Sarah Bullen
Russian-born director Sergei Bodrov saw the setting for his new feature film Hoofbeats, a big-budget production by Columbia TriStar Pictures, in Solitaire.
Solitaire – best described as a tiny enclave somewhere in the middle of Namibia’s endless Namib desert – has very little going for it apart from a caf, a petrol station and a truck stop. And in the desert outside Solitaire, where Bodrov planted his flag, there is literally nothing. No power, no telephones, no water. Nothing but sand. And that’s where a South African company was called in to build a portable town.
By the time the set builders, crew and cast of some 200 arrived – along with a team of 60 horses, oryx antelope, baboons, cheetahs and lions – they walked into a fully functioning village with five-star accommodation amid the dunes.
The architects of the temporary village were project managers from Felix Unite Production Support – a division of Felix Unite Tourism Group – which has developed a specialised division to cater for film and commercial shoots in the most inaccessible and inhospitable locations in Africa.
With an army of trucks and equipment they will build roads, dig and install sewage tanks and plumbing and laundry systems. They’ll set up generators, install portable plumbing, solar heating and air- conditioning units. They build massive kitchens to cater for a crew of 100 hard labourers and cast, erect single or double luxury rooms with carpeted floors, air- conditioning or heating, bedside lamps, duvets, pillows, cupboards complete with hangers, lights, bedside tables, tablecloths, chairs, white flush-toilets and hot showers. They put plug points in every room so crews can blow-dry their hair or plug in radios. They build restaurants and bars. They even install satellite TV and when the shoot is over they pack it all up and move to the next location.
All of this for about R1,6-million a project.
Felix Unite is tapping into one of the fastest-moving sectors in the film and television industry – the selling of South Africa as a location. That sector has now focussed on Cape Town.
Despite the self-propagated image of Cape Town as the Hollywood of South Africa, it can actually lay claim to only 9% of production companies, with at least 80% of production companies – admittedly mostly television production – located in Gauteng. But where Cape Town does lead the market is as the dominant location industry. Its diversity and South Africa’s favourable exchange rate have attracted exponential growth of international commercials shot under its clear summer skies.
Moonlighting is one of South Africa’s most successful facilitators of international commercials. The company’s co-director, Kathy Brower, says Cape Town is a rising success as a location because it can offer a sunny Europe during European winter.
It has, she said, precipitous Swiss mountain passes, dark German forests, long European beaches and white sands of a desert island. It has long, flat roads to nowhere, sculptured white mansions on the Italian Riviera, golden wheat fields, cobbled streets and sunny piazzas.
Most importantly, Cape Town has two crucial attributes: winter rainfall, ensuring about four months of clear blue skies and sunshine that coincide with the miserable European mid-winter, and a favourable exchange rate.
“Often a bid on an international commercial will start with a producer asking us: `Do you have golden wheat fields in December?'” Brower says.
According to Mike Smit, MD of Sasani – whose Video Lab outlets are South Africa’s only three post-production facilities – the number of commercials shot in Cape Town in the nine months to March grew by 16% compared to the corresponding period in the previous year. In Johannesburg, the volume of processed film was 20% up from last year – a figure skewed, however, by massive footage of film used by two large feature films processed through the Johannesburg studio. Total film shot in South Africa over the nine-month period grew 18%, compared to a 29% growth in the 1997/8 season and a 41% growth in 1996/7.
But while the figures show the location industry is still growing at a respectable 18% a year, there has been a marked decrease in growth rate.
Hot Shots crewing agency director Heather Setzen says the decrease is due to a drop in the number of international feature films shot in South Africa.
Competing with increasingly costeffective and well-marketed locations like Mexico, Spain, New Zealand and Australia, Setzen said South Africa is losing out on the supply of international feature films because of inadequate marketing of the country as a world-class film destination by a national body.
“While individual firms in various sectors of the industry have aggressive and effective target marketing in the commercial markets, there is still no nationally co-ordinated drive that sells the country as a world-class film location,” she said.
While South Africa’s appeal as a location has seen strong growth, its local film industry, however, is still struggling to rise out of a crisis of funding and confidence from a history of badly directed and managed funding schemes and intense government censorship.
Investment bank Merrill Lynch in 1997 estimated the South African entertainment industry would be worth between R15-billion and R16-billion by 2000 based on an industry growth of 19% to 20%. In November a Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology study put the industry’s worth at R7,5-billion. Of this the film and television industry is worth R5,8-billion.
The local film industry was left gasping after a 33-year-long subsidy system was stopped in 1992. As a stopgap measure the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology introduced the Interim Film Fund with a budget of R10-million a year and a mandate to stimulate new projects in the industry. While a portion of funding went to development, the bulk went into training institutions and projects such as the highly successful Cape Town Film and Television Market and the department’s official visit to the Cannes Film Festival.
The groundwork to kick off a broader marketing initiative has, however, already been laid in the form of the National Film and Video Foundation – a body of independent consultants modelled on the successful Australian Film Commission. The commission hopes to negotiate co-production treaties with film producing countries and to actively invest in and promote the film industry. Although its board was announced recently, the film industry is certainly not holding its breath. In November a number of the country’s cinematic giants announced the creation of the FilmRand Equity Fund, which hopes to inject some R100-million in a number of films generated by South African producers.
David Wicht, who manages the fund, said the subsidies will allow local film-makers to generate films set in South Africa and approach international producers with a portion of funding already secured.
“A key structural deterrent to foreign producers investing in developing a South African film is the lack of local support. Why should a foreign producer co-fund a South African film if financiers in South Africa won’t support it?” he said.
The Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology noted in its explorative report on the South African film industry that a major impediment to growth in the sector is lack of confidence in marketing local films to international producers. But for the moment, the industry remains hovering on the brink of success.