Guide #269 Ident Epidemic: Why Fjord Opens With 15 Logos
Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner Fjord screens with 15 production logos before the film begins. Veteran producer Stephen Woolley explains why European independent films carry so many idents, how soft money pays for them, and why his own attempt to fix the problem failed.
Cristian Mungiu's Palme d'Or winner Fjord opens with 15 production logos and idents before its first scene, in what a cinemagoer who counted them called the biggest pile-up they had seen. Producer Stephen Woolley says the ident epidemic comes down to how European independent films get paid for.
Fjord follows a conservative Romanian Christian family in a liberal Norwegian community. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve star. It is the kind of divisive drama built to start arguments after the credits.
Fifteen logos, counted aloud
An idents tally is usually a private annoyance. At the screening, a viewer across the aisle started counting out loud after reaching seven or eight, with growing disbelief.
Idents are the short animated graphics that credit a studio, a film board or a financier. Most independent films seem to carry half a dozen or more, according to the cinemagoer, so Fjord is the extreme end of a familiar pattern.
Where the logos come from
Woolley has worked in independent film since the mid-1980s. He produced many of Neil Jordan's films, along with Made in Dagenham, On Chesil Beach and Carol.
He says the trend is not new. He points to a Family Guy clip from 2011 that mocked overcrowded idents, though he accepts there are plenty at the moment.
His explanation is money. He blames "the problem of making films in Europe at the moment", and says indie films must raise cash from "loads and loads of different sources" because they are not, on the face of it, particularly commercial projects.
The easiest top-up is "soft money". That means private finance, or support from national film boards that offer tax breaks or direct funding for shooting in a country or hiring its people.
"For the film-makers, it's a way of adding another 100k or 200k into the pot so that they can make a film at a decent level," Woolley says. The catch is a credit at the start of the film. More funders mean more idents.
A failed revolution
Woolley once tried to shrink the pile himself on the Neil Jordan vampire film Byzantium. He persuaded all the backers to accept a single card showing six animated logos.
"I thought I'd start a revolution," he remembers. Nobody copied it, he says.
He also criticizes how some idents look. He disliked the old Irish Film Board ident that appeared on many of his films with Jordan, asking: "You have all this talent in Ireland, and that's the best you can do?" The board, now called Screen Ireland, appears to have improved its design since.
