The Knowledge - Jonathan Shteinman
CSB has been working for months on an exciting project with film journalist Andrew Urban of Urbancinefile. We’re interviewing film and television practitioners about their business experiences.
Our aim is to develop a deeper understanding about the history of business decision-making in film and television and to share with our audience the wisdom from the accumulated mistakes, experiments and achievements of the contributors.
Jonathan Shteinman - biography
Jonathan Shteinman is one of Australia’s most prolific producers, having produced or executive produced eighteen Australian feature films in the last two decades including Rabbit-Proof Fence, Oyster Farmer, Not Quite Hollywood, Thank God He Met Lizzie and the award winning Angel Baby (AFI Best Film 1995). Jonathan is Australia’s leading producer of official international co-productions. His last feature film was the first Australian co-production with China, Children of the Silk Road, and he previously produced the UK/Australian co-production Like Minds, starring Toni Collette. Jonathan founded film distribution company Ocean Pictures, which has co-distributed four films in Australasia including Rabbit-Proof Fence. Jonathan has in the past been an Investment Manager at the FFC, a Feature Film Councillor on the Board of the Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) and was a Board member of the South Australian Film Corporation for seven years.
Audio download
Chapter 1 - Producing and selecting projects - 10 minutes
- Producing and executive producing for 20 years …it is a business, but only just
- My business plan is to stay in business
- Filmmaking is project-based
- A sense of achievement – creating something from nothing
- In selecting projects, know your limitations – I choose projects that I think can get made
- Assessment takes into account the financing environment – as well as the material
- Material should be original – successful Australian films have all been original
- Never imagine there is a formula
Video downloads
Chapter 2 - The skills of a producer - 18 minutes
- Strengths as producer: graduated in law and accountancy, spent couple of years in investment banking and as investment manager at the FFC, produced lots of projects
- Keeping abreast of what everyone else is doing
- Special strength is seeing project from prospective investor’s perspective and knowing the players in the market
- Understanding the agendas involved
- Diplomatic skills to negotiate between partners, especially in co-productions
- Producer Offset: weakness – lower percentage of budget than subsidy model
- Strengths: gives freedom, it’s uncapped and unlimited
- Offset introduced at time of digital filmmaking expansion, creating new avenues of partnership with post production houses
- Industry will still not be self-sufficient
Video downloads
Chapter 3 - Looking ahead - 5 minutes
- Going forward: bit burnt out but working at low budget and high budget ends
- One big lesson I’ve learnt: the larger the number of investors (eg. 21 on the co-production Children of the Silk Road), the bigger the risk that one or more will fall over and your fees end up plugging that hole
Video downloads
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