The Film Industry and South African Urban Change

From a methodological point view this analysis draws a data set complied from the SA Filmguide, the National Film and Video Foundation, Durban Film Office, as well as the Gauteng and Cape Film Commission. These companies’ listing was arranged according to provider/service type and location, and the location of the various businesses was mapped. It has to be stated that the database cannot be seen as complete, and in fact it is not possible to develop such a definitive database. In the terms of this database, if businesses were registered in the various directories, they were included. In addition, and very importantly, their self-identification, in terms of whether they are a production company or casting agency etc., was taken at face value. It was reasoned that a company best knew how to categorise and present themselves to potential clients. There is also data bias in the set as the large cities that have identified the film industry as a key component of their respective economic development strategies are inadvertently over represented through greater data availability. On the whole, small scale businesses in towns and smaller cities do not register in the database in any great numbers. Businesses such as accommodation providers were excluded from the listing, though some of them were listed in a number of the base documents. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the film industry, much like tourism, has countless linkages into local and national economies—it is a system or network of businesses that interact to produce a product and not a production line. Some companies only work within the hard core of filming while others do so seasonally or occasionally. A further challenge is that there are constant reconfigurations of businesses which merge or split into new firms. Thus, the same company might be rebranded and operate as a new concern but from a listings point of view indicate two businesses, or vice versa. This not only complicates the mapping to the industry, but makes spatio-temporal analyses of broader filming businesses in South Africa very problematic. The true employment impact of the filming industry is also difficult to gauge as there are many freelance workers in the field who work on film but are also (by way of example) graphic designers or artists at other times. Although there are challenges in constructing a database of the filming industry in South Africa, for the purposes of what this investigations aims to achieve, the current database is, whilst not perfect, adequate.