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Market Ready
FilmInk chatted with Open Channel about their upcoming Script Development Program and what makes the course so unique
Open Channel, a Victorian based screen resource centre has recently announced its offer of four scholarship places for its 2012 Feature Film and TV Series Development program. "At Open Channel it's not about doing your course and then you're back out on your own," the centre's Vocational Education and Training Manager, Daniel Schultheis, tells FilmInk. "It really is about nurturing careers and practitioners and projects as well. It's about pathways for participants."
It's true. The program, which launched in 2010, is an intensive 34-week "hothouse" that boasts a huge list of leading industry practitioners that both lecture and mentor the students. "We look to people that are very willing to support emerging filmmakers and make their knowledge available," Schultheis says. "Experience is critical. Current knowledge is critical. People that are making films now."
Past leaders who have roamed the Open Channel halls as contributors or beneficiaries are Peter Weir (The Truman Show, Gallipoli), Fred Schepisi (The Eye of the Storm, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Roxanne), Sue Brooks (Japanese Story) and Jan Sardi (screenwriter behind Shine, Mao's Last Dancer and The Notebook), to name a few.
While film critics are divided between the Auteur theory and the idea of film being a collaborative process, Open Channel is very much on the side of collaboration. The program offers up places for not just individuals but filmmaking teams as well, with the program able to split the team up into their individual disciplines and bring them back together for development phases. "We certainly encourage existing teams to come and do the program. It's also possible for people who don't have those existing relationships, to hopefully meet new teams as well," Schultheis explains.
With an equal focus between creative development and the business side of the industry, is this a result of Open Channel's belief that filmmakers tend to err on the side of idealistic artists and not pragmatists? "Possibly writers and directors and writer/directors don't understand enough about producing and vice-versa for producers who don't understand enough about the creative process. So, yes," laughs Schultheis.
But the course is called the ‘Feature Film and TV Series Development program', emphasis on ‘Development'. Lack of development is a common malpractice within the Australian film industry. A lack of work and money sees producers often leap frogging from project to project to earn a living, drawing out the development process and reducing the much needed collaborative process.
"There's not enough collaborations between the business parties involved in development - producers and the writers," Schultheis explains. "This particular course is designed to fill a gap that's somewhere between a screenwriting course at film school and a producing course. Those already exist but it's that space in between where the collaboration happens during development. That's where Open Channel saw a real need for training. It's that development over a long period of time that really draws people in."
So what about the divide between TV and feature films? With the lines blurring further each year between the two mediums with the likes of HBO, Showtime and Australia's own Showcase channels offering up stunning cinematic works season after season, there surely needs to be a change in focus with the way programs such as these angle their students. Course co-ordinator Roslyn Walker (Line Producer for Not Quite Hollywood) will be heading to Los Angeles this year for a Skills Victoria/ISS International Fellowship to look at international best practice in project development, with meetings at HBO set firmly in her sights. "Television is a real main-stayer of the Australian industry but a lot of our initiatives are focused around feature film for development. You need to be multi-skilled in Australia," Schultheis says.
So why should students partake in this program? What is it that Open Channel sees that others don't? "A lot of emerging filmmakers often bring their projects to the market too early," Schultheis says. "So, they're not developed enough and once you've taken your film to someone to look at they're probably not going to ask to see it a second time. It's a very market focused course with the business and the creative working side by side. The idea of a financing plan for your project, and how that then guides the creative development of the script, would certainly make the projects more market and agent ready."
The Feature Film and TV Series Development program will run from March 19 to December 7, 2012. Places are limited and the application deadline is January 30, 2012. For more information about the course and how to apply, head here.
Picture caption: Open Channel's studio space in Melbourne's Docklands.