From Issue 6, September 2002:

Development Heaven?
The Ambitions of the Film Council

(Full Interview)

Is the Film Council going to achieve its ambitious goals?  Since the script, script, script is apparently the prerequisite for a successful film, Julian Friedmann talked to Jenny Borgars, Head of the Development Fund at the Film Council.

JF:  The Film Council’s mandate is to develop a sustainable British film industry.  This means there isn’t one yet. Has development – or lack of it – been responsible in any way for this? Has our industry failed to develop material for our films in a global way as, for example, the Americans have done?

JB:  Moving towards a more sustainable industry is one of the main aims of the Film Council.  One of the key questions is what is a sustainable industry? This is particularly relevant to us working in the Development Fund. However, we are but one spoke in the wheel and for there to be a truly sustainable industry, all the spokes in the wheel need to be in place and working together in a cohesive way.

Development is a key area that was identified as needing to be better resourced, better skilled and given a greater level of importance and recognition within the industry as a stepping stone towards having better films made, that is, films that will perform better at an international level.  It’s not by any means the only thing that will help change our industry.  We need to work in a focused way to develop projects better, develop people better and develop businesses better. It’s a huge job and it’s something that goes beyond the scripts themselves.

JF:  Is the developing of people and businesses as much part of your mandate as developing scripts?

JB:  Absolutely.  We realised that it can’t just be about scripts. If the aim is to achieve better films, films that are performing internationally, the script is undoubtedly one of the elements that needs to be in place to make it all happen. To achieve a good script, the skills of the people who are writing and developing the scripts need to be improved, but you must also increase the appetite in local audiences for the type of stories that are being told. This may also involve changing the appetite of those who are creating the ideas so that they look at the world in a more international way.  Businesses must be created which are capable of moving these ideas and scripts forward and of converting them into films.  Finally, there must be a proper distribution and marketing network so that the films will reach the public.

It’s immensely ambitious. These are things that everyone has debated endlessly but fundamentally for us it is about nurturing people who are able to create the projects that will succeed and so help production companies to be more robust.  For instance, the slate funding initiative, which will fund around twenty companies over a three-year period, is by no means just about giving those companies the ability to develop scripts.  By giving them money we believe they will be able to source a better quality and range of projects because they will be able to employ specific people who have development and business expertise.  The aim is to help create a network of sustainable businesses that are able to look outwards rather than inwards.

JF:  This is obviously not a quick fix because people and systems don’t change quickly. Something that I have wondered about since the Film Council came into being, is the apparent separation of the development of writers, script editors and projects in television from those involved in film.  Why does the Film Council not embrace television as well given that it is an important training ground for British creative talent? Does the Film Council think television drama is less important than film, as do most people in the film industry?

JB:  That may be so of some in the film industry but it’s not a view shared here, and most certainly not within the Development Fund.  Look at some of the initiatives that the New Cinema Fund is involved in at the moment, such as making films for television using documentary directors who can then move over into making feature films.

JF:  They may be using television as an output, but the Film Council is not involved in training for or the development of television drama.

JB:  We are not becoming involved in the training or development of television drama because the Film Council was set up as a film council not a film and television council.  We also have to look at where we can best invest our resources and I don’t know that we could effectively spread across both film and television.  However, what I would say is that we, certainly within the Development Fund, cross-fertilise by working with television talent that has either moved across to film or is moving back and forth between the two, for instance, Kevin Hood, with whom we’re working through Ecosse Films on the adaptation of On Green Dolphin Street. He is a writer who moves between the two very successfully.

JF:  So if a television writer with a track record were to say, I really don’t know much about writing a feature film but I would like to try, what would you offer them?

JB:  Firstly we could offer to steer them to the Film Council’s Training Fund and the range of courses that are being supported by it and the Development Fund. There are many different courses on writing for cinema, on specialised levels or on a more general level.  That would be a way we could help a television writer who isn’t necessarily engaged directly on a feature project with the Development Fund.

Alternatively, a television writer could come up with an idea but need help in accessing feature film script techniques to realise the idea.  If we were interested we could take it into development by having them interact directly with Development Fund staff and, if we could identify relevant training, we would help fund that and so develop the writer’s skills base.

We have taken on newer writers as well who, as part of the development process, have been put on courses like Draft Zero in order to develop their projects and their skills. As the financier, the end result is, hopefully, in achieving a better-developed draft of a script. The writer is being trained not only for this project, but on a broader level and so will hopefully benefit for the rest of their career.

JF:  You have a close relationship with the Training Fund.  How does this relationship work?

JB:  What we can do is steer people towards the courses that are available or funded by us, but they can probably gain that information more directly through the Training Fund.

JF:  However, if you have a project that you feel would be suitable for low-budget production, do you discuss it with the New Cinema Fund or are you able to make a unilateral decision that you would like to develop it independently?  What is your relationship with the Production Funds?

JB:  The relationship with the Production Funds is different from that with the Training Fund.  We work very closely with the Production Funds, which I think is a good thing, but we don’t work exclusively with them. The structure under which the Film Council was set up puts us in a strong position, because as the Development Fund we can engage with the needs of the Production Funds in terms of the type of films that they would like to finance and the type of talent with which they would like to engage   We are also able to react to the projects that they’ve identified, that they’ve been approached with and, where appropriate, help to facilitate the development of those projects to a point where they are ready to be financed for production.

JF:  I believe that you now have 75 projects in development, which I understand amounts to about 5% of the projects submitted.  Did you ever have a target figure?

JB:  No.

JF:  What proportion of those 75 projects has connections to either of the Production Funds?

JB:  I would say about 20 projects – about a quarter.  What’s incredibly important for us is to be able to identify a potential end-user on the projects that we’re developing.  It’s important because the danger – the thing that we are always trying to avoid here – is that a project will sit in a development vacuum.  So we have the flexibility to go out and engage with other parts of the industry and can work with almost anyone who’s out there.  That is particularly important for producers who may want to use our money initially and then bring in other partners.  It puts them in control and we become a strategic fund for the people using it.

JF:  What proportion of the 75 projects has come from producers as opposed to writers?

JB:  The figure is about 80%. This is a rough figure because some of these projects may have come directly from writers and been placed with producers.  I’ve always said – and I think it is important for your readership to know – that we encourage writers to apply to us directly.

JF:  How many regular script readers do you have?

JB:  We have a pool at the moment of around ten external readers.

JF:  Are they working for other people as well or are you keeping them pretty busy?

JB:  We keep them pretty busy but, yes, they do work for other people.  When we take readers on, they are generally people who are already involved in the industry.

JF:  I understand you’ve given them some training.

JB:  I think it’s very important for us that the readers should feel that they are part of the team and that they should have a clear and overall sense of what we are trying to achieve and how that can change as well. One of the brilliant things about the Film Council is that it can grow and respond to the changing needs of the market place and the people who approach us.

By helping to train the readers, we not only align them more closely with what we are looking for here, but we see the role of reader as being a more important function than it is usually regarded in that it can be used as a stepping stone to further things.  My expectation is that many of our readers would like to move forward into development work or producing or script editing.  So the more tools that we give them, the better they work for us, and the better they are when they move somewhere else in the industry.

JF:  Presumably they are now working to a mutually agreed level or standard of script analysis.  Many people in development seem to be concerned about the lack of a benchmark or standard for analysing scripts and writing reports. How do you ensure that they make ‘equitable’ judgments about what they are reading?

JB:  I would say that the benchmark is available in the cinemas every day of the week.

JF:  Do you feel any kind of obligation to provide more information to those who submit ideas than you do at present when you reject material? I talked to many people before coming here and amongst the most frequent comments were that it takes a long time to obtain a response from you and that your system is too bureaucratic. Also, most people I questioned wanted to be given more information about why their material was rejected so that they could learn from the rejection. Furthermore, you’re in a unique position to establish a kind of benchmark to which people should aspire, but no one knows what that level is because you are not telling them. Knowing what’s working at the cinema isn’t really an explanation for the majority of writers or producers, particularly the less-experienced ones.

JB: Feedback is something that we think about a great deal here and it’s very difficult.  The reasoning behind our decision not to give detailed responses is partly a resource issue in that we want to make the best use of our team and the expertise to which we have access. This is particularly relevant when you consider the volume of material that we are looking at as well as actually putting into development.  Take that 5% figure: it translates into 75 projects and that translates into a huge number of active relationships that all have to be nurtured.  We have a staff of four creatives and have to strike a reasonable balance between the time spent moving things forward and the time we can afford to spend on projects that cannot be moved forward.

I do agree that there is a need for people to learn how they can improve their work.  We try to address that by putting some of the Development Fund’s money into the Training Fund to pay for writers’ courses be it for beginners or those more advanced or for courses that cover specific genres.  As for feedback, we are currently thinking about better ways of handling this.

JF:  What is the format of one of your internal reports?

JB:  There is a synopsis and a comment.  However, I strongly feel that it’s not an option for us to pass on the reports that are generated because they are written for us to be able to make an assessment on a project.  They’re not necessarily written to help move the writer forward.

JF:  That leads me into another question. You do presumably sometimes reject good projects because they are like something else which you know is already in development.  So do you say to someone that you don’t feel you can support it because there is another film in development like it?

JB:  A project is looked at by an external reader. The report comes back to us and is looked at by the execs in the fund.  If there is a positive report or if the subject matter is of a type that we feel positive about, then it will be looked at by an exec internally.  But if our feeling is that it’s not for us but might work for someone else, then we say so. One reason that we might not take something on might be because we already have something in development that’s similar.

We try to inform people who submit material to us if there are other similar projects when we are aware of such projects. It is then for them to make the decision as to whether to seek finance elsewhere, or to consider whether this project is really the one with which they should to be moving forward.  Also, since we’re not the only source of development finance, I would expect people to be testing out their ideas on a range of organisations because inevitably, with the amount of projects we all receive, no one body is ever going to be able to choose everything out there that is good.  People have different appetites.

JF:  You said earlier that you were open to first-time writers too.  Is that wise?

JB:  It can be if they have talent! I would say that a very high proportion of the people who apply here have some level of experience, whether it’s in television or theatre or otherwise.  It’s rare that we receive material from absolute beginners.  Anyone who applies, whether they’re a first-time writer or fiftieth time writer, still has to pass the selection process.  If we think their idea or project has legs and can move forward, once they’re in the cycle of development, if they need help in technical craft skills, then that’s part of the development process.

JF:  I’d like to move on to something that is often discussed in the industry, which is the call for original voices, original material, original ideas. Is there a kind of mythical obsession about doing something different or doing something that’s original, rather than, say, a genre piece?

JB:  To answer your question in a slightly different way, one of the things we often feel here is that there rarely seems to be a desire to emulate the best of what exists.  There’s a desire – and maybe it’s natural, particularly in writers – to want to blaze a trail, to throw things up in the air and then make changes. I am a fan of original ideas and appreciate the distinction between an original idea and a familiar execution.  We love people who have a new way into a story, but the approaches taken in many submissions have shown a hesitancy to embrace the best of the genre or the best of mainstream storytelling.

JF:  Whereas in America they do that more often?

JB:  Yes, in America that’s probably more part of their culture. It’s a culture to which they aspire.  What always perplexes me is the gap between what the British film industry aspires to and what people will go to see at the cinema and I’m talking particularly about the cinema because I’m not an expert on the television industry.  It is extremely rare that anyone – writer or producer – comes to my office and says: I really want to make a terrific thriller or horror movie, or a film like Meet the Parents, or I really thought that Something about Mary was fantastic because it worked on all these levels and it worked for the audience and what I want to do is make the kind of film these audiences want to see.

JF:  Is that because they assume that that’s the last thing you want to hear?  Do you think people who go to Working Title say things like that?

JB:  It would make me much happier if I felt people were at least going somewhere and being enthusiastic about bringing those ideas through!  It’s certainly a gap that we perceive here. I’m not talking about bad quality films that have enough marketing money and star power behind them to make them work. It’s the understanding of what appeals to audiences on a purely emotional level that is what gets them into the cinema.  There is a gap between that and where many people – writers and producers – start with their ideas.

JF:  Do you sense that this is partly because writers and producers feel they are superior to their audience? Do they believe that because they have something they want to say, there is a gap between them and their audience? You want mainstream horror and thrillers. Why do you think you are not being offered them?

JB:  I would say we have more horror than thrillers with a renaissance of horror in the UK during the last eighteen months or so, but there is definitely a gap between what people want to make and what they seem to enjoy going to see.  We need to address these issues.  It’s partly about developing an appetite in the people who are creating ideas for films to want to embrace that kind of film-making. We need to have a broader spectrum available and I think a robust industry can reflect that broad spectrum.

JF:  But if there isn’t a broad spectrum it can’t be a robust industry.  Could you give us a list of ten or twenty films that you would love to have seen being done as British movies, like Something about Mary?  In other words, do people know enough about your taste, your sensibilities and your aspirations?

JB: Here is a list that might give some indication:

The Sixth Sense
10 Things I Hate About You
Clueless
Do the Right Thing
Fight Club
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
La Haine
The Matrix
Memento
Meet The Parents
Misery
Ring
Save the Last Dance
Shrek
Strictly Ballroom
Swingers
There's Something About Mary
Together
Tootsie
When Harry Met Sally

[Read Nic Ransome's analysis of this list:
Jenny Borgars On The Couch]

JF:  Do you have any targets?  How many of the projects in development do you realistically expect to go into production?

JB:  In the Development Fund we do have targets in certain areas.  We don’t have an overt target for the films that will go into production but we do have an internal target of what we aim to achieve.  One of the interesting things about this fund – and it's one of the perverse things – is that it’s there to help people understand how it’s alright to fail when a project is in development, that is, for a project to fail during the process of development, for a project not to go all the way. It’s preferable to a finished film failing.

JF:  But should you spend tax-payers’ money giving people the right to fail?

JB:  What I’m talking about is pulling people back during development because it can be seen not to be working. You lessen the chances of failing after production if beforehand you say: let’s make it work and if it doesn’t, let’s be incisive enough to understand, to accept and move on. This is preferable to the cycle in which we’ve tended to find ourselves when as a production company you can only access finance once you go into production and producers therefore tend try to reach that position as quickly as possible.  It is a key function of this fund to resource that process properly. However, when a project doesn’t work, we are also in a position to say: OK, it didn’t work, let’s stop and move on to something else.

JF:  Is one of the real problems trying to second-guess the industry and the public?  A writer comes up with an idea, develops a treatment, writes a script and still can’t really know if it’s going to work when it is shot.  Is this why training and developing the people you work with is as important as furthering written projects?

JB:  We’re definitely trying to further educate the people who have projects in development (although some are already very experienced and successful).  We can help finance having scripts read aloud, shooting a pilot, doing a workshop with actors over a month or so. These are the options that writers, script editors and producers can use when they’re in development with us. I think the Script Factory readings, for example, are great.

JF:  What happens if the writer or producer (be they individual or slate-funded) who brings in a project disagrees with you over what should happen on the next draft of the treatment or script?  How pro-active is the Film Council in taking care of its investment in a project?

JB:  We care about our investment.  I think that it is important that commercial rigour is imposed.  You have to bear in mind that we are dealing with a wide range of people and projects and a wide range of levels of experience, so it’s usually on a case-by-case basis. The range is from those writing their first feature screenplays (they may have written very well in other formats but are now writing their first screenplays) to the most experienced talent in the country so obviously the means by which you treat those different levels of people is very different.

Similarly there’s a very different relationship with companies that have slate funding because we’re making an overall investment in a company so there has to be a different level of trust.

If we’re taking an individual’s project into development, one of the first things to ascertain is whether we share similar aims and ambitions and whether the individual is making a strong enough case to be able to realise their ambitions.  We are trying to facilitate and enable people.  This fund isn’t a production finance fund.  It’s not directly linked.

This takes me back to an earlier point about the fact that we are able to engage on a wide level.  We need to start with a shared set of aims and then if the project is in development and it goes wrong and there is disagreement, we reach a situation where we go our separate ways or we try to come to some compromise. I’m also quite happy for people to leave and try and prove us wrong. I would never want this fund to be seen as the arbiter of all taste.

JF:  One of the comments I’ve often heard is why do you give money to people like Robert Altman or Michael Kuhn, or other people who have no trouble raising money for their films? Shouldn’t you be trying to help those who can’t help themselves?

JB:  First of all I would like to say that the purpose of this fund isn’t to give money to people who don’t really need it. I think if you speak to Robert Jones of the Premier Fund about the investment in Gosford Park you will find that this was a film that was unable to be financed from the usual sources.  Investment by the Premiere Fund was a cornerstone in furthering the project and we believe that we should be supporting people and projects that could be commercially successful as well as artistically important, if we are to help develop a sustainable film industry.

Michael Kuhn came to us with an extremely bold and exciting proposal that involved doing something new that reflected the overall aims of this fund. We thought he had a good chance of achieving it and so supported him.

JF:  Presumably you’ll have greater successes with more-experienced people than with those less experienced. If you don’t have enough success, you’ll not have the momentum to maintain a sustainable Film Council, never mind a sustainable film industry.  Nevertheless, there is criticism that you should not be funding people who will probably succeed without your help.

JB:  We’re investing in people whom we believe have the potential to achieve a common goal and this has sometimes required putting them and their projects through a process of training and further development.

I think we do have a problem with the perception of public funding. We’re still perceived to be like the previous forms of public funding.  Additionality – funding films that the market was unwilling to support, used to be the mainstay of much public funding but it’s not something that we have to follow here.  We acknowledge that the industry needs to work in a broader way and that commercial success isn’t something to be frightened of or to back away from. It is clearly part of our goal at the Development Fund to be successful. It is a difficult and competitive industry and we are very serious about what we are attempting to achieve.