• The 2004 Federal Election was held on 9 October and the Coalition was returned for a fourth term. Read about the Coalition's film election policy: 'A World Class Film Industry'. The Coalition announced its new ministry on 22 October. Senator the Hon Helen Coonan remains as Minister for Communications, and Senator the Hon Rod Kemp will remain as Minister for Arts and Sport.


• AFC Chief Executive Kim Dalton gave two speeches in October related to free trade. On 6 October at the Australia Korea Foundation Media Forum and 28 October at the Film Victoria Free Trade Agreement Seminar he commented on the impact of the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement on the audiovisual industries.


• The Sydney office of ScreenSound Australia, the National Screen and Sound Archive, has now moved to new and upgraded purpose-built facilities at the Australian Film Commission. Archive staff, for the first time, have a sealed film-handling area, a cool room (with a nitrate safe) and sound-proofed viewing rooms ready to take advantage of digital delivery technologies. The new location is Level 4, 150 William Street, Woolloomooloo, ph: (02) 9321 6444.


• Fieldwork is currently underway for a comprehensive AFC survey of Australian companies engaged in TV commercials production. This research will track trends in the commercials sector by following up and expanding on an published in 2001. More than 200 companies throughout Australia are being approached for interview. The survey covers production company profile, number of commercials produced, budget ranges, shoot days and locations, sources of work, employment and trends. The questionnaire was developed with input from SPAA's Commercials Committee and statistical analysis of the results will be undertaken in November.


• Continuing our spotlight on low-budget feature filmmaking, in November/December AFTRS Melbourne is offerering a hands-on course that will teach participants the methodologies and practices used in budgeting feature films, with an emphasis on the low-budget feature. See also our feature article on how to write a low-budget screenplay.

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• The Indigenous Unit is expanding the opportunities it provides for Indigenous filmmakers through a new program to develop feature film ideas. LONG BLACK is a strategic initiative aimed at encouraging and supporting Indigenous filmmakers to work in the longer format, and to bring to the screen feature stories authored and crafted by Indigenous people. Deadline Friday 19 November.


• RAW NERVE, entering its third year, is a national project of the AFC and Screen Development Australia. QPIX is calling for scripts and the theme is 'Crazy for Love'. Applications are open for writers and producers. Deadline Friday 19 November.


• Successful applicants for ENTERPRISE TASMAN, the innovative program designed to provide Australian and New Zealand producers with the business skills that will assist in making their companies globally competitive, were announced recently.


• The following AFC funding round deadlines are coming up in November:
  
  Film Development
  5 November: General Development Investment
  19 November: Documentary Strand L - Shooting Time-Critical Material
  
  Indigenous
  19 November: Long Black - Feature Development
  26 November: Documentary Development
• 
  
• AFC funding approvals.

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• For the first time an 'Australian focus' was featured at the recent Pusan Film Festival in South Korea, 7-15 October. Despite its short festival history, Pusan is widely regarded as the key festival for the discovery of Asian films. In addition, the PPP (Pusan Promotion Plan) is fast developing into a serious option for raising financing for Asian feature scripts. Four Australian films screened at the festival: the features Human Touch (director Paul Cox) and Tom White (director Alkinos Tsilimidos), the feature documentary Letters to Ali (director Clara Law) and the short animation Birthday Boy (director Sejong Park). The Australian Korean Foundation (AKF) brought a delegation of film journalists and Australian festival directors to Korea while the AFC supported the directors of the films selected to attend the festival. Co-hosted by the Australian Ambassador to Korea, His Excellency Colin Heseltine, the AKF and the AFC, a 'Celebrate Australians at PIFF' gala reception was held at the aquarium in Pusan, attracting key Korean industry figures, filmmakers and international festival directors. Discussions with the festival continue to enhance the participation of Australians at this key Asian film festival.


• This year's MIPCOM, 4-8 October, was well attended with over 130 Australians travelling to Cannes. MIPCOM has an animation and children's program focus and by the end of the week was generally reported as very positive, offering opportunities across all genres. Six producers received AFC Travel Grants to attend and the AFC again produced an Australians at MIPCOM booklet, containing a snapshot of each Australian company attending, including details of projects represented and availability for co-productions. The Australian stand received a major design overhaul and the AFC hosted its traditional 'Australian Drinks' reception as a major networking opportunity. For a hard copy of the booklet contact publishing@afc.gov.au


• The Big Screen festival is screaming towards the end of its tour for 2004. Alice Springs, Darwin, Carnarvon and Broome all had successful festivals during August and September with Barcaldine and Katherine lighting up in early October. Warrnambool, Victor Harbor and Burnie will be the final three locations for 2004, with premieres of Chris Kennedy's new Toronto Award-winning comedy A Man's Gotta Do in Warrnabool and Burnie, presented by co-star Alyssa McClelland. Victor Harbor will play host to Rolf de Heer with a mini retrospective, and the silent classic Jungle Woman will feature with live accompaniment in both Victor Harbor and Warrnambool.


• The Archive is sponsoring the Newcastle Film Festival's opening night screening of the classic Australian film Newsfront, a new 35mm Kodak/Atlab Cinema Collection print. Manager of the Kodak/Atlab Collection Jane Adam is also on the judging panel for the short film competition. If you'd like to find out more about Newsfront and the collection read Angie Fielder's article '50 Film Flashback' in the latest IF Magazine or see a listing of the 50 restored films.


• AFC Manager, Indigenous Unit, Sally Riley attended the All Roads Film Festival with filmmaker Darlene Johnson in Los Angeles and Washington in late October, accompanied by filmmaker and AFC Commissioner Rachel Perkins. Films screening in the festival were One Night the Moon (w/d:Rachel Perkins), Dust - (w/d: Ivan Sen), Gulpilil - One Red Blood (d: Darlene Johnson) and Mimi (d: Warwick Thornton). The festival also featured films from Indigenous filmmakers from around the world.


• Six Australian films have been selected to screen at two of the world's most prestigious documentary film festivals, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), 18-28 November, and the Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, 11-24 November.


• The first nationally touring music film festival visited Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Fremantle in late October, with the support of the AFC. The Document Music Film Festival showcased documentaries, feature films, live concerts and curated projects from a wide variety of musical genres.


• The Berlin Co-production Market is going into its second year in 2005. The two-day initiative for co-productions is currently calling for submissions until Friday 5 November.


• The Embassy Roadshow is a travelling film festival that showcases a selection of contemporary Australian films through Australian embassies. It is an initiative of the Australia International Cultural Council, managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the AFC. Manilla, Philippines and Ramallah (West Bank) Palestine were the two destinations in September. Manila is a repeat of a very successful event held last year and again received strong audiences. A previous attempt to hold an Australian Film Festival in Ramallah had to be cancelled in the late stages because of security concerns so it is great news that this one went ahead peacefully.


• The Home Brewed International Film Festival is a festival and seminar program that showcases projects in the Wollongong region. AFC Project Manager Julia Overton took part in a session on 30 October about AFC film development funding programs.

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• The Australian Film Institute recently announced winners in the features and non-features sections of the 2004 AFI Awards. AFC-funded features did particularly well this year with Cate Shortland's debut film Somersault winning a record 13 awards. Now in their 46th year, the AFI Awards are the premier event of Australian film culture, acknowledging excellence in a broad range of categories that cover feature film, television, documentary, short fiction and short animation.


• The Sentimental Bloke screened in Melbourne on 26 October at the RMIT Capitol Theatre, followed by a reception at Melbourne Town Hall. The screening was organised by the AFC and presented as part of a two-week screen culture event, Melbourne On Screen, introduced by AFC Chair Maureen Barron, Archive Director Paolo Cherchi Usai, and the President of Film Victoria John Howie.


• Congratulations to Beck Cole for winning Best Australian Film at this year's WOW Awards for her short Wirriya - Small Boy. She received $27,000 of in-kind film production services. The judges were Sharon Connolly, former CEO at Film Australia and Margaret Slarke, drama and documentary producer.


• Cate Shortland's Somersault took out the major awards at the AWGIES and the Film Critics' Circle of Australia Awards nominations have been announced.


• Actors Claudia Karvan and Alex Dimitriades recently announced nominations for the 6th Annual Lexus IF Awards which will take place at Luna Park in Sydney on 10 November, co-hosted by Sarah Wynter and John Safran.

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• The AFC Annual Report for 2003/04 is now available to browse online.


• Tuned into Leadership - women and television was launched on 18 October at the annual Women Working in Television cocktail party at The Wharf Restaurant in Sydney. Over 310 people braved the rain to attend the event. Liz Deep-Jones (SBS presenter, Toyota World Sports) was MC for the night and kicked off proceedings with much good humour. The guest speaker was Sue Masters (Head of Drama, Network Ten) who enlightened with her leadership insights, drawn from an amazing career working for various networks in Australia, the US and Britain in influential positions. Sue also provided the key case study in the publication. AFC Chair Maureen Barron officially launched the publication, which is available free from the AFC website.


• The AFC's new statistics publication, Australia's Audiovisual Markets, featuring key data on Australia's cinema, video, television and interactive media markets, is now available.


• For hard copies of these AFC publications, contact publishing@afc.gov.au.

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• A number of new policy submissions are now available. The AFC has made submissions to the DCITA Reviews into the following Digital Television Services: provision of services other than simulcasting by free to air broadcasters on digital spectrum; provision of commercial television broadcasting services after 31 December 2006; and the viability of creating an Indigenous broadcasting Service and the regulatory arrangements that should apply to the digital transmission of such a service using spectrum in the broadcasting bands. The AFC argues that whatever the government ultimately determines in relation to new television services, the new system as a whole, and its component parts, must deliver to Australian audiences adequate levels of choice, quantity and diversity of Australian content. At minimum, these levels must be at least equivalent and in proportion to those which audiences currently enjoy on free-to-air television.


• The AFC has made a submission to the DCITA Review of the regulation of content delivered over mobile communications devices. The AFC believes that as television and cultural content distribution evolves and changes, the importance of access by Australians to Australian content should remain a fundamental goal.


• The AFC has provided comments on the ABA draft Documentary Guidelines that seek to clarify the interpretation of 'documentary' for the Australian Content Standard.


• Read about the latest AFC-funded success stories including Clutch, Look Both Ways and Lucky for Some.


• Are you looking for details of a particular Australian film title - feature, short, TV drama or documentary? The Searchable Film Database includes Australian and co-produced features, TV drama and documentaries from 1990 and shorts from 1998. It is now updated on the AFC website each month.


• Upcoming Production Report.


• Latest updates to Get the Picture Online industry statistics.

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• Welcome to Manager, Facilities and Services Peter Callow, Research Consultant Cecile Casanova, Policy Research Officer Julia Hammett-Jamart and Legal Coordinator Leela Shanker.


• Positions vacant: Legal Assistant/Paralegal - deadline 5 November; National Helpdesk Support - 11 November; Network, Systems & Services Manager - 11 November; System Administrator - 11 November; Network Administrator - 11 November; Helpdesk Support - 11 November.

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• The Big Screen 2004 regional tour of Australian films heads to Victor Harbor (SA) and Burnie (Tas) in November.


• Find out what's on at the Archive in November.


• The Australian features Somersault, Watermark, A Man's Gotta Do, Bondi Tsunami, Letters to Ali and Lost Things are screening in November-December so keep an eye out for them at your local cinema.


• Game Time, a major international event dedicated to the latest in games development, interactive entertainment and networked media, will be held in Melbourne, 1 October - 14 November, at the State Library of Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). For further information visit the Game Time website at www.gametime.net.au


• The Archive is sponsoring the Newcastle FIlm Festival's opening night screening of the classic Australian film Newsfront, which is also a new 35mm Kodak/Atlab Cinema Collection print. The festival is screening 12-14 November and there's also a forum on documentary.


• ReelDance International Dance on Screen Festival focuses on dance in everyday life. It is touring nationally until Wednesday 27 November.


• Convergence Jam is a workshop event that profiles and creates awareness of converging digital media. As an alternative to lectures, Convergence brings a diverse range of industry players together to create converging media concepts to workshop under the guidance of facilitators from RMIT and other industry specialists. It will be held in Melbourne for the first time, 29 November - 1 December.


• Hosted by the Archive and the Australian National University, the Credits Rolling: Filming and History Conference will be held in Canberra in early December and has attracted over 80 speakers, with topics including 'Special Effects in Lord of the Rings', 'Early Rock'n'Roll Films', 'Odd Couples in Recent Australian Cinema', and 'Picturing the Cold War: some issues in documenting the split in the Australian Labor Party'.


• The next biennial Adelaide Film Festival will be held from 18 February to 3 March 2005. The 2005 program will explore contemporary screen culture with a unique program of screenings, special events and far reaching forum sessions, incorporating feature film, documentary, shorts, animation, music, online and new media screenings, computer gaming, installation and exhibitions.


• The 2005 Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) will be held in Adelaide, SA, 21-24 February 2005. Based on the theme Common Ground, New Horizons, the AIDC will focus on international co-production and potential new delivery platforms for documentary makers today. Early bird registration closes 1 December 2004. To register go to www.aidc.com.au


• Digital Salon invites all digital media artists working or experimenting with interactive media, VJing, non-linear filmmaking, DVD, electronic music and projection arts to take part in their regular meetings, held the last Tuesday of each month in Sydney.


• Popcorn Taxi has weekly screenings and Q&A sessions in Sydney and Melbourne. See their website or join their mailing list for details of upcoming events.


• Cinematheque offers a diverse program of classic, cult, animation, experimental, documentary, silent and short films to Australian audiences all year long. For screenings in your state visit the Cinematheque website.


• IF magazine's What's On in Film July to December 2004 guide to screen events is sponsored by the AFC.


• Other AFC-supported activities and events.

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Writing the low-budget feature presents the scriptwriter with all the usual craft and content problems of any feature film script, with the added dimension of working within clearly defined budget parameters. Too many scriptwriters and/or first time directors have little knowledge of production realities, crew functions and what things cost. The challenge is to think imaginatively within budget constraints, rather than compromising a bigger-budget idea, and to provide the audience with a genuinely cinematic experience on the story's own terms, rather than television on a big screen.

The following article is an edited and updated version of Michael Brindley's speech 'Writing the Low-budget Feature', a dialogue which originally appeared in Low Means Low (a collection of papers from the Low-budget Feature Seminar, published by the Australian Film Commission in 1996 and edited by Philippa Bateman and Catherine Knapman). To purchase a copy of Low Means Low, contact publishing@afc.gov.au

Writing the low-budget feature? A pretty silly idea. Everyone knows that low-budget features aren't really written; they don't have or need writers. They scarcely need a script. They have directors or the heroic hyphenate - writer-directors. Fortunately for us, some directors, the real auteurs, are also very good writers, although not as many as some people seem to think, or choose to remember.

I speak here as a mere screenwriter. Someone who is hired to do the typing for creative producers and directors - Producers and Directors who have a 'vision' but are too busy, or too gregarious, or too lazy to do it themselves. As Irving Thalberg put it: 'The writer is a necessary evil.'

What I want to emphasise in this article, however, applies whether there is a writer involved or whether the script comes whole and perfect from the director.

A good low-budget feature begins as a good low-budget idea. In 1915 the Russian filmmaker Pudovkin wrote in his book Film Technique and Film Acting: 'In order to write a scenario suitable for filming, one must know the methods by which the spectator can be influenced from the screen.'

Now if you're a genius don't worry about the following - just proceed on instinct. For the rest of us, let's assume we have a story, that we are writing a proposal for a work of cinematic art which does not yet exist.

Read the full article.

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