A few years ago if you had seen Leon Schuster’s Mr Bones you would have watched one of the highest grossing and, dare it be said, best films South Africa had to offer. Thankfully the same can’t be said of our industry’s current output with the advent of films such as Bunny Chow and Tsotsi.
It is a costly, painstaking battle to create quality South African film and television. The cost begins not with production budgets and development projects, but with the institutions that educate the young filmmakers of tomorrow.
Most filmmaking and media institutions can tell you that learning filmmaking comes with a massive price tag. Can the South African film and television industry support the graduates who beggar themselves or their parents to enter it? And how do learning institutions equip the students starting their careers?
The notion that the film and tele-vision industry is not large enough to accommodate graduates is losing currency. Rather, the digital media explosion has crept up on South Africa, creating opportunities that ”we are totally under-geared to maximise”, argues Garth Holmes, co-founder and executive chairperson of Afda, the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance.
The process of creating a generation of filmmakers takes at least 10 years, says Holmes, and is an extraordinarily complex process. But, to create a sustainable industry, filmmakers need to be skilled enough to create excellent, internationally competitive content. ”We can’t just provide the raw material, the labour or the market, we need to be a factory of content,” he says.
To this end the government must be more open to joint ventures with all the institutions, including private ones, that educate and equip South Africans to compete globally, says Holmes.
But do film schools offer anything that real experience can’t?
”In the past, filmmakers trained mostly by serving apprenticeships and both academic and skills training opportunities were limited. Today the situation is very different,” says Wits University Productions researcher Lieza Louw.
She says all young or emerging filmmakers should serve internships. But, Louw says, film schools allow them to engage with historical development and theory and to experiment without commercial constraints. They give budding cinematic storytellers opportunities to ”develop their voices as auteur filmmakers”.
Developing the industry, particularly when it comes to training, is something that government, private companies and broadcasters need to be aware of.
”Many companies are reluctant to take students into work placement programmes or invest in upskilling their employees with master’s or short course programmes,” says Dr Melanie Chait of the Little Pond Production Trust. ”They feel this will lead to employees requesting more money or leaving to work elsewhere. There is little understanding of developing the industry.”
The trust, based in Auckland Park, was set up by the former film and TV unit at Monash University to mentor former students’ productions.
Another problem, says Chait, is that many companies are beginning to conduct in-house training to take advantage of the tax benefits and BEE qualifying points. She says these rewards should go to companies that offer workplace programmes and leave the training to established institutions. ”The good training providers not only educate in the fundamentals of storytelling through different media, but good training allows for both conceptual and critical thinking that company training often does not offer.”
In addition, they have no interest in taking the time to develop life skills, which is an important aspect of training in the film industry, says Chait.
”If the government is serious about making the film industry one of the seven pillars of economic development, as President Thabo Mbeki has stated, and broadcasters are serious about improving the quality of local content, there needs to be a better understanding of all the training requirements of the film industry — and that it does require a big capital injection to not only get it established, but also to help keep it sustainable for a solid period before it is self-sustainable,” she says.
Young filmmaker Norman Maake, director of Soldiers of the Rock, Homecoming and who is working on the feature The Fighting Prince, says the process of moving from an institution into the industry can be gruelling.
He says that while there is work available, it is often the kind that pays the bills and leaves filmmakers without the capacity to create truly exceptional movies. They are bound by the prescriptions of whoever commissions their work and this means South Africa lacks cutting-edge, challenging films. For Maake, establishing yourself and your independence as a filmmaker sometimes ”means you have to starve”.
”The industry needs more leaders to recognise young talent and take more risks investing in young filmmakers,” he says.
That young filmmakers have to pursue other avenues in the industry is not necessarily a bad thing, says Leon van Nierop, head of the Motion Picture Academy at Tshwane University of Technology. ”Studying film doesn’t only mean you will become a director, scriptwriter or camera operator. You can do marketing, write reviews, do sound, lecture, produce and explore several other career opportunities that are linked to film.”
It is important for film and television schools to recognise this, says Van Nierop, and to provide inclusive and intensive training that ensures students master the various disciplines that form part of the trade.
