Why The Film Industry In WA Is Flourishing

"Film in WA is a bit like why Britain produces so many good bands: it’s got really shit weather and you either stay in and learn an instrument or get obsessed with music. In WA and Perth it’s so isolated that people haven’t got as many distractions, and when they get into things they really get into things.” Justin McArdle, producer of the film, Factory 293, has got a lot of reasons to be excited right now. As the Revelation Film Festival comes to a close, the Heath Ledger Centre will be glammed up for the 26th Annual Western Australian Screen Awards. McArdle, along with the writer and director Roderick MacKay, have received six nominations at the festival. 

It can’t go without mention that this group of young filmmakers is in Screen West’s sights, with Factory 293 a good example of the power of crowdfunding. McKay and his team managed to raise $20,000 through Pozible, with Screen West matching three dollars to every dollar of that.

More than that, McArdle mentions that they are a part of a system to help develop feature films. “We were very lucky and fortunate to be accepted onto Screen West’s Feature Film Navigation Track, which is basically offering us finance support to Roderick and his co-writer.” 

So why is WA the place to be as a young filmmaker right now? MacKay sees it like this: “The competitiveness is there to a healthy degree, but It’s all here just on a microcosm. And with any hardships or constraints that might come with a small arts sector and screen industry in the most isolated capital city on the planet it, I guess, draws out of you by necessity resourcefulness and innovation. You just sort of get done what you have to however you possibly can.”

As funding for arts seems to have gone the way of most good things, Screen West are supporting it well. MacKay and McArdle’s Factory 293, along with Antony Webb and Ben Sutton’s film The Fan, and Tango Underpants, directed by Miranda Edmonds and Khrob Edmonds, are some of pretty exciting Australian films and filmmakers you should be keeping your eye on. 

“It’s a pretty exciting time to be a filmmaker,” MacKay feels. “There is hardships and I guess a lot of hurdles that have to be overcome, making films in this day and age between the whole digital revolution, which has changed things. On the positive side it’s made the tools behind production values much more accessible to emerging filmmakers, so you really aren’t constrained by your geography. You can world-build.”