There really is no business like show business.
Whether you’re working alongside Hollywood stars on a multi-million dollar blockbuster or struggling to get an independent movie made, the film industry can be glamorous. But in Alberta, it’s an industry that often seems to be hanging over a precipice.
The most recent hit came in 1997 when the total budgeted film activity in Alberta atrophied from $150 million in 1996 to $52 million, when the provincial government scrapped the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation.
Assaults on this province’s film industry can come from many angles.
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| Larry MacDougal, Business Edge |
| Cover Story film crew prepares to shoot a scene with Elizabeth Berkley in Calgary last week. |
Local and foreign government policies, contract uncertainties in California, protectionism in the U.S. and technological change are all reasons to be afraid if you earn your living (or try to) in Alberta’s motion picture industry.
So why do people continue to pursue careers in the film business and why do governments continue to lure productions here?
Alberta’s Minister of Community Development Gene Zwozdesky says the industry is much more than a business. “It provides enormous opportunities with tremendous benefits, to the economic, to the social, to the cultural, to the artistic, and every aspect of our well-being in this province,” he says.
The feature film and TV industry spent about $113 million in the province last year.
There are about 10 active, local production companies in Calgary and Edmonton making feature films. The Alberta Film Commission says about 3,000 people are employed in the business.
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IATSE (we do not explain this acronym because it is more than 20 words long, and this disclaimer is shorter) is the labour union which includes makeup artists, carpenters, grips, paramedics, etc., comprising the bulk of the people who work full time on the larger (in excess of $1 million) shows. It has about 1,000 active members in the province.
The Alliance of Cinema, Television, and Radio Artists — the Canadian film actors’ association — represents about 650 people provincially, and few of these make their living solely from the local film industry, having to work either in other regions, or take supplementary jobs. A recent ACTRA survey indicated that 15 per cent of Alberta’s ACTRA membership worked exclusively in film.
Locally produced motion pictures comprise about 30 per cent of Alberta’s film industry. The rest is made up of films shot in Alberta but produced elsewhere. The small local producers, such as James Gottselig of Red Devil films (suburbanators, Bad Money), see themselves as fiercely independent artists.
“It’s almost like there are two distinct industries in Canada. There is the industry of servicing the foreign productions that come here to shoot. And then there are companies that are creating, producing and making films here. Indigenous films.”
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Gottselig, who also serves on the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association Film Committee, recognizes there’s not a lot of economic stimulus coming from the independent productions.
“The two entities are quite distinct. Often there’s a big misconception. But the lion’s share of (the provincial film activity) is what may be called ‘service’ productions,” he says. A typical Red Devil film (such as Bad Money) might only be in the $1.5-million range.
And waydowntown, the critically acclaimed, award-winning picture directed and produced by Gary Burns about office workers betting who can stay longest indoors, was made for less than $1 million. It was shot shot largely using new digital camera technology and it will be released on video in Calgary June 12. These are among the lowest-budget features produced here.
Alberta’s Film Commissioner, Paul Rayman, acknowledges the division in the province. “On the one hand, we are in an arts and culture business. But on the other side, it’s a factory.”
Jennifer Blaney, an administrative assistant with ACTRA, says that when the big-budget Hollywood productions roll into the province, she sees large increases in membership. “We had a dramatic influx of members when Texas Rangers and Shanghai Noon came, both in the summer of 1999. Most of (the new members) were stunt performers.”
These are the “factory” or “service” productions that inject serious cash into the local economy. Union and guild memberships swell and millions of dollars are spent on catering, rentals, and even gasoline. “A film that was shot near Jasper in the 1980s, the bill at the Petro-Canada there was about $250,000,” recalls Zwozdesky.
Somewhere between these two extremes sit the medium-sized producers that include Alberta Filmworks, Nomadic Pictures Corp. and DB Entertainment, which base their operations in Alberta, but often work with international or interprovincial partners. These, too, are independent producers — meaning they are dissociated from the large studios — but they manage budgets generally upwards of $2 million, sometimes exceeding $5 million.
“We are part of a local industry and we are participating in an international one,” says Douglas Berquist, president of DB Entertainment, a company which he started last year. One of the keys to his success (i.e., Ebenezer with Jack Palance), was finding a way to hire internationally recognized actors, the surest way to find international buyers.
“Jordan Randell (Berquist’s partner) and I believe that the industry has reached a point where motion pictures have become too expensive for even the studios to make by themselves. In the medium-sized sector, there’s a lot of partnering going on and a lot of co-venturing because it’s the only way that you get the shows off the ground.”
Today, Canada has treaties for film production with 47 countries, making it an opportunistic time, in Berquist’s opinion, for co-productions to flourish. Even the Cannes Film Festival featured local producer Bruce Harvey’s latest film project, Almost America, in a symposium on co-production.
Doug MacLeod, whose company Alberta Filmworks (After the Harvest, with Sam Shepard) co-produces on a regular basis, thinks co-operative arrangements are a powerful tool to meet the varying demands of big-budget dramatic production. “I’m interested in seeing Albertans provided with work opportunities, doing jobs in independent film and television production. We need to be as innovative as we can in attracting and building the business.”
In attracting the Hollywood crowd that brings so much cash with it, Edmonton is at the short end of Alberta’s stick — and the tail end of the air routes.
“The Hollywood decision makers tend — I think unfortunately — not to have discovered Edmonton to the extent that they know Calgary. They seem to get as far as Calgary, get off the plane, and don’t go any further,” says MacLeod. “I tell as many people in the business as I can to check it out.”
Geography may explain why industry activity in Calgary is four to eight times greater than Edmonton, depending on the year.
But MacLeod says his experiences shooting in Edmonton have been outstanding. “A lot of the people that have high profiles in this country right now started in Edmonton,” he says, referring to people such as Anne Wheeler, Arvi Liimatainen and Glynis Whiting.
The City of Edmonton goes out of its way to accommodate film logistics by waiving permit fees that can range from $35 to hundreds of dollars per day, says Edmonton Film Commissioner Patti Tucker.
Fees can be punitive in places such as Calgary.
The fact that Edmonton has its own commissioner of film is also a sign of what importance the city gives to the business.
“We also have a state-of-the-art television and film studio here, and that is our trump card over Calgary,” says Tucker — referring to what used to be called Allarcom Studios, and now goes by the name CanWest Studios, containing the only purpose-built soundstage in the province.
“It (the studio) is 25,000 sq. ft. It has digital post-production facilities, fibre-optic transmission direct to L.A., greenroom, make-up and hair, dressing rooms, and an art department. It also has 36-ft.-high ceilings and an underground tank (for water scenes).”
The studio is being prepared to serve as the base for 13 more episodes of Mentors, the children’s TV program available on the Family channel.
One of Calgary’s relatively new assets is what’s known as studio row, a side-benefit of the amalgamation of the Canadian Forces in Alberta. The abandoned CF base on Crowchild Trail has been transformed into a hub of film/TV activity, with William F. White (the large film-supply rental company), guilds, producers, and other ancillary organizations all located near five converted-hangar studios and workshops.
“We are going to give the film industry a real strong opportunity to utilize those facilities,” says Ken Toews, who oversees those hangars for Canada Lands Corp. “And if that doesn’t work out long term, then we’ll look at something else down the road. But we’re not going to make any decision on that for a couple years.”
“It’s screwing us.”
Those were Rayman’s first words when asked about how the contract uncertainty between the U.S. Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers was affecting local activity.
“It’s great. Projects are being greenlit quicker.” That was Chad Oakes, Nomadic Pictures Corp.’s co-chair, speaking to Business Edge on the same topic.
Could both perspectives be true?
Oakes and his partner Mike Frislev (who were both key players in the successful film Ebenezer) are producing Cover Story, the $2.5-million picture starring Jason Priestley, now being shot in Calgary. It comes hard on the heels of Snowbound, with Jann Arden, which wrapped only a month ago.
Oakes and Rayman are looking at the SAG threat from different perspectives.
Rayman is referring to the big-budget blockbusters that regularly come through the province, which haven’t been seen since 1999. Oakes is talking about the medium-sized projects that international distributors, his big customers, need to stock their shelves before the SAG contract expiry, June 30.
Rayman, commissioner of the least government-controlled film commission in Canada — because industry and private funding for the office (60 per cent) outweighs government grants — says the dip was inevitable a year ago. “When they knew that there was a potential of a strike last year, Hollywood started to overproduce in trying to prepare. If there is no strike, production will ramp up slowly,” he says.
And as ACTRA representative Jennifer Blaney points out, reps from her office who were in Hollywood last year were told that no film-making would be scheduled for the summer of 2001 because of the fear that stars would bolt come July 1.
“What I’m looking at now is that we’ll have a number of little projects. We will have a year with less overall production, let’s say under $100 million, but we will keep most of our people working. That’s what’s most important.”
Protectionism in the U.S. is another factor that could seriously hurt Canadian film and Alberta’s industry.
Since 1998, regular protests have been occurring. The first ones were organized by Californian IATSE groups against “runaway” productions. These are the big-budget Hollywood productions that take advantage of the low Canadian dollar, tax incentives, low labour costs and Canada’s tax programs to shave millions of dollars off their bottom line.
A recent article in the Globe and Mail contends that one of the issues being discussed between SAG and AMPTP is that of runaways. The article says it is not a make-or-break issue, but the resurfacing of the runaway debate could portend trouble down the road.
It may be that the biggest threat to Alberta’s film industry comes from those provinces that, through their insistence on tax incentives, will incur the wrath of U.S. countervailing tariffs.
But this also could be Alberta’s biggest advantage, since as Berquist points out, we are the only province that can compete without tax incentives.
“When you figure out the math, it’s actually cheaper and more economical to shoot in Alberta because there’s no provincial sales tax, the crew salaries are cheaper, you’re getting $500,000 (from the Film Development Fund), you don’t have to go through the dog-and-pony shows with the tax credits because there’s so many stipulations; it’s a cheaper, easier place to film right here.”
