Written evidence submitted by Mike Goodridge

Evidence for UK parliamentary committee on British film industry

WHY WOULD YOU BE A PRODUCER IN THE UK?

I am an independent producer in the UK. I run a company called Good Chaos which is now six years old. I have built it from scratch and it is to date self-sustaining. We have produced, co-produced or executive produced 11 films, with at least four to come next year.

Not all are British, but they all have British elements. I have projects with BFI, BBC Film and Film4 as well as work with US and European co-producers and funders.

Being based in the UK is an advantage in that I am seen as the conduit to the UK talent pool of writers, actors and directors. We also have a solid tax credit – although that world is a competitive one and countries as close as Iceland and Austria are now offering 35%

But on many other levels, it is incredibly hard to be based in the UK. As the US labour strikes have demonstrated, when the US industry shuts down, the UK shuts down. Our government has historically encouraged US productions to shoot in the UK and employ our craftspeople, actors and technicians, rather than creating a sustainable domestic industry which can employ them.

After Brexit, independent producers – who have no regular income, by the way, but must get the films made or else they go out of business – even lost any access to EU funding or co-production benefits with EU-based companies.

We depend on support from BFI, BBC Film and Film4. But how can three bodies with diminishing pots of funding support the entire UK creative film community? They can’t. (And Film4 funding operates principally as commercial equity).

I feel lucky to have kept my company going – I have four staff in addition to myself – but that is partly because I have accessed international funding from Sony, Universal and Netflix on individual projects. Fees from those projects have keept me afloat. And none of those projects are UK-based. I am incentivised to make films with international talent and stories because relying on the UK is virtually impossible.

I was very lucky to be a recipient of £80,000 backing from the new DCMS initiative The Global Screen Fund in 2021. That is over three years. It has been incredibly helpful.

However, I cannot compete with my European producer counterparts when it comes to accessing funding from the Global Screen Fund on projects. The fund they have is so small compared to France, Germany or even The Netherlands and Poland that when international partners ask me to bring UK public funding to the table, I have to tell them how slight are the chances of doing so.

So here we are in 2023. Most of the crew have had a bad year because the US industry shut down for the strikes. UK independent film producers, as a damning piece in Screen International recently articulated so shockingly, can barely afford to survive and often have other jobs on the side.

I would love to develop more UK film projects but I have a company to support and that ambition will not get salaries paid. I have to look overseas to tell stories and work with overseas talent to survive.

UK producers need help. I look jealously at my European counterparts who are so well-tended by their local public funds, and I shake my head in sadness that all our talent is working on US movies and series and that our rich and wonderful UK movie tradition is collapsing so visibly on the world stage.