Filming for growth

The Malta Independent on Sunday

Filming for growth

My first brush with the film industry came nearly twenty years ago. The Rinella studio was having one of its cyclical troughs and had run out money. A new board sought` my consulting services to turn the place around from the financial mess it was slipping into.

It did not take long to discover what great potential Malta has to build economic growth around a film industry, or more specifically for turning our country into a favourite filming location for foreign productions.

In those days Malta`s major selling ticket was centred round the marine filming facilities offered by the Rinella tanks. Producers filming sea based sequences whose budget permitted the precision required from natural background scenery did not have much else to go other than Malta.

The problem was that marine action films suffer from bouts of fashion and quite often the local film facilities, dependent as they were on this particular niche, passed through lean period where business was scarce and losses accumulated. As the cycle turns and marine films come back in demand, the industry had to be raised back from rust and ashes to efficient operational levels.

This cycle should have been broken long time ago if my vision for making filming location facilities a pillar of growth for our economy. We have what it takes to make it. Not just marine filming facilities which in the meantime have been replicated in other countries.

The whole country is a ready set for filming. Its small size and the compactness and diversity of locations offer a strong economic argument for choosing Malta as a filming location. The possibility of filming in the antique and peaceful setting of Mdina in the morning and shifting to film a bustling night scene in Paceville in the same day offers strong economic arguments.

What I realised was needed to create a truly value adding film industry was investment, good, solid,` well planned investment.` We needed to create an industry where several operators offer facilities to producers to ensure that the industry runs on efficient commercial lines. The temptations to over charge the first film which comes to make up for the dry period of the troughs of the cycle had to be abandoned.

Secondly the industry had to be given a domestic base to ensure a minimum amount of continuity to smoothen out the cycles.` This needed an investment of a few million liri` in` a series of co-productions in small budget films which would back to back each other for two years.` This is normally the cash out lapse between investment in a co-production and commercial recovery from the revenue generated. Investment in a good sound stage was also needed to compliment location filming.

Thirdly we had to have a national effort to give the necessary fiscal incentives to attract foreign producers, to conclude film co-production agreements with an array of foreign countries and to organise a sensible national marketing effort of Malta as a prime foreign film location.

Within the limited time I had during my stay at Rinella I tried to put the plan into action within the constraints of the resources available. Helped by arrival of two major foreign productions which brought a peak to` the cycle I ensured that these production were given efficient, reliable reasonably priced services where they were aware and could track all their costs and be in good control of their budgets. Considering that major productions have to have an insurance completion bond it would help tremendously if the underwriters know that the location offers a good background for transparent and controlled cost inputs.

Then as soon as the productions were finished and there was nothing else in the pipeline we engineered what is probably the first and only Maltese co-production full feature 35mm film which was shot in 1984 starring no one less than the present Helena Dalli MP in` a leading role with Joe Don Baker and Rossano Brazzi and other Italian stars. It was titled FINAL JUSTICE. It was a positive learning experience though professional commitments elsewhere and my harsh financial controls which are not always appreciated dragged me elsewhere soon after the project was completed.

When I ponder the Lm200 million or so which since then were sent down the shipyards big black hole without effectively undergoing the re-structuring which is being attempted so belatedly, when we have wasted so much time and resources, and when I realise that even if we had devoted just 10% of this sum for investment in an indigenous film industry we could today have a bustling industry offering productive employment to more persons than are currently employed at our shipyards, my heart bleeds.

When I had the opportunity during my chairmanship of Mid-Med Bank during 1997/1998,` there again, in full profession of my belief in the potential that the film industry has for Malta`s economic development, I promoted the formation of a film funding company. We had just the time to pay up the share capital but not to execute any project although I had engaged the services of Malta`s most renowned film professional, director Mario Philip Azzopardi with an excellent reputation for performance in Canada.

Currently the film industry is again showing signs of life. It is a bright spot in an otherwise dull economic scenario. Following the success of the Malta shot Gladiator, both at the ratings as well as box office,` Julius Caesar is again a big ticket film attracted to Malta by our inherent advantages, competitive costs and trade skills.

It is never too late to make sensible investments but the industry must not be allowed to crumble again as soon as the big ticket Roman scenery films eventually go out of fashion. It could be an important chip in the much needed re-structuring programme.

Alfred Mifsud