A link to some interesting research on the performance of Australian films

Editor’s note: What follows below is the first para of a most interesting academic paper which has been mentioned before on this blog. The paper has now just been posted on an academic website and there is a link to it at the end of the paragraph. In the light of the fact that the film industry is once again under Federal Government scrutiny (details of the Parliamentary Inquiry are here, I thought it would assist debate to have this research made known again to as many as possible. Here is the opening section.

Australian films at large: expanding the evidence about Australian

cinema performance

Deb Verhoeven, Alwyn Davidson and Bronwyn Coate

Media and Communication, Faculty of Arts & Education, School of Communication and 

Creative Arts, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway,

Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia;

Faculty of Arts & Education, Centre for Memory Imagination

& Invention, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway,

Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia

International markets have in recent years become a critical component of the

business model for Hollywood cinema, opening up a renewed interest in the

global dimensions of film diffusion. Smaller film-producing nations such as

Denmark have similarly emphasised global distribution as a key component of 

the industry’s success. Typically, however, claims for Australian film industry

success rely almost exclusively on a film’s domestic box office performance. This

paper considers the possibilities for an expanded approach to measuring success

and failure in the Australian film industry. Adopting analytic methods from

cinema studies, cultural economics and geo-spatial sciences, this paper will

examine the international theatrical circulation of Australian films using a unique

global database of cinema showtimes. This data set captures all formal film

screenings in 47 countries over an 18-month period ending 1 June 2014 and

enables detailed empirical study of the locations visited by Australian-produced

films. In conjunction with relevant box office data and contextual critical

commentary, we propose a revised and expanded ‘film impact rating’ for

assessing the reported performance of Australian films.

Introduction: measuring success and failure in the Australian film industry

…..

......For more you will have to click on this link via Deb Verhoeven's website