Local film industry reeling from Covid

Early this year, Layla Swart, founder and executive producer at SA production company Yellowbone Entertainment, was looking forward to an exciting 2020. The local film industry was looking up, and her company had produced five films in just three years — with more in the pipeline.

Then Covid-19 changed it all.

Swart and her team were two weeks away from resuming production on a project called Blood Psalms — a 10-part series telling the story of SA’s precolonial mythology — when the country went into lockdown.

"The project [Blood Psalms] was a huge stride for local production," says Swart. "It was meant to create hundreds of jobs."

Instead, Yellowbone was hit with huge costs after it was forced to shut down production.

"Our film Knuckle City was also pulled from cinemas after only two weeks on the circuit," she says. "And we were dealt another blow when the release of funds to complete our upcoming film, Valedictory, was halted and indefinitely delayed."

Yellowbone’s is not an unfamiliar story in the local film sector. The Covid lockdown brought revenue-generating activities to an immediate halt, with devastating effect.

"Overnight, thousands of freelancers and independent contractors who work in the industry lost their incomes," says Trish Downing, Covid-19 crisis manager at the Independent Producers Organisation (IPO), a group that promotes and protects the interests of local film and TV producers.

"Production companies had to indefinitely postpone and even shelve productions. Many ... folded under the weight of overheads."

In the year leading up to the pandemic, the local film industry was responsible for creating 60,000 full-time, part-time and freelance jobs, says the IPO. But those weren’t the only positions affected by the sector shutdown.

The film industry is an "employment and economic multiplier" that punches well above its weight, says Downing.

In other words, every job that is created — or lost — in the film sector has a parallel impact on complementary economic sectors.

She says: "A recent global industry survey by [creative industries consultancy] Olsberg.spi shows that 67% of production spend empowers multiple sectors. Film budgets include travel costs, hospitality, logistics, construction and even the small florist who supplies flowers for production sets.

"The industry is unique in that it employs individuals ranging from highly skilled, world-class actors, technicians and artisans, to unskilled, new entrants who learn on the job."

It’s a driver of youth employment, too, with 65% of those working in the industry aged 35 and younger.

Prior to the pandemic, SA’s film sector grew 18% from 2018 to 2019, coming from just under R10bn-worth of projects.

Of course, in terms of box-office takings, the local sector is still marginal when compared with the international productions.

The National Film & Video Foundation (NFVF) estimates that local movies backed by the foundation accounted for just 5% (R57m) of SA’s box office takings in 2019. But that was an improvement on the R50m earned in 2018 — and it occurred despite a shaky economy.

"Four SA titles earned R6.1m in the first quarter of this year," says NFVF CEO Makhosazana Khanyile. But, with the pandemic, "it will be hard to predict where 2020 is going to end up".

Some numbers are already becoming clear. By the IPO’s estimate, SA’s film industry has lost about R2.7bn in foreign direct investment in the current financial year, money that would have secured more than 8,000 jobs.

Film Cape Town is a joint initiative between the City of Cape Town and the Cape Town film community. It aims to promote the city as a film hub, allowing film-makers to "make the most of the city’s amazing locations, diverse talent pool and world-class infrastructure to create a thriving and sustainable industry".

It felt the knock as early as February, when "the global outbreak of Covid-19 resulted in postponement and cancellation of international jobs," says JP Smith, MMC for safety & security.

Then, with lockdown, the city’s film office was forced to stop processing filming permits entirely, which pushed back numerous local projects. It "brought the entire industry to a halt, compounding an already dire situation", says Smith.

In a bid to turn things around — and mindful of the knock-on effect on other sectors — the city made submissions to the national government, arguing for the resumption of productions under strict Covid-19 safety rules.

"The city, through the Film Cape Town initiative, developed a comprehensive standard operating procedure document," says Smith. "It was circulated to the film industry as a guide on the protocols to be adhered to as part of the permit application process."

It’s an effort that has started to pay off. Since May, the city has processed more than 810 permits for filming on public property.

Part of that success comes from Film Cape Town revising its plans for promoting the city as the filming location of choice for local and international projects — including by freezing location fees for filming on city property to help cut costs, says Smith.

One of the problems, for an industry so reliant on freelancers and independent film-makers, is that a large proportion of the sector had no access to the government’s relief efforts, says Downing.

Freelancers don’t qualify for benefits under the Unemployment Insurance Fund or the Covid temporary employer/employee relief scheme.

As a result, industry initiatives were launched to plug the gap. For example, the IPO, together with Netflix and the SA Screen Federation, set up a film and television Covid relief fund, administered by social fund manager and adviser Tshikululu Social Investments.

According to Downing, Netflix donated R8.3m, which reached more than 500 below-the-line freelancers, with each awarded a one-off R15,000.

Overnight, thousands of freelancers and independent contractors who work in the industry lost their incomes

—  Trish Downing

The NFVF has also announced new strategies and relief efforts for the sector. For a start, it has a plan to fast-track funding for made-for-TV films. This one-off initiative is aimed at delivering 12 projects, linked to a distribution arrangement with Netflix.

The foundation also revised its performance targets. "We awarded 109 grants," says Khanyile, from an initial target of 40.

"We announced relief for freelancers. And we are in the process of administrating a total of R5m aimed at 400 freelancers."

Not all applications for relief have got the green light. For example, Yellowbone Entertainment’s applications were declined because the company’s projects had been delayed, rather than cancelled outright.

"These delays crippled us financially," says Swart. "We did, however, receive assistance from MultiChoice to pay one-week notice salaries."

Part of the problem, in Downing’s view, is the lack of pandemic insurance cover for creatives in SA. Without insurance, she says, it’s impossible for film-makers to secure funds from financiers, and to bounce back when tragedy strikes.

She cites the UK as an example: in early July, the film sector launched a pandemic insurance mechanism to protect the industry. As a result, it was able to bounce back to 75% operational capacity (prior to the second wave of the Covid pandemic).

Downing believes the government needs to take a more holistic view of the film industry. It shouldn’t, she says, be confined to an "arts and culture" box. If supported adequately, she believes it can form a critical part of the national economic recovery — as was the case in the UK in 2019, where growth in the film and related industries helped the country to narrowly avoid a slide into recession, she says.

"We need a task team [from the government] to stage meaningful engagements with the sector to position it to make a profound contribution to the economy and job creation," says Downing.

More recently, SA’s government has come on board. In an effort to bolster its support for creatives, it launched the R140m presidential employment stimulus programme in October. Through the National Arts Council and NFVF, the four-month programme will support efforts for employment creation and retention, and business recovery for artists, creatives, heritage sector workers and cultural workers.

For Yellowbone’s Swart, these interventions are "glimmers of hope".

"My only despair comes when there is a huge disconnect between what is actually happening on the ground and the measures that are supposed to be put in place to sustain the industry," she says.