International Communications Association (ICA) virtual conference

In light of the global Covid-19 crisis, the 70th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), will convene in May as an entirely virtual conference. ICA is one of the largest associations of academic researchers in the area of media and human communication with more than 4,500 members in 80 countries.

Caitriona will give her paper ‘Film Funds and Screen Agencies as cultural intermediaries: policy, purpose and professional identity’ as a video presentation as part of the conference’s strand on Media Industries.

More information about the conference is available here.

Film Funds and Screen Agencies as cultural intermediaries: policy, purpose and professional identity

This paper reports the findings from an international comparative study of screen agencies and film funds across a number of small EU nations.  Using interviews with senior staff in these bodies along with analysis of policy materials, this research offers insight to the evolving rationales, roles and models for publicly funded interventions in the film and television sector.  The research also advances the field of cultural production by examining the professional identities and challenges for those working within these agencies.

Despite considerable disruption to the screen sector, publicly funded subsidies and financial supports continue to be essential to the provision of film and television.  There is an elaborate global system of fiscal incentives and direct funding espoused under rationales of economic growth and cultural protection (Leiser 2017; Ramsey et al 2019). National and regional screen agencies are one of the main elements in this system, yet there has been little critical comparative research on their activities or how they are evolving in response to changes in the sector. In the context of small nations, screen agencies assume significant responsibility due to specific structural issues within their market including limited domestic markets, less license fee income for PSBs and smaller labour markets.

This research highlights how screen agencies and film funds play a key role in the assembly and allocation of disparate financial, logistical and talent resources, often in temporary ways in response to industry demands. Our research emphasises that in doing this, many agencies have shifted from being exclusively funding bodies to being more rounded development agencies supporting both domestic production and attracting inward investment. This can be viewed within the wider shift from cultural to economic objectives in screen policy (Mingant and Tirtaine 2018; Hammett-Jamart et al 2018) and the growing power of mobile transnational content producers and distributors like HBO, Netflix and Amazon Prime (McElroy and Noonan 2019).

Many agencies (though not all) are now tasked with promoting the screen sector as part of an economic agenda in which to increase and build the sustainability of indigenous production. More and more of their role involves investment decisions, labour market interventions, nation branding and capital investment.  Furthermore, the research points to a number of emerging agendas for screen agencies including: expansion of expertise and funding to support new forms of screen technology (e.g. apps, VR, gaming), attempts to establish more diverse production cultures, and efforts to reconfigure a new map of screen production through regional redistribution of funding and resources.

Emerging from this research is a critical understanding of the making of creative content and the ways in which cultural policy is shaped and enacted in response to regional, national and global markets by screen agencies and film funds

This paper also reflects on the value of comparative research to the media industries research agenda.  Our methodological approach necessitated multinational, multi-sited and multi-method research (including policy research and interviews). Our work routinely travels into and between several small nations including: Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, Belgium and Croatia.  Challenges for this approach emerge including developing robust and analogous quantitative data and the considerable commitment needed for international fieldwork and cross-border dialogue.  However, the value of comparative research is clear to us as a way providing a more nuanced understanding of the multi-layered geographies of cultural production and as a route to attending to urgent questions of power at a time of content abundance and industry disruption.

Keywords:

Film, television, screen agencies, policy, small nations

References:

Hammett-Jamart, Julia; Mitric, Petar and Novrup Redvall, Eva (2018) European Film and Television Co-Production: Policy and Practice.  Cham: Palgrave Macmillan

Leiser, Stephanie (2017) The Diffusions of State Film Incentives: A mix method case study. Economic Development Quarterly 31(3): 255-267

McElroy, Ruth and Caitriona Noonan. Producing Television Drama: Local production in a global era. Palgrave Pivot: Hampshire (2019).

Mingant, Nolwenn and Tirtaine, Cecilia (eds) (2018) Reconceptualising Film Policies. Routledge: New York.

Ramsey, Phil; Baker, Stephen and Porter, Robert (2019) Screen production on the ‘biggest set in the world’: Northern Ireland Screen and the case of Game of Thrones.  Media, Culture and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443719831597