Where is everyone? Graeme Mason, chief executive of Screen Australia, has chosen a newish restaurant near his Ultimo office. The thinking is that Pyrama is close to a batch of buzzing media companies, including the Seven and Ten networks, the ABC, Google and Fairfax. But we are the only customers.

Everyone in besieged media organisations must be eating at their desks, working the phone for advertisers and looking over their shoulders for the next cutback.

As we order it is already clear why Mason beat 250 other candidates to become head of the federal government agency that funds films, television dramas, documentaries, interactive games, multi-media projects and indigenous productions. He is an enthusiast and a very smooth communicator.

You could say he is personable enough to make a journalist feel like the only one in the room, except we are the only ones in the room.

Since starting at the agency late last year, the former head of the New Zealand Film Commission has been walking to and from his Surry Hills home. It is still early days: his longtime partner, landscape architect Ross Palmer, some of their furniture and their labradoodle Boo were yet to arrive in Sydney.

He orders a healthy option – pumpkin and feta salad with char-grilled chicken breast – and water rather than wine; a good decision given he may be required to turn water into wine during his five-year term at Screen Australia.

Mason, 52, grew up in Warimoo in the Blue Mountains. His father was deputy registrar at the Sydney University, his mother was a lecturer and professor in reading and education in western Sydney.

"I was always very keen on stories and entertaining myself in some ways," he says. "I'm very close to my sister and brother but when you're the baby, they've got other things to do.

"My parents always said that's when I began my real fascination with the idea of fantasy and imagination and stories."

After school – Warimoo Primary and Springwood High – he studied arts and communications at what is now the University of Technology, Sydney.

"Like many of us, there was the idea of picking up the camera or appearing in front of it," he says.

While he loved acting, he recognised he would never be particularly good.

"I realised thankfully pretty early that I had different skills. I was better in facilitating, always much clearer in the 'producorial', distributor or helping-people-make-things role."

Helping people make things is his job now. Screen Australia has a budget of $110 million this year, a federal government allocation plus revenue from productions sold, to invest mostly in film and television. It also administers the tax offsets that support production.

Mason has returned to Australia after 23 years working overseas. "My thing was, 'What else is there?'" he says. "Not that it wasn't enough here but what else?"

Back then, he left for London after working as an archival researcher in a stock footage library and helping make music videos for the likes of Midnight Oil. He pushed a tea trolley in an office and worked in bars before joining Sky Television to work for the head of the Euro Sport channels.

By chance, his partner's sister, Manifesto Film Sales' Wendy Palmer, needed help at the Cannes Film Festival, so Mason joined her in 1991. It turned out a film that Manifesto was selling, Wild At Heart, won the Palme d'Or, the top prize. Another one, Barton Fink, won the next year.

"Wendy taught me a whole side of the business I knew nothing about, the business side of the business," Mason says.

He moved onto bigger roles with bigger corporations, at PolyGram Filmed Entertainment as the music industry giant moved into movies, at Universal Studios, shuttling between London, Los Angeles and other territories, then at Britain's Channel 4.

"I've had the good fortune to have experience across a huge range of the sector," Mason says. "And I understand that it's very complex, it's very wide.

"It's not just about the writer-director of some art-house classic. Nor is it just about the star of the sitcom. They're both vital but it's about the sports channels, the shiny floor shows, the grips, the journalists covering it. It's a massive industry."

Mason says Channel 4 had a motto that he has adopted: "Do it first, inspire change, make trouble".

When his lunch arrives and the photographer wants a pic, Mason shows he is not quite so comfortable being photographed as explaining the subtleties of the entertainment business. Then it's back to that mantra.

"I don't think we're necessarily there to make trouble but a lot of things we're going to invest in, it's because others couldn't or wouldn't,'' he says. ''If something is really easy to fund or get made, it probably doesn't need us as the government to intervene."

So has Mason, with his extensive business experience, been brought in to Screen Australia to make the local film industry more commercial?

Even with The Great Gatsby a hit last year, the Australian share of box office was just 3.5 per cent.

"I certainly don't think, and hope, they only want us to do popcorn movies or shiny floor TV shows – and there is nothing wrong with those shows," he says. "I do think we need to be commercial. But what I mean by commercial is what is the best we can hope for?

''Whatever we've invested in, what's the best amount of viewers that can see it? What's the most we can hope for in career opportunities for the people involved?"

He pauses. "That sounds almost like one of those people you get in to make inspirational talks."

By now, one or two other tables have been taken inside the restaurant but we still have the terrace to ourselves.

Mason stresses that his job is a lot more than just being about the film industry, noting the huge number of TV viewers who watched four Australian shows – Schapelle, INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, Rake and So You Think You Can Dance – one Sunday night recently.

"I think that's awesome," he says.

But what can Screen Australia do about the fact that so few people are watching Australian films in cinemas?

"It's about perspective," says Mason. "Ninety-two of the 100 most-watched shows on television last year were Australian.''

While the Danes default to Danish films and TV shows even though they also speak English, Australian filmmakers have to compete with the US and UK, he says.

"I think we need to change the concept. We will not get 10 or 20 per cent of the box office. It's not going to happen. So rather than being disappointed in ourselves at the end of every year, accept it.

''But do I think some of the films that we've made – and I don't mean just Screen Australia now – have been very niche? Absolutely. And do we need to look at that? Yes."

If watching TV is like eating at home, he holds that catching a movie is like going to a restaurant. It's often an event and it costs money.

"Australian films by their nature – creatively and size – are art-house. They're appealing to a smaller demographic. We don't have the budgets. We're not going to make Thor or The Hobbit."

Mason believes the film business has become tougher.

"There is no room to fail any longer. The specialty audience has so many opportunities that are so much cheaper. You have to nail it.

''We need reviewers in your paper to give it five stars. We need reviewers to be saying, 'This is bleak but this is one you have got to see'. We need your friends to be telling you to go see it. You can no longer get four-star reviews and, 'This is a good first attempt'. It has to be five stars."

As he orders a short black, Mason has some questions of his own. Why don't art-house cinemas work west of Leichhardt? Have I interviewed James Packer? What's Lachlan Murdoch been up to?

While the restaurant has not been buzzing, he certainly is.