In a pun perfectly suited to his job, Roman Bittman staunchly predicts that Nova Scotia’s film industry will ‘become a lot more visible in the years to come.’

Bittman, a veteran producer heading up the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, says a combination of factors – its regional leadership position, surging production activity, attractive locations, strong awareness and expression of local cultural values, plus the fact that new money is now available through his agency – will make Nova Scotia a more vibrant presence in the Canadian industry.

While Bittman says filmmaking has seen ‘gradual’ increases in his province over the past decade, he expects the pace will accelerate quickly. Although the two multimillion dollar features currently in production in Nova Scotia have ‘almost tapped out’ local crews, the nsfdc hopes a new financing incentive will help to build a larger base of key and second unit craftspeople.

The provincial government introduced the incentive earlier this year as part of a larger package. One element allows the film agency to rebate as much as 30% of the Nova Scotia-based labor component of a film with a local producer or coproducer, to a yearly total of $3 million in rebates. That should encourage use of local hires, Bittman says, and at the same time prove coproduction friendly.

Other financing changes resulted in a 60% increase in the amount nsfdc can offer as equity investments or loans to productions. Before this change, he says, the combination of local spending by foreign producers and budgets administered by local producers came to an annual total of about $13.5 million. As a result of the boost, Bittman reckons the figure will more than double to $30 million or more.

The province may have to wait and see how these new monies affect the pace of production, but in the meantime, things are hardly slow. The aforementioned big-budget features are making good use of industry talents, and the range of tasks required is immense. In Shelburne, crew members toiled to recreate a 1680s-era town for Disney’s The Scarlet Letter, a job that involved, among other things, the construction of a town’s waterfront and a half dozen streets running perpendicular to it.

In addition to set construction work, craftspeople from all over the province are helping to create items for this period film. A potter made leech jars and bleeding bowls (used by doctors when extracting ‘bad’ blood from sick patients), a police chief-cum-weaver created wattles (woven rods and twigs for the sides of a horse-drawn carriage) and other basket-type containers, woodworkers researched the look and design of 1600s trestle tables and writing desks, and on and on.

Bittman says local skills have served The Scarlet Letter well, adding that Halifax is home to one of just two Canadian colleges offering a degree in the fine/visual arts. ‘We have wonderful people in terms of set design, set construction, props, that kind of thing,’ he says, ‘lots of talented people in visual image, 3D (design), pottery, furniture, sculpture and so on.’

And the other major movie, Needful Productions/Castle Rock Pictures’ Dolores Claiborne, based on a Stephen King thriller, involved extensive set building of house fronts and a town hall to say nothing of the 17,500-square-foot blue screen put up inside ‘the enormous hockey arena of Acadia University in Wolfville.’ With no soundstage resident in Nova Scotia, Bittman says the Claiborne producers had to make do, which they did fairly efficiently, but he’d rather the soundstage was a permanent fixture. ‘Three or four groups are looking to build a soundstage,’ he adds, ‘including a producers’ consortium.’

But the lack of a soundstage and a film lab – and a ‘thin’ contingent of experienced film editors – represent the only real gaps in Nova Scotia’s ability to service productions. As the provincial film and video guide will attest, a full range of other services and personnel are available, including lots of video post shops, video mixing, audio post, on-set services and so forth.