The annual competition for film grants from the Government Information Office (GIO) has always been a major event for the motion picture industry. In recent years in particular, with the market for domestic films on the slide, any movie proposal without grant subsidies has had great difficulty finding investors willing to inject hard-earned capital with little or no prospect of a return on their investment.
As a result, anyone wanting to make a movie has no choice but to apply for a grant. With the exception of a few films made by internationally recognized directors, making a film with foreign funding is almost unheard of.
However, every year, the grant application requirements change. It used to be that individual directors could apply, then the rules were rewritten and applications had to be submitted by a production company. It soon switched again so that both individuals and companies could apply, or an application could be submitted on the basis of a script and a proposal.
All sorts of other conditions have continued to change arbitrarily. Grant recipients, for example, can only receive a portion of their funding in advance -- only after the entire movie has been completed and passed inspection is the remaining portion of the grant handed out.
May I venture to ask how the entire film can be completed on only a portion of its budget? Those films that aren't completed or fail to pass inspection must return all grant funding received, plus interest, to the GIO. It's hard to see how this sort of ludicrous regulation will do anything for the film industry except make it more difficult to work in the movies.
Application requirements have become even stricter this year. Not only must applications come from a production company, but they must be accompanied by accounting statements and financial reports for the previous two years. In addition, they must also provide the past five years' marketing performance data from the cooperating distribution companies. And even if they do receive a grant, it must not exceed half of the entire budget for the film. The regulations state, "Grant recipients must present matching funds within six months or else lose their eligibility to receive funding." The loss of eligibility lasts for five years.
We should pause to think about that. No applicant intends to fail to come up with the other half of the budget. Losing eligibility for a grant by failing to raise matching funds within a given period of time makes some sense because the grant money should first be reappropriated to alternative candidates. But if applicants are punished with ineligibility for five years, they will be fearful before they have even applied and may even choose to abandon mature proposals with real potential. This would defeat the original objective of cultivating the film industry.
The grant authorities say the purpose of this rule is to encourage applicants to raise some of the required funds before applying. Indeed, if they have failed to do so, they would do better not to file applications at all. The people who made this rule do not seem to understand the reality facing filmmakers.
These days, whether it has a big-name or a small-time director, a large or small cast, a Taiwanese film will be considered well-received if box office revenues for the entire country total NT$2 million to NT$3 million. Production and distribution costs range from NT$7 million to NT$60 million. With such a disparity between income and expenditure, hardly any applicants can raise the funds to meet the financial requirements until they receive the grants. If they still fail to raise sufficient funds after receiving the grants, that only means the market is in a very bad shape and investors have no confidence.
Losing eligibility for one grant is punishment enough. How can it be reasonable to disqualify an applicant for the next five years? What is the purpose of this rule? Apart from limiting the qualifications of applicants and raising the threshold for applications, I cannot see any constructive purpose. Indeed, the rule appears to be aimed at eliminating, rather than boosting, opportunities for many filmmakers.
There is another aspect of this year's regulations, for which the GIO, in all its brilliance, certainly deserves praise -- its grading system, under which every company and every individual involved in the proposal, including the company, producer, director, screenwriter and actors, are given scores according to their records over the past five years at the box office and at film festivals. (The GIO has a detailed chart and formula for calculating the score.)
The higher the total score, the more likely a proposal is to win a grant. Certainly, to aim to select the best proposal and personnel is the correct thing to do. But can this provision really guarantee that the best people are selected? Or is it simply a guarantee for the lucky ones who manage to put together high scores?
It is hard to imagine how one can use such simplistic formulas to evaluate the ability and potential of a film artist or the complexities of motion picture production and distribution. Final decisions must still rely on the professionalism and experience of the judges. What then is the point of such a grading system?
If the GIO thinks only people who have been successful at the box office or film festivals are worth cultivating, then why is it that movie industry has continued to decline, unable to maintain the cutting edge of the directors who emerged in the 1980s, even though over the past 20 years many producers, directors and actors have been nominated for and even won prizes at film festivals both at home and abroad. Many have also done well at the box office.
If the GIO cannot grasp these essential points, rely on professional experience to judge the merits of a proposal and introduce constructive rules, then what is the point of motion picture grants? Do we need them at all?
Pei Zai Mei is a writer and filmmaker.
Translated by Ethan Harkness and Francis Huang
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