Views
s t h g u o h t s ’ e p Thor Sound post
Comparing apples with apples
perspective
Adjusting for inflation and population growth is the only way to truly compare box office performance, argues Tim Thorpe.
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ne of the questions people often ask is how to compare box office receipts for movies made now with those made any number of years ago. The answer is relatively simple – adjustments have to be made for the fact ticket prices are more expensive now and also for the fact that there are more people who can go to the movies if they want to. Essentially what this means is adjusting for inflation and population growth. The question has taken on prominence recently because of Boy’s golden run at the New Zealand box office ($8,964,174 as of 30 June), clearly taking out the title of the highest box office earner at the till since Roger Donaldson’s World’s Fastest Indian (released in 2005, it made $7.05 million). Adjust for inflation, however, and Boy comes in third behind Once Were Warriors (1994: $12.07 million) and Goodbye Pork Pie (1981: $8.93 million). Adjust for inflation and population* and it comes in fourth behind Once Were Warriors ($14.38 million), Goodbye Pork Pie ($12.15 million), and Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail (1986: $8.90 million). There is no doubt Boy will climb into second on the inflation-adjusted list and third on the inflation and population-adjusted list. However, there is equally no doubt it will not climb any further. What has consistently amazed me over the years I have been doing these numbers is just how strongly Once Were Warriors and Goodbye Pork Pie have performed. They stand out markedly in just the same way that Whale Rider stands out in terms of international box office receipts. There are some doubters (including the editor of Onfilm) who question the value of adjusting for population growth and suggest that the number of screens is also a factor. I agree that adjusting for population seems a little esoteric, but it is no less logical than adjusting for inflation – ie, both
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ticket prices and population have gone up therefore adjustments need to be made. I am not so convinced about the number of screens, which is partly related to population anyway. There seems to be a thought that because there are more screens nowadays – including cellphones, PDAs and the internet – people don’t go to the cinema. Once again a simple glance at total annual box office receipts over the past few years indicates that the evidence doesn’t support this notion. While there has obviously been an explosion in the number of screens, box office receipts keep going up. Without having done any work in this area at all, it seems plausible that the increase in the number of screens means that more people are going to the cinema. More screens means viewers get to sample a movie (either as trailer or download) and then decide to go and see it at the cinema for the big-screen experience. As I write this article there has been a bit of fuss in the media because Boy can now be illegally downloaded online and there are also pirated DVDs available to buy. I don’t believe this will make much difference to Boy’s run at the box office, which is already starting to tail off. Conversely, the FIFA World Cup has certainly had an effect on box office receipts. Box office receipts are recorded in their own inflation series in official statistics. Every year since 1993 Statistics NZ has surveyed a number of cinemas from Invercargill to Whangarei (currently 26 in 15 centres) to work out ticket prices. They get prices covering age, time of day and day of the week from each cinema in their sample. Imagine that. A whole inflation chart devoted to cinema ticket prices. Makes you feel kind of special, doesn’t it. For anyone wanting to see the top 31 New Zealand films adjusted for inflation and population, these are listed on my website – www.thorpecon-
www.onfilm.co.nz
Supervising sound editor Justin Doyle on Manurewa’s (pictured) sound post process – a companion piece to Mike Westgate’s June issue piece about recording surround sound for the short that’s playing at the NZIFF.
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sulting.co.nz – under Tips&Resources/ Statistics. My own definition of what is a New Zealand movie is where the intellectual property is held within New Zealand. This rules out The Piano and The Lord Of The Rings, but would include The Lovely Bones. Because I am not sure that everyone would agree, however, I have played it safe and not included box office figures for the latter. For the record, the lowest box office earner listed on the NZ Film Commission website is Luella Miller, an independent film that earned $717 in 2006. That is, of course, ignoring movies such as The Ferryman, which went straight to DVD. *All adjusted figures are correct to December 2009. • Thorpe’s thoughts is an occasional column by consultant Tim Thorpe (tim. thorpe@thorpeconsulting.co.nz) on aspects of the NZ screen production industry.
ound post for Manurewa went well for us. The film contained a lot of material for us to cover as there was a good deal of action, characters, locations and vehicles in the film. Fortunately we had an excellent team on board and were able to divide the work load up quite nicely. Morgan Samuel supervised all the dialogue and made two trips to Auckland to record ADR. Stefanie Ng cut all the vehicles from material recorded for us by Sam [Peacocke] and Mike [Westgate]. Rowan Watson did a wonderful job on the ambiences and sound design, and I took care of hard fx and foley. As the four of us had worked together before in assistant roles on features here in Wellington, we were keen to put together a rich and detailed soundtrack of feature film standard. We were a little concerned about how wide we’d gone track-wise once it was all assembled but Tim at Park Road managed to power through our material in a focused three day mix. The soundtrack was largely shaped around an Aphex Twin music track that features in the robbery and end sequence of the film. This really set the tone for these sequences, and informed the rest of the film. Anything extraneous was pulled back and what remained hopefully strengthened the connection to what was happening on screen. Mike provided a good deal of location recordings that had been recorded in quad, both production audio and wild ambiences. The tone of these captured the essence of the locations and Sam was keen to keep their flavour in the final track. Rowan did a good job of working with these and embellishing them with more detail and depth as required.