Filmscope Entertainment: Creating their own Industry
31 Aug
So Friday night, Xoe and I decided that since there wasn’t much to do in Perth (ok, that’s a lie, but a good excuse nonetheless), we’d take a quick jaunt and take in a taste of the emerging CinefestOZ Film Festival, located in the holiday town of Busselton, some three hours south of Perth, and catch the premiere of John V. Soto’s latest flick “Needle“.
While I could comment on the film itself, you probably get enough of my thoughts on films through the podcast, and if you for some reason want more of my thoughts on films, you can always email me.
What I personally find more interesting about Filmscope Entertainment (Soto’s production company with his partner Deidre Kitcher) is their ethos of building a production outside of the usual system of government funding. With 2008′s Crush having a budget of AU$1.2M, and Needle’s budget managing to grow to AU$3.2M, you’re seeing the same kind of fundraising utilised by such American genre classics as The Evil Dead: private investment.
While Soto’s goal appears to be theatrical distribution, what he has succeeded in doing so far is producing low budget product that has made sales around the globe. Attaching known yet inexpensive, often local, talent that have broken in Australia or attempting to break into Hollywood, he’s managed to secure sales for both Crush and Needle, no small feat indeed given the marketplace for direct to video genre films is always crowded.
Post-feature at the Needle screening, Soto, Kitcher, and some of the cast took part in a Q&A where, despite some less than stellar questions, the group managed to cover all the key points around the production of the two independent features. Given that there were quite a few familiar faces from Perth’s filmmaking community (while I’m referring to the ones who didn’t work on Needle, there were a number of crew members who made the trip to Busselton as well), Soto’s covering of key topics (such as why he uses a protagonist with an American accent in both films, as well has his thoughts on the role of Perth’s feature filmmaking outside of Government funding) were clearly welcomed by the large amount of the audience who stayed for the discussion. Whether or not they were fans of Filmscope Entertainment’s product, or agreed with Soto on some of the topics discussed, it remained interesting and valuable to hear from someone who has indeed done it on a proper budget (as opposed to Perth’s ever building micro-budget offerings).
While Soto and Kitcher’s productions may be lacking the deep-rooted Australian ethos so prevailent in the majority of government funded films, and while they may pale to their bigger budget US counterparts, you have to give credit to Filmscope for developing a slate of productions that have been sold in a number of territories and played in major markets like the USA. Sure, they may not be making Citizen Kane, or for that matter Scream, but they have been hard at work developing a commercially viable slate of independently financed films.
In a small city like Perth, Western Australia, that itself is something to be commended.
Filmscope Entertainment are currently finishing up sales and releases for Needle (coming out sometime next year) and currently have their first 3D feature Point Blank in development along with
The Death Collector. John V. Soto and Deirdre Kitcher are also Executive Producers on the upcoming film Drift, set to shoot in Margaret River, Western Australia, and featuring Sam Worthington.
You can hit up their website over at www.filmscope.com.au.
