"It's too expensive to shoot in Sydney"
Sydney filmmakers are leaving town because they can't survive. Ruth Hessey asks why
Gillian Armstrong says Sydney is pricing itself out of the market
John Maynard
Producer Sweetie, The Boys, Romulus My Father
NSW is not a favourable place for the arts because of the boofheads running the place. I haven’t done anything in Sydney for nine years and we have nothing planned. It’s as if we are afraid to chip away at the city in fear of what we may find. So no one does, because it doesn’t match the aesthetic. We just check our phones and head to the gym.
Robert Connelly
Producer, writer, director The Bank, The Boys, Three Dollars, Romulus My Father
The problem with Sydney is the state government and local councils. It’s too expensive to shoot here. When we shot The Monkey’s Mask I wrote to then mayor Frank Sartor because the parking fees alone for that film came to $50,000. In some countries, people make a whole film for that money.
The politicians love to have their photo taken with Keanu Reeves but that’s no substitute for a local industry. As John Maynard [above] said, when Hollywood arrives it brings with it a way of working which infects the local industry. After The Matrix was filmed here, a lot of people geared their businesses to suit that sort of film. Now our films are made like mini Hollywood operations – 50 crew, catering trucks, gaffer trucks. You know Michael Haneke shot his last film with Juliet Binoche with an HD camera and a crew of eight.
Sydney is not a character in films. The City Council was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the makers of Superman Returns to shoot here, but local filmmakers can’t afford those location fees, so Sydney won’t be on film as Sydney anymore. It will be onscreen as some anonymous “Metropolis”.
Gillian Armstrong
Director Starstruck, Oscar And Lucinda, Little Women, Death Defying Acts
Sydney is too expensive. I even had trouble shooting my doco about Florence Broadhurst, Unfolding Florence. We had to beg and call in favours to get locations we could afford.
Too many people had earned a lot of money from the big US films. The local councils in Sydney can’t see the big picture. It’s really frustrating and sad to see a film like Tender Hook being shot in Melbourne when it’s set in Bondi in the 1920s. The minute Fox Studios got in, it sent out the wrong message. It did help some people, but not the local film writers/directors/producers. And it created a boom-bust situation. The Matrix and Mission Impossible II could pay those huge fees. Then the studio was empty for two years until Baz Luhrmann brought Australia in. Fox Studios didn’t help the local industry one iota. It pushed up the prices, and everyone got used to the big money. Now it’s gone. It’s a fantasy to think [the Americans] will come back. They’ve moved on to Bulgaria and South Africa. Before that it was Romania.
Marian McGowan
Producer Two Hands, Death Defying Acts
When we were shooting Risk, I pleaded with Sydney City Council to turn off the meters where our trucks were parked – these were churning through $300 each a day – to reduce our parking and location costs.
Shooting Death Defying Acts in London was easier than shooting here because Sydney has pitched its rates at the US market.
Donald Crombie
Director Caddie, Kitty And The Bagman, The Killing of Angel Street
The current NSW government is not supportive, it’s antagonistic towards the arts. It sees funding film as grants for basket weavers, they don’t see it as a business. They don’t understand there are economic returns. People are still going to Hanging Rock in Victoria 30 years after Picnic At Hanging Rock was made. The pub in Crocodile Dundee is still on the tourist map. Sydney’s filmmakers are leaving town because they can’t survive.
Sydney’s other biggest mistake? Well, I wouldn’t want to try to do a period piece in Sydney now. It’s all been knocked down.
Vincent Sheehan
Producer Little Fish
It’s not just film; it’s the whole infrastructure. No one can operate in this town, whether it’s the corporate world or sport or science. When Fox came in they thought it was the solution! But it was just subsidising Hollywood. They walked in when the dollar was low, and when they left it became a ghost town because they’d outpriced the locals.
Little Fish was very costly for the film it was ($12 million) with all the fees that blew the budget. So much so that in future I would not shoot a film in Sydney. That’s why we’re not out there developing contemporary stories. Melbourne is working because they’ve got the balance right. They’ve got the big studio work (Spielberg’s Pacific) so people are skilled up on the American stuff, plus great incentives (tax breaks, low location fees etc.). The artistic core is heading south.
Rosemary Blight
Producer Fresh Air, In The Winter Dark, Clubland
Sydney is so much more than a sparkling harbour. I’ve worked with English director Julien Temple on a very Sydney film, The Eternity Man, the story of Arthur Stace who wrote the word ‘eternity’ on our streets. Julien had an incredible knowledge of our history. I’ve never shot so much of this dazzling and gritty city as I did with him. Perhaps this could mean that we are a bit immune to the city’s beauty and the stories it has to tell.
Helen Bowden
Producer The Girl In The Mirror
It’s partly a real estate issue in Sydney. The biggest city in any country has a struggle to be accommodating to film because of competing pressures from other commercial activities. Get over it. Perhaps the laneways project will help to subsidise some artist precincts. In New Zealand and Victoria, they’ve done a lot to stimulate the artistic community. The sooner the Australian filmmaking community realises that it is small and starts acting more like Denmark (with a population the size of Sydney) and New Zealand, the better. But also we have to have leaner crews, more flexible production models, and become more commercial but not mainstream.
Brendan Cowell
Actor, writer, director Noise, Love My Way
We seem to want to be a part of one or two big (American) films instead of a collection of small to medium (Australian) films. So we fund big bright American co-productions which makes us feel good about ourselves because Nicolas Cage or Natalie Portman are in our social pages for a month or so. On a deeper level perhaps Sydney is afraid to talk about itself. It’s so beautiful the people who inhabit it feel a pressure to replicate this beauty in their own lives. This beauty is very external. It’s about your house, clothes and job. Sydney is following America’s archetype. We are becoming careerist and wholly defined by what we do and the power and fashion that comes with that. There are few people you can talk to in Sydney, and an even lesser amount of people who care to talk about that.
How much does it cost to shoot in Sydney ? Here's proof that filming in $ydney doesn't come cheap
Waverley Cemetery $440 per hour
Botanic Gardens $1,870 (half day); $3,300 (full day)
Centennial Parklands $1,500 (low budget); $3,000 (commercial film)
Fish Markets $2,500 for a full-day. $50 per vehicle, $60 a truck daily.
Sydney Ferries $500 application fee, $750 daily rate - discounts for non commercial TV or documentaries and free for media
