For this week’s special report, SHOOT canvassed production and postproduction shops and film commissions in South Africa for their take on their ad market—known both for its prowess as a production services hub and as a highly creative environment in its own right.
The execs were asked the following questions: How would you describe the state of the commercial industry in South Africa—is it growing? How much of the work in the region is from production services? Is this area still expanding? What are some of the recent creative highlights from South African shops—yours or others? Here are their responses.
Glen Bosman
Managing director/
executive producer
Freshwater Films,
Cape Town and Rivonia, South Africa
Board flow is back to what it was three years ago, before the feeding frenzy of South Africa being the chic place to shoot. So the growth cycle has leveled off in commercials, but is stable.
The top guns are still gunning, with the rest fighting for the scraps. We have faced serious cost inflation in certain sectors of the industry, but we’ve isolated them and are addressing them with a sense of urgency and responsibility. We are broadening our local horizons to create infrastructures in good shooting locations other than Cape Town to offer our clients more variety and value for their money. South Africa is and will continue to be a cost effective and professional destination with producers and directors of worldwide ability.
Peter Carr
Executive producer
Velocity Films, Cape Town and Rivonia
The South African industry continues to grow, albeit at a much lower rate compared to the last eight or so years, predominantly because our economy has strengthened and stabilized. The market has now leveled itself very nicely and we’ve seen it settle this last year to a good state of balance whereby we can offer better availability and choice of supply to our clients. This is in contrast to the boom years, when we often found ourselves scraping to get the best services in times when the cream of the industry was booked solidly all the time.
We’re very aware that our Rand [South African currency] has, to some extent, reduced our export value, but we’re not sitting back and crying about it. The country has taken practical steps to counter overpriced suppliers and keep rates low and negotiable in the interest of our clients. As a result, we’re still encouraging a continuing flow of foreign work to the country. It is noticeable how many clients have a strong loyalty with our companies, which has been developed over many years, and they feel very comfortable returning to South Africa knowing they’ll take home a great commercial. Just as noticeable is how many clients are tapping into the South African directors now. This side of the industry is growing more rapidly than ever before. We are predicting a surge in the South African film industry mainly due to our strong production value.
Although we have had some competition from other countries due to cost, we are seeing more and more clients return to shoot in South Africa after shooting in the "cheaper" countries, mainly due to the service, infrastructure and production value one gets in South Africa.
The country has transcended the reputation of a country that is based solely on economics. The South African film industry has proved itself over the years to still be the cost effective choice over many other countries, but has so much more to offer, including a stabilized sophisticated shooting destination with an unmatched array of locations, professional cast and crew, world class technology and, above all, production value. South Africa is synonymous with Cape Town. However, we like to view the city as a gateway to a wealth of undiscovered locations where one can always find that unique setting in destinations as varied as Madagascar, Mauritius, Durban and Johannesburg, with their rich cultural heritage and architectural masterpieces.
It seems that the bigger, more established facilitation outfits are still doing pretty well with their established clients regularly coming out here for the production values they’ve come to expect from us. However, the scores of smaller set-ups that popped up every week in boom time are not doing as well. This is not a bad sign as it probably should settle the industry down to a truly professional balance of passionate filmmakers that give foreign clients good commercials at good values.
Interesting to note is how many production service companies are broadening into longform production for overseas clients. As a result, the service industry is pushing as much film through the labs as ever before. South Africa is fast developing in the sector of the film market, and I expect it will be the next wave of facilitation. The commercial industry has helped South Africa develop the first world infrastructure that can now handle big features, several at a time.
I can’t really speak for other local companies, but we have certainly seen a lot more creative work coming in for our directors. In the early days of trying to get foreign work for local directors, we’d jump at almost anything slightly above average that had a hint of international, just for the experience. Now we’re seeing a very healthy flow of good ideas from all over the world, and our directors’ reels are strongly representative of international creative work.
I think the highlight for us this year has been getting in with some good agencies and getting them to recognize how strongly creative we are. I include Fallon, Minneapolis, who came out here to shoot BMW and Simon Malls with two of our local directors, Sergio and Greg Gray. They’ve been singing our praises on every shoot, a good sign that we’re doing it right. The signs are there that we’ll be seeing more of them and similar clients out of the States. The grapevine has also indicated that the likes of Tarsem [of bicoastal/international @radical. media] and other top names have frequented our shores this year, always a good sign that we’re top of mind and on their list of places to shoot.
Martin Cuff
Chief operating officer
Cape Film Commission,
Cape Town
As a commercial production destination, Cape Town’s 2003-’04 season dipped by around 10 to 15 percent mainly due to the strength of the Rand, and a perception of over-use of Cape-based locations. As a result, the industry in the Western Cape is undergoing a major re-evaluation—collectively driving down costs, unlocking new locations and improving the efficiency of the production environment.
For instance, as a result of extensive work by the Cape Film Commission, the city of Cape Town has frozen film tariffs at ’03 levels for the ’04-’05 season. Permits for city property start at just 28 Euros a day. Service tariffs such as traffic officers have been slashed by up to 75 percent. Traffic officers are now available for just 8 Euros an hour. Furthermore, Cape Town has introduced a consistent process for the issuing of film permits that is applicable across the entire 215,900 hectare, 3.2 million-population city. This process is also being developed as an online system that will include GPS mapping, locations information and reference photographs, as well as permit application forms, available to production 24-7.
In terms of permits issued by the Cape Town Film Office (CTFO) in the city center and South Coast areas only, stills shoots and commercial productions traditionally dominate the Cape production environment. Stills represent about 74 percent, while television commercials account for 21 percent, and features and television shows represent four percent. This is unchanged from previous years.
In terms of revenue, however, the number of feature films has grown by 140 percent since 2002. (Features mostly shoot on private property and are therefore not recorded by the CTFO.) Average budgets for film productions are +/-R15 million, compared with R940,000 for the average television commercial. The production industry as a whole is worth around R2 billion to the Cape economy, utilizing the services of some 2,000 companies and generating thousands of jobs.
Some spots shot in the Cape Town areas include: a job produced by Freshwater Films, Cape Town and Rivonia, for Old Mutual, which involved dropping fake money on Thibault Square and the Company Gardens; and a commercial for Coca-Cola Australia through The Farmfilm Production, Cape Town, which required intermittently closing Loop Street.
James Cunningham
Marketing manager
Suburban Films, Cape Town
The commercial industry in South Africa, from an international perspective, can be divided into two camps—service and directors.
The service industry has been growing and growing for many years at an amazing rate. However, the past couple of years have definitely seen this growth curve plateau as people look to fledgling territories like Eastern Europe and South America as alternative shooting locations.
The director-based industry however is without doubt on the up. As the world becomes aware of the wealth of creative talent there is outside of the U.S. and Europe, South African directors (like our own Miles Goodall, now represented worldwide by bicoastal/international @radical. media) are being regularly selected in preference to other international directors on the strength of their treatments and show reels.
There is naturally a flourishing local advertising market, with South African productions through South
