Sharing Stories in Scotland

(Angela Gwynn-John is executive director of the Nova Scotia Film and Video Producers Association.)

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Where do you go to find the right coproduction partner? For producers in Nova Scotia, Sharing Stories, a coproduction conference held annually in Scotland, has been one of the best-kept secrets.

Started three years ago by Edinburgh-based independent producer Barbara McKissack as ‘a sort of return match’ for the good time Scottish guests had at the 1991 Atlantic Film Festival’s first Scottish Perspectives program, the Sharing Stories event has become Europe’s largest coproduction conference and a recognized event on the crowded media calendar.

The aim is to bring filmmakers and television producers together with broadcasters and financiers to explore and establish links for coproductions with other countries.

The Sharing Stories conference is held alternately in Edinburgh and Glasgow. This year, from Nov. 11-13, 140 industry representatives from 13 countries met in Edinburgh.

European presenters included Simon Perry of British Screen, Liam Miller of rte (Irish Television), Stuart Cosgrove of Channel Four (Britain), Anna Glogowski of Canal + (France), Andrea Calderwood of BBC Scotland, Christoph Jorg of Arte (France) and representatives from Barclays Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Panels addressed finance and risk, control of rights, children’s television, feature film development, documentary co-production, the future of tv fiction and several case studies.

The first year, five independent Canadian producers, all from Nova Scotia, attended. This year, a group of 20 Canadians ensured representation on every panel, and included Jim Burt (cbc), Robert Morrice (The Royal Bank), Jan Rofekamp (Films Transit), Roman Bittman Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation) and independent producers Chris Zimmer (Imagex) and Annette Cohen.

The highlight event – as at any major industry gathering of this sort these days – was the pitching session, led for the second time by Pat Ferns.

Nova Scotia was still the largest contingent and is also ahead in terms of results.

Zimmer already has three projects on the go with Steve Clark Hall and Trevor Davis of Skyline/ Zenith, a British independent production company based in London and Edinburgh, a contact resulting from the first Sharing Stories event in 1992.

The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum starring Helena Bonham Carter is currently in post-production, and the team has two other projects in development: a feature, Love and Death on Long Island, and a tv special featuring Nova Scotia composer Scott McMillan’s Celtic Mass for the Sea, which will be performed and shot on location in Scotland.

In December, Hall will visit Nova Scotia to scout locations for a future project.

‘This sort of relationship is the mark of a successful event and we hope to develop other connections made at Sharing Stories over the coming years,’ says nsfdc president Bittman.

The nsfdc and the Nova Scotia Film and Video Producers Association are planning their own return match – an Atlantic Rim conference to take place in Nova Scotia in 1995. Many of the contacts we’ve made at Sharing Stories over the past three years feel it’s time for them to come to Canada – they’ve heard about the great parties we have here in Nova Scotia!

At the moment, the future for coproduction looks rosy. Delegates agreed there was more international potential in well-told local stories than in the ‘Europudding’ approach. The best advice was to ‘keep the creative at heart and not chase the money too far,’ closely followed by the need to keep the number of creative partners to a minimum.

As an anonymous commentator wrote to the suggestion box: ‘We don’t want tabloid television dressed up as anthropological inquiry.’

Delegates also agreed funders should talk together more so that international deals can be established verbally prior to the completion of long forms. They said program exchange as well as coproduction should be explored, and ways must be found to help broadcasters and cable deal with varying program duration formats and dubbing.

My best advice: come to Sharing Stories next year.