Current Place on Contemporary Critical and Market Horizons
Unfortunately, for the cast, crew, distribution and production company for Swimming Upstream, the film was not a huge financial success. This was somewhat disappointing considering the assumed $10 million budget that they spent to finance the films production. “An expensive production—its $10 million budget makes it the most expensive Australian feature since Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)” (link) .
Swimming Upstream, should not be taken as the best example for Australian film released in 2003. Ned Kelly (2003, Gregor Jordan), was at the top of the domestic box office with a gross taking of $8.4 million. However, this does not change the fact that in 2003 the total box office takings, for Australian films, were at 3.5% from 4.9% in 2002. These figures seem to drop to a low of 1.3% in 2004. Last year, 2007, the figures seem to average out to 4.0%. These figures should not be disheartening considering Australia entered the least amount of films for that calendar year.
There could be many reasons why Australia is not taking in as much money compared to the US and the UK, and this could be due to lack of funding both internationally and in Australia, marketing of the film internationally, the support by the Australian government and the production of the foreign sector.
Interestingly enough, “according to the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2006 the average cost of production for a major Hollywood studio film was US$65.8 million (A$86.9 million) while a US minor studio film was US$30.7 million (A$40.2 million)... The average cost of a UK feature in 2005/06 was £3.1 million (A$7.5 million), while the average production cost of an Australian feature in 2005/06 was $3.8 million” (link) .
With lower budgets and box office takings, Australian films do not have the money to market their films to the same extent as US films, which ultimately causes less exposure to the film and less chance of making it to a wide amount of viewing screens.
Another factor, which could be affecting the marketing of Australian films, is the amount of films released in comparison to other countries. The AFC states that,
“over the five years from 2002 to 2006 Australian films accounted for 7.7 per cent of all films released in the Australian market, and 3.6 per cent of box office, whereas UK films in the UK accounted for 20.0 per cent of titles and 23.1 per cent of box office. During the same period, Canadian films in Canada accounted for 17.7 per cent of titles released and 4.1 per cent of box office” ( link).
On a current marketing level, Australian films are lacking in their overall ability to gain international and sometimes even national support. However, Australian names such as Nicole Kidman (actress), Naomi Watts (actress), Geoffrey Rush (actor), Eric Banner (actor), Phillip Noyce (director), P. J. Hogan (director) etc., continue to make international stardom and exposure in the film industry.
For films like Swimming Upstream, and other contemporary Australian films, making box office success is quite slim. This cannot be completely blamed by the lack of funding, exposure, or competitive high budget US films, but also the current place film takes in the consumerist lives. Illegal downloading is available, projectors and big screen plasmas with awesome surround sound systems are starting to fill Australians homes, and successful box office films can be borrowed cheaply form video stores. This causes less unknown films to be viewed at home rather than the consumers ‘wasting money’ seeing it at the cinema.
After looking at the figures from 2002-2007, I have not seen much improvement in the marketing horizons for Australian films since the release of Swimming Upstream. This is disappointing for the future uptake of Australian films both internationally and nationally. The government needs to provide more funding to Australian film and television so international exposure is gained, and so more Australian films have the opportunity to make box office success.
Facts and figures accessed from AFC