Summary document: Increasing value from government investment in the New Zealand Screen Production Grant

Option 1

Summary

This option has the least change and does not include changes to the NZSPG headline incentive rates or criteria.

Overall, this option could mean all NZSPG productions would better support the skills and career development of New Zealand cast, crew and businesses. The process for international productions to access the 5% Uplift would be clearer, and more PDV productions would receive a greater level of support. Strengthened cultural content and creative talent criteria could incentivise stories that reflect a wide range of New Zealand perspectives and culture meaning more New Zealanders see themselves reflected in films and TV. This option might have greater impact on domestic productions than on international productions.

Key changes

• Introduce a skills levy or a skills plan requirement for NZSPG-funded productions (this would apply to all international, domestic and PDV productions)
  • A skills levy would require productions to pay a percentage of their Qualifying New Zealand Production Expenditure (QNZPE) to a government-administered fund established to support skills development.
  • A requirement for a skills plan would mean that productions have to develop and implement a plan to address identified skills gaps for New Zealand’s screen sector.

• Introduce a strengthened cultural content and creative talent criteria for New Zealand productions (there would be no change to the official co-production process under this option)

• Improve the 5% Uplift by clarifying the eligibility process and criteria

• Remove the sliding scale rates for the Post, Digital and Visual Effects (PDV) grant (currently a 20% rate for QNZPE of up to $25m, and 18% thereafter) and instead offer 20% rate for all sizes of productions applying for the NZSPG-PDV.

Option 2

Summary

This option has a greater level of change and does not include changes to the headline incentive rates or criteria.

In addition to the impacts identified under Option 1, the repeat activity uplift and/or introduction of a per-project cap for international productions could support a more consistent pipeline of production work for the sector, which in turn might support growth in firms and careers.

The structure of a sliding incentive (up to 20%) for cultural content and creative talent provides the flexibility for New Zealand productions to receive government support in line with the level of cultural benefit they provide. Some domestic productions might get less support than under status quo if they do not qualify for all of the stackable incentives.

The requirement for official co-productions to meet the cultural content and creative talent criteria to access the stackable incentives could lead to a reduced number of co-productions receiving the maximum 40% rebate, but will incentivise greater benefits from those that do.

Key changes

All changes described under Option 1, plus:

• Introduce a Repeat Activity Incentive in place of the current 5% Uplift for international productions, in order to encourage studios to undertake consecutive production activity in New Zealand and support a pipeline of production work

And/or

• Introduce a QNZPE cap per project for international productions to help target specific segments of the international production market (a range of values for the potential cap are discussed on pages 34 and 35 of the consultation document and on the web page Option 2 within the Part 2: Options for change section) 

And

• Restructuring the current NZSPG-NZ (for both domestic productions and official co-productions) into two parts:
  • A base NZSPG-NZ incentive of 20% of QNZPE
  • Up to 20% in stackable Cultural Content and Creative Talent incentives (offered in four 5% increments)

And

• Reduce the minimum QNZPE threshold for PDV from $0.5m to $0.25m in order to help smaller and emerging businesses to attract smaller PDV activity that would otherwise be out of reach.