Ask any producer in Alberta what the single most important change in their provincial industry has been over the last year and one answer is bound to surface – series production. Not since the 19-year run of cbc’s Beachcomber series in Vancouver have television series had such an impact on the production community of a province.

Multiplied impact

With a pair of series, Destiny Ridge and North of 60, produced in Alberta last year and the startup of two more series, Jake and the Kid and the u.s.-developed Lonesome Dove The Series, scheduled for production later this year, that impact will be multiplied. And all this in a province where a national primetime dramatic series had never before been filmed.

What this means to the Alberta production industry, says Calgary-based Doug MacLeod of Alberta Filmworks, which produces North of 60 with Alliance Communications of Toronto, ‘is that people in the production industry are getting a better idea that they can raise a family here, put food on the table and count on paying a mortgage. And they’re looking to our Alberta productions to provide the continuity.

‘We’re finally getting overtures from professionals in the industry who are considering relocating to Alberta, attracted by the improved quality of life available here,’ says MacLeod.

‘This is a big change. I hope what we’re seeing here is the end of the exodus of talent away from this province that has always characterized the development of our industry to date. We’ve been exporters of talent for 15 years. Now tv is turning that around.’

Garry Toth, general manager of the provincial film funding agency, the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation, adds the series are also providing a phenomenal training engine for local crews.

A certain competition

Veteran producer and recent director Arvi Liimatainen of Edmonton agrees. ‘Mostly what series have accomplished here is to give certain individuals an opportunity to practice their craft consistently. This gives us as indigenous producers the chance to use their skills on our own productions. And now there’s a certain competition and challenge for crews. ‘

Toth says his agency has seen a dramatic swing from feature films to series in the province’s production activity. He says most of the companies have shifted into television because of the increased cash flow available through broadcast production which allows them to develop their corporate infrastructures.

He cites as an example Edmonton-based Great North Productions, which has grown in the last two years from two to 22 employees and become more vertically integrated with the establishment of its own distribution arm, Great North Releasing. ‘That’s a massive change,’ he says.

Similar evolution

Other major production companies such as Alberta Filmworks out of Calgary and Kicking Horse Productions in Edmonton have gone through a similar evolution and growth.

Series production has created a tremendous increase in the volume and scale of projects, says Toth. ‘If you look back only two to three years ago, the largest indigenous project Alberta had ever produced was the $5 million – $6 million feature Bye Bye Blues. Now we’re dealing with far larger scale projects like Destiny Ridge and North of 60 where the budgets are $10 million – $14 million per cycle. This obviously injects a huge amount of capital into the province.’

But while it’s a great situation to be in, Toth says ‘it’s put increased pressure on the funding agencies and the industry itself. The big question now is how do we possibly manage four series in the province as well as a bunch of mows and all the other foreign service activity? I think there’s almost been a co-ordinated effort amongst the producers here to make sure all this production not only works, but works well.’

Alberta producers are also increasingly entering into joint-venture co-operative relationships within the province.

Producer/production manager Tom Dent-Cox, who is in partnership with Randy Bradshaw and Doug MacLeod in Calgary’s Alberta Filmworks, is also in partnership with Edmonton writer/ producer Glynis Whiting under the WDC Entertainment banner.

Joined forces

When Liimatainen recently made his feature film directorial debut on Strange and Rich – the first Alberta project done under the Prairie Initiative (a co-operative venture backed by the three Prairie provincial funding agencies and Telefilm Canada to produce six low-budget features for television) – he called on Whiting to produce it for him along with Credo Group of Winnipeg.

Co-operation among Alberta production companies has always existed. But Toth says this new level of cross-fertilization stems from the growing scale of productions that requires companies to rely more on each other’s resources and expertise. He says often it’s a ‘win win’ situation because it provides each company with the opportunity to work on a project it wouldn’t have been able to do on its own.

Toth has also been encouraged by the provincial government’s support of the indigenous film industry, which many consider remarkable given Alberta Premier Ralph Klein’s inclination for a slash-and-burn style of budget cutting.

Held onto funding

After undergoing close scrutiny of its activities recently, the ampdc managed to hold on to its funding this year and has had its three-year business plan accepted by the provincial Tory government.

‘We know we’re going to be around for the next while,’ says Toth. ‘The government has given us a very strong commitment to make sure the industry continues to grow and flourish.’

One of the key issues the ampdc will be examining over the next few years, he says, is where increased resources will be coming from. ‘One of our corporate goals is to replenish the fund either through public or private funds.’

He says the agency is also being a lot more careful about the features it gets involved in. ‘We’re more interested in those with creative above-the-line development from inside the province. We’d like to see more projects like Road To Saddle River and Perfect Man that utilize almost 100% Alberta talent. We want our features to be a showcase of the province’s talents and skills.’

This year the ampdc reached a new record with more proposals submitted to the agency for funding than ever before in its 12-year history. Toth chalks up much of the increased activity to the maturation of the industry. ‘ampdc has spent the last dozen years developing a solid indigenous base for independent producers in the province, and I think we’re now starting to reap the benefits of the time and money spent,’ he says.

Series are the big news in Alberta this year, but by no means the only news.

Earlier this year, the crtc held public hearings to consider applications for a fourth television service in Alberta. Among the applicants were AltaWest, which would be the first Alberta station in the ever-growing CanWest Global system; The Alberta Channel, an application backed by Craig Broadcast System of Manitoba; Midwest Television of Lloydminster, Alta.; and a new entrant into the broadcast field, David MacKenzie of DiaMet Minerals in Kelowna.

In Edmonton, Great North’s Andy Thomson, who produces Destiny Ridge with Toronto’s Atlantis Films, recently received news that the series is being renewed by CanWest Global for another 13 episodes. This summer he plans to produce Jake and The Kid, a series based on W.O. Mitchell’s radio plays for cbc in the fifties.

He says most Alberta producers are excited about the prospects for a fourth television service in the province, and believes there’s no question that a new service will provide a wealth of new opportunities for local independent producers.

But evidently not all Alberta producers are so enthusiastic. The three incumbent stations in Alberta rallied substantial support in their favor with numerous – not to mention vocal – negative interventions.

Calgary producer Bruce Harvey was among those intervenors. He believes a new service in Alberta would be ‘terrible.’

‘I think it will be detrimental to the entire broadcast community here by cutting into the revenues at existing stations resulting in reduced funding available for all projects. For me as a producer, I already work well with the existing broadcasters in this market,’ says Harvey.

A decision by the commission on the Alberta service is not expected until June.

The prospect of additional specialty channels has been met with broader enthusiasm. Toth says the new services, several of which have plans to base their head offices out of Alberta, will provide new markets for smaller projects so that non-dramatic producers working in the areas of documentary and specialty programming will have increased opportunities.

The new Shaw Communications Children’s Programming Initiative located in Edmonton is of prime interest to Alberta producers because it is the first national investment fund to be based on the Prairies.

Gerri Cook, executive administrator of the Shaw fund, says although the guidelines for the fund will not be finalized until the end of March, she does know there will be $10 million made available to producers over five years. The fund will be primarily a ‘top-up’ equity investment fund that will provide the last 10% to 15% of the production budgets for new Canadian children’s production to a maximum of around $200,000 per application.

The programming, she says, will be aimed at children under 13 years of age and will include drama, variety, documentaries, animation, specials and pilots and series. The fund, which is expected to be operational by April of this year, will be available to independent producers from across Canada in partnership with private broadcasters or specialty channels.

As a former development officer with Superchannel pay-tv and executive director of Saskfilm, Cook says she is very familiar with most Western producers, which should improve their access to the fund.

Foreign service production also made a big leap in Alberta last year, according to film commissioner Lindsay Cherney. In 1993, four major productions including the TriStar feature Legends of the Fall starring Anthony Hopkins, Brad Pitt and Aidan Quinn and directed by Ed Zwick (Glory) were filmed in Alberta. Combined, those productions left behind an estimated $31 million out of the total $46 million that was spent in 1993 on all production in the province.

Film commissioner Cherney says the province received its biggest boost as a location from the Clint Eastwood-directed western Unforgiven, which filmed in Alberta the previous year. ‘Now whenever producers are thinking of doing another western they think of Alberta.’

Cherney anticipates production levels for ’94 will take another incremental jump with the arrival of Lonesome Dove The Series, which begins filming south of Calgary next month, and the mega-budget imax feature film Wings Of Courage, directed by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud (The Bear).

The post-production sector in Alberta is also benefitting from the province’s rapid expansion of production activity.

Toth says the more cards you have in your hands as a provincial industry, the more flexible and better are the deals you are able to enter into. ‘Certainly post-production in Alberta has always been our Achilles heel. We could shoot here, we have every category of above- and below-the-line talent, but post facilities in either film or video have always been lacking.

‘Because of the limited production volume in Alberta, it’s always been a chicken or the egg dilemma. Nobody wants to make the major investments in equipment when there isn’t the production here to support it, yet without our own post facilities we can’t attract more production. Now that the volumes are increasing, it’s started to make more economic sense to expand or put in new facilities.’ Toth says these expansions include digital editing, audio, video post and film processing.

Colin Minor, general manager of Edmonton’s Studio Post and Transfer, Alberta’s largest post-production facility, says the biggest change in the facility over the next year will be the addition of the province’s first film processing lab. Currently, he says, ‘all the film shot in Alberta has to be sent out to Vancouver or Toronto and there’s always a delay in it coming back. So now we can provide this option for producers here.’

The Post Place in Calgary, owned by Bridget Durnford and Carolyn McMaster, has also made a major investment through the installation of the province’s first fully digital editing suite. The two partners, former employees of cfcn-tv Calgary, ventured out on their own three years ago. They, too, hope their facility will help capture more of the lucrative post work that normally leaves the province for Vancouver.

Not everything, however, has been entirely rosy for producers in Alberta over the past 12 months. While the government appears to have been generous with the ampdc, ACCESS Network has not been so lucky. Late last year, in drastic cost-cutting measures, the provincial government announced the possible elimination of access, one of the country’s oldest and most established educational broadcasters.

Great North’s Thomson, who is also president of the Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association, says the demise of access will hit the province’s smaller independent producers particularly hard.

‘Over the years, access has pumped a lot of development money into the community. Many of these projects never would have happened without access’ participation,’ he says, citing as an example In The Gutter and Other Good Places, which won this year’s Gemini for best documentary.’

Possibly even more important, argue some producers, is the potential loss of a very important springboard for the development of new talent.

Jan Miller, executive director of the National Screen Institute in Edmonton, says almost all of Alberta’s more established filmmakers got their start in the business at one time or another through access. ‘I think one of Arvi (Liimatainen’s) first jobs was pushing a camera around there, and now look where he is,’ she says.

However, Miller admits that in recent years as more production shifted to in-house producers at access, that important training ground had already been lost.

Final word on the fate of access is expected to be announced later this summer.

Alberta producers have also been vocal lobbyists for some form of tax incentive scheme similar to what currently exists in Ontario and Quebec to help encourage more private investment in the provincial production industry.

Thomson says incentives are particularly important to a growing indigenous production community because it allows them to take over creative control of projects that otherwise would just be service contracts.

MacLeod of Alberta Filmworks, which currently has three major projects in active development in addition to coproducing North of 60, agrees. ‘The major challenge for producers here remains that the primary ownership of the vast majority of production activity being done in Alberta does not rest in the hands of Alberta companies or producers….The other Canadian partners on these productions are dealing from a much stronger base in terms of financing capital available.

‘Because we don’t have any of those tax incentive type of mechanisms here,’ he says, ‘we as Alberta producers are operating at a competitive disadvantage trying to finance and package our own projects.’

On a brighter note, Thomson says at last the film industry in Alberta is becoming a business. ‘Up until now it’s always been more of a creative art form. Previously, very few Alberta producers concerned themselves with the business aspects of production; instead they just went from one project to another without any long-term thought about building an infrastructure.’

But that’s changing, he says. ‘Over the last two years, following the establishment of the Canada-Alberta Cultural Industries Agreement which made money available for the building of companies not for projects, and with the arrival of television series production and the general growth and maturation of the industry, we’ve seen that producers here have become businesspeople. And that’s the most significant change in the last decade for the Alberta production industry.’