Making Movies Happen: Film Producer Tessa Ross Talks with Andrew Keen

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Andrew Keen is PoliticsCentral’s podcasting source for the present and future convergence of media, culture and technology.

You can find his previous podcasts @ AfterTV and his collected writings @ The Great Seduction.

A Production of Pajamas Media, the Best of the Blogs, and POLITICSCENTRAL.

Narrator: This is a Pajamas Media Politics Central presentation. Welcome to After TV with your host, Andrew Keen. Today on After TV, a show that maps out the future of media through interviews with the visionaries of today, Andrew speaks with Tess Ross, head of Film and Drama at Channel 4 in the UK.

Andrew Keen: Welcome to After TV, the show about media technology and culture. Today we have the honor of talking to Tessa Ross, who is the head of Film and Drama at Channel 4 in the United Kingdom. She is a movie mogul; I’m delighted to talk to her. She was the Executive Producer of Billy Elliott, the Oscar-nominated movie about ballet dancing in the north of England. She’s also the Producer of recent movies like Motorcycle Diaries and Touching the Void. Hi Tessa; thanks for appearing on After TV.

Tessa Ross: Hi

Andrew Keen: So it’s interesting to get a perspective from out of America about Hollywood.

Tessa Ross: Thanks.

Andrew Keen: And I wanted to ask you as a kind of an insider/outsider, someone who has spent some time in Hollywood but does their film work in the United Kingdom; many people in the US are critical of Hollywood for the poor quality of its product. People say it’s dull, conservative, predictable, cookie-cutter kind of product; is that fair? What is your opinion of the quality of films now coming out of Hollywood?

Tessa Ross: Well I would say that it’s really difficult to generalize from many perspectives. The mini-majors who are also part of those large organizations and the subsidies of the majors are definitely on a high at the moment. So it would be premature to start writing Hollywood off. So they’re essentially industrial giants with a very broad spread, so even if one bit of them isn’t working they got their bases covered by doing smaller films elsewhere; so I don’t think you could ever say that this—the big studios are doing one thing and only one thing. They go in cycles like all of us really.

Andrew Keen: Tell me about those cycles; how has or is Hollywood changing or is it purely cyclical?

Tessa Ross: Well I think it’s a number of things; it’s cyclical in as much as talent and ambition and the notion of derivative success, which drives a lot of money driven success and money driven ambition. It’s always problematic and sometimes you hit a high and inevitably when you do the number two and the number three you can hit a low. But technology is changing things isn’t it for everybody? And so all those organizations have to adapt and shift as the market changes and as the world around them changes. And we all do that. I mean we’re a tiny organization compared to the large Hollywood studios but even the way that we look at how we make films and how we might distribute the smaller films that we make has shifted over the last few years.

Andrew Keen: In what way? How has technology impacted on your studio?

Tessa Ross: Well we’re not a studio because we don’t any longer sell or distribute our own product so we’re dependent on other people to understand the marketability of what we do and to get it out to an audience outside of our own television audience. Our only distribution network is our television channel. But it’s changed in as much as there is definitely a democratization of access to the tools of which you can deliver film [on] television because small cameras can now deliver and be—and to larger audiences by the sheer nature of being able to buy one, pick one up, edit it yourself on your laptop and send it around through the Internet. And broadband has shifted everybody’s expectations of who they can get to, although of course being an editor of choice proving that you have a brand that can deliver quality is always going to be of value and isn’t going to diminish I don’t think.

Andrew Keen: Is your role personally as a—I guess as a business and as an aesthetic door-keeper, are you somebody who makes calls about whether or not you should invest money in sorts of movies?

Tessa Ross: Yeah; that’s all I do. My job is to—is to find the talent and develop the talent, work with the talent, and try and make the scripts for that talent work, find the film-makers who can deliver to an audience that we think is defined by what Channel 4 stands for and make those movies happen by putting my money on the table.

Andrew Keen: Why do you think the people like you have a better sense of what the public wants than a teenager on the Internet with their—?

Tessa Ross: Well I don’t suppose I do; I think I—I you know I’m not standing here saying I know better. I’m just saying I know the bit that I know and at the moment I’m the person paid to do the job here, but of course there’s lots of other people paid to do the job elsewhere. And we find ourselves disagreeing all the time; me and the Hollywood mini-major or me and another distributor in the UK will spend a lot of time discussing quality of directing and writing that we’re all aiming to finance. So I don’t assume I’m right; I just as soon stand by my own tastes. There’s [less] competition really.

Andrew Keen: But aren’t there established criteria for determining the value of a movie in terms of its viability?

Tessa Ross: Where you started which is how does Hollywood value—how do the studios value? It’s extremely different from the standpoint that I’m looking, you know the perspective I take on the investments we make—is entirely different.

Andrew Keen: Very briefly tell me how your work develops; do people pitch you projects?

Tessa Ross: It comes from all sources really that—I work in a television organization which finances both drama and film. So the talent and—the writing talent or the directing talent or producing talent I’m working with works across all areas of television as well as coming from movies and theater and often journalism. So we’re [sourcing] ideas from all over the place to find those people that we think can tell stories in a way that suit what we think we stand for.

Andrew Keen: Do you think that there is a big difference between movie taste in Europe, obviously in the UK, and in America, or are you seeing more and more of a—sort of a global market for the kinds of products that you’re financing?

Tessa Ross: Well I think yes, there’s difference and no there isn’t; I think that you’ll find that European cinema is very supportive of its own language cinema. However it’s also the case that the biggest, most [pan]-European cinema or Euro-cinema which does travel is often genre based, Hollywood driven, and is—you know sort of known brands, so there is a protective quality about speaking another language that isn’t English. French audiences like to see films in French, as do German audiences; they like to see films in their own language. But there are clichés that one can I suppose make about different sorts of cinema. The US system is more reliant on stars internally—for example [inaudible], but there are sort of half-truths about how European cinema tends to often have more specific and notes the local references being made for domestic market. And often when it breaks out it hasn’t an [exotic] system of setting and cultures as one of its kind of [USPs]. And the other I think which is probably a cliché as well is that it’s more concerned with history where US cinema does very recent history, more often and often better; so European cinema concerns with the early 20th Century, too often feels like it’s talking to itself.

Andrew Keen: Is the European art movie business dead?

Tessa Ross: No. [Laughs] I think that’s what it is.

Andrew Keen: But it’s no longer government-financed to the extent that it had been historically; is that fair?

Tessa Ross: No; I don’t think it is fair. I think that there’s massive local subsidy in most of the European countries. And it changes and shifts in the way that it has in the UK, and in the UK, well if there’s a tax credit and subsidy through government bodies, it’s still a subsidized cinema, and I would say that for the most part British cinema is aimed at the art-house market, and it’s only to very rare break-out which is seen to be successful within a Hollywood structure.

Andrew Keen: And when you talk about the art-house market you’re talking about what—a high-end clientele?

Tessa Ross: I’m talking about a smaller release patent; I’m talking about the price you make the film for and the number of people you expect to come in and see it. I’m talking about the ambition behind the film; I’m talking about the expectations of the film-maker and the people invested in it, so it’s a whole—it’s a whole—it’s why you make it and how you make it.

Andrew Keen: Is there always a hope even when you finance a movie like Billy Elliott that a kind of a niche product will become a mainstream hit—is there always that potential?

Tessa Ross: I don’t know that there’s always that potential but there’s certainly occasion of that potential, but it’s also the case that the more idiosyncratic has often been the greatest success, so they’re more true to one’s own understanding and tastes and culture—has often delivered the better success and the aping of other people’s values and other people’s expectations has not—has delivered to the middle ground, and actually in the end Hollywood does it better because it has more cash and more stars.

Andrew Keen: What is your feeling about this massive boom, almost the cult of self-made online videos? I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at the site called You-Tube.

Tessa Ross: I don’t know very much about it. [Laughs] I’m—I think there is always going to be a desire for a big auditorium experience. And—but I’m sure it’s also the case that more and more will be driven by diverse home access and how people watch and how people deliver and I don’t think that—I think it’s much more fragmented in a way that the music industry has become more fragmented. But I think that however—however, one lowers the technological barriers for the entry point so people can make movies and deliver movies, you—definitely the case that you can lower standards and also find greater—greater range, greater possibility, you know. It’s great that people can have a go and can watch more, but it also means that it’s going to be low quality stuff on the Internet.

Andrew Keen: And that’s what you mean by democratization?

Tessa Ross: Well I think—I’m not sure whether that’s—I don’t know whether that’s what you mean [Laughs], but the fact that it’s easier to make it is the only way you could describe that democratization I suppose, but—and access of watching. The fact that it’s great that lots of people can have a go at doing something is democratizing.

Andrew Keen: Right; but we’re nowhere near a point are we where people can make their movies on the Internet, distribute them completely independently are people like yourself and actually becoming success—

Tessa Ross: No; I agree. I think how you market and how you sell, how you reach your audience is vital and a tool which isn’t available to you know—with—without support.

Andrew Keen: And that’s your competency? I mean not you necessarily personally but the traditional door-keepers?

Tessa Ross: No; I don’t think so. I mean I think the door-keepers—well the [thought] that you’re talking to me, i.e. the finances and development of scripts and films are different sorts of door-keepers to those that actually are involved in the—in the selling business. That’s not my job. And actually when they’re connected, when they’re incredibly connected is often the point of which you can get the [branding] out of the decisions you take in the first place of saying yes to things—when you have—when you have people who sell and know how difficult it is to sell saying well what I need is a local—and one picture and one line that will describe the film to me—is often the point at which you water down your expectations of what you actually make. So I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we’re separated.

Andrew Keen: How’s the DVD market changing things?

Tessa Ross: Well the DVD market is becoming the video on demand market. So again you’re talking to the wrong person because it’s shifting so quickly. But it’s undoubtedly the case that more and more revenues will be driven by diverse home entertainment and it’s not just going to be DVD extras but also some interactive games and competition and entities that will drive people to movies. But you know as I watch—so video on demand has become a massive activity and most negotiation of rights over films.

Andrew Keen: And are you suspicious about those kinds of interactive add-ons?

Tessa Ross: No; it’s not what I do. I still don’t believe in the end people will buy content because of the extras. You know but I have to believe that because my job and my trade is the content and the people who deliver it.

Andrew Keen: But as interactive gaming for example becomes bigger than the movie itself and perhaps again I’m talking to the wrong person here or at least the wrong kind of—

Tessa Ross: You are talking to the wrong—

Andrew Keen: —well to the wrong market area but for the blockbuster in Hollywood isn’t the gaming side and the interactivity increasingly becoming the thing in itself?

Tessa Ross: Yes; I’m sure it is but you have to understand that all those spin-offs which are the pleasures of making money are not what people who make movies are interested in. I mean it really isn’t the business I’m in. And that’s the enormous difference between Hollywood and ourselves that if we are a machine at all it’s the machine that delivers television product and so my film is at worst—an hour of entertainment for a television audience at worst, but it’s not at worst a toy or a piece of paper in a packet of cereal or a game—because it’s just not my business.

Andrew Keen: So what it seems as if you’re really saying is that the so-called digital media revolution really hasn’t changed your job or your industry that dramatically?

Tessa Ross: Well it hasn’t yet; nobody said to me by the way what you do and the people that you work with and the technology that they use is no longer viable. The effect has been for us to understand the different ways in which we can make and deliver material, but I’m working very much in the context with people who write it and make it and that’s the content which drives everything else—whatever the technology. So I don’t see how it will ever become redundant because you will always need the story-tellers—whatever form you deliver them in.

Andrew Keen: So you’re confident that traditional story-telling with a clear distinction between author and audience and all that sort of thing is not something that’s being threatened in any way?

Tessa Ross: I think it might be shifted and people will have occasionally brilliant new breakthroughs about how they can play with audiences, and I don’t think we’re unaware or uninterested in how those breakthroughs might happen. But I don’t see how content becomes irrelevant.

Andrew Keen: Irrelevant in the sense that that’s the thing making the product?

Tessa Ross: I think that it drives everything, all the bits be it technology, delivery, how you make, how you watch, how you interact, what game you play; it’s all based on an original idea even if that idea is Matrix 7. Somebody had the original idea.

Andrew Keen: Can you give us some examples of films whether you’ve produced them yourself or other people have produced them that you think really do reflect the values that you’re talking about?

Tessa Ross: Well I—yes; I can—I mean unfortunately this would be a long list of films that we—I don’t produce any films; I commission them.

Andrew Keen: Right.

Tessa Ross: So effectively I’m an Executive Producer on them but the kind of films we make and invest in are films like—I’m trying to think—well you mentioned a couple of them—the Motorcycle Diaries, which was a film that Walter Salles directed, who is a visionary South American Director, who told from his perspective a journey of a young man who became politicized through what was actually a kind of—an adolescent road trip. And it’s the story of a young Che Guevara and it’s an extraordinary film, classical film; or, Kevin McDonald who is a young British documentary film-maker who made a film called Touching the Void, which was in—which came out in the States over a year ago, but has just finished a film called The Last King of Scotland with Forest Whitaker, which is the story of the young Scottish doctor who became Idi Amin’s doctor at the time of his dictatorship in Uganda and how in a way he became [inaudible] between innocent and devil and how his eyes were slowly opened to the horrors that he was playing with his country—was wreaking on his country, and I think that’s all driven by a film-maker—that’s all a vision. That’s one person’s way of telling a story. The Road to Guantanamo, which you tell me is apparently just arriving in cinemas over there which is Michael Winterbottom’s version of events as told by three ex-detainees in Guantanamo who were British and who were picked up on the journey from Pakistan into Afghanistan. And he told—they told him their story and he put it into words in film. Those are very powerful films—not easy films, not blockbuster films, not films that fit to a genre or an expectation; some supported with American money—some not, some supported by American distribution and—after they’ve been made and some before. But all of them we made because a script and Director fitted and because the Director wanted to tell something very particular to the world. So that’s—those three examples are recent and they’re very much from individual perspectives. Nobody else could have made those films I think is the point.

Andrew Keen: If people want to contact you with ideas of their own how should they do that?

Tessa Ross: They should email Film Four and they will get information about a website which is a production website where we can allow anybody to submit ideas. That protects them and us from the copyright position.

Andrew Keen: And do you read everything that comes in or do you have a team?

Tessa Ross: Unfortunately I can’t read everything because we get at least 80 to 100 scripts a week, but—

Andrew Keen: And this is by prospective film-makers?

Tessa Ross: Film-makers, I—you know who send in ideas or scripts and books. But I read everything that’s recommended by—and everything is read at least once if not three times.

Andrew Keen: So you have a team kind of screening them and then the stuff that they think is good they send onto you?

Tessa Ross: A small team but we have a team of two who read everything.

Andrew Keen: Well Tessa, I really want to thank you for being on After TV, and good luck with all your movies.

Tessa Ross: It’s a pleasure.

Narrator: Thanks for listening to After TV, which is hosted and distributed by www.pajamasmedia.com, featuring music by Unity, an artist licensed by Creative Commons. Hope you can join us again.