Montreal: Quebec’s long established independent production industry is headed for a record year with certified film and tv budgets set to top the $300 million mark.

Pierre Lampron, president of sodec, Quebec’s cultural funding and certification agency, says the cost of the refundable production tax credit, which finances up to 18% of certified budgets, will be $50 million this year, up from $38 million in ’94/95. Certified production does not include foreign location shoots, nor in-house production by broadcasters.

The range of indie projects, both French and English, from Montreal’s production community is rather impressive.

In early August, the stcvq, Quebec’s freelance film technicians’ union, listed 10 feature film and tv series in production, three features in preproduction, and nine assorted projects in post.

Current shoot highlights in Quebec include homegrown tv series, mows and feature films such as the Prisma medical drama series, Urgences, sda’s underworld story Omerta, the Bloom Films/Verseau International police series, Jasmine, the fifth season of Cinar Films’ spooky campfire anthology, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Cinevideo Plus Yukon gold rush mow series, The Adventures of Smoke Bellew, coproduced with France’s Ellipse Programme and Gaumont Television, and the Productions La Fete/Pathe Television feature film Le Silence des fusils, part of a five-year coproduction push from the two companies.

Recent production includes two high-definition features, Habitat, a science-fiction tale produced by Transfilm and Kingsborough Pictures, and Rainbow, a Filmline International special effects/family fantasy coproduced with Winchester Pictures in the u.k.

Other indie shoots of note this season include the Point de Mire international women’s docu series, This Wave an Ocean, two big-budget puppet series, Cinar Films’ Wimzie’s House and Desclez Productions’ Little Star, the Telefiction miniseries 10-07, about a homophobic serial killer, six new hours in the Sovimage courtroom series Les Grands proces, and Red River, a $13 million frontier drama from Transfilm, Productions EGM and France’s GMT Productions shot mainly on location on the Stony Reserve near Calgary.

Earlier this year, Allegro Films and director Christian Duguay shot the sci-fi thriller Screamers. The film stars Peter Weller and will receive a wide screen release in the u.s. from Triumph in mid-October.

Selected location action this year includes the NBC/Creamer Co. production Zoya, and the Newline Production feature Mother Night, with Nick Nolte.

Upcoming Quebec action includes: Marguerite Volant, an 18th-century drama series from Cite-Amerique; Lilies, a feature film coproduced by Montreal’s Galafilm and Toronto’s Triptych Media; Ces Enfants d’ailleurs, an historical miniseries from Neofilms and Polish partners, and the Aska Films feature, The Amateur, a coproduction with Japan.

Multimedia financing

In the multimedia domain, Lampron says Quebec is set to take a giant step in production and distribution.

‘According to our diagnostic, all forms of multimedia will undergo great development in the next five years,’ he says, pointing to the Internet and existing points of sale for technologies such as cd-rom and cd-i. ‘The breakthrough has already happened.’

Under Premier Jacques Parizeau, Quebec has established an industrial $50 million Information Highway Fund (Fond de l’autoroute de l’information.)

This new fund will be used to finance production, and to pay for the development of a made-in-Quebec multimedia point-of-sale distribution network, for cd-rom, cd-i and other software products.

This new, ‘to be invented’ network won’t necessarily be subject to the laws of the North American commercial market, and Lampron says sodec is looking for proposals from investors.

The government has also asked sodec to develop a tax credit for multimedia producers, the guidelines for which are expected by late September.

Lampron says government wants the credit program to be financed at whatever level is required.

‘What they have asked me to do is develop parameters that are as efficient as those for the film and television industry,’ he says.

sodec is also planning a selective aid program for multimedia projects, in the order of $5 million a year.

Shooting in French

Financing quality French-language production remains problematic, says Louise Baillargeon, president of the apftq, the highly effective Quebec producers’ association.

Despite the record production levels, the industry here is looking to increase exports, especially to Europe, in addition to expanding coproduction activity.

Says Lampron: ‘My fear is that we’ll continue in Quebec to oppose national creative to coproduction. What I would like to bring forward is an understanding that products made for our market should reflect a constant preoccupation with quality. It’s quality that allows audiovisual products to travel.’

‘If producers looking to export continually find themselves at odds with broadcasters who oppose their ratings to international results, then the Quebec industry is headed towards a dead end,’ he says.

Lampron, former director of the Telefilm Canada office in Paris, says he is ‘a big supporter of the coproduction agreements and strategic alliances with the Europeans.’

He says Quebec producers need more regular, better financed coproduction partners.

As for the export problem, Lampron says it’s significant that the program directors from Radio-Canada and Tele-Metropole, as well as the executive director at Telefilm, are members of the board of Conseil national du cinema et de la television, the film and tv advisory board headed by Cite-Amerique producer Lorraine Richard.

Coproduction:

the ties that bind

‘All too often, coproduction has been seen as bastardized product, if it works for one country, it doesn’t necessarily work in the other,’ says Pierre Roy, president/chief executive officer, Premier Choix:TVEC.

Roy takes a practical approach to coproduction, and surmises that the real problem may be that too much emphasis is placed on drama when other forms of production, such as animation, show a greater aptitude for travel.

In drama, he says wide-appeal programs, including some of the new sci-fi material from Atlantis Films, are generally characterized by less Canadian content.

He says it’s likely these kinds of shows are better vehicles for coproduction success.

Roy believes the main source of difficulty in coproduction has been inappropriate subject matter.

‘Does the story naturally lend itself to coproduction?’ he asks.

Export successes

Roy says domestic programming performs best in markets such as Quebec, the u.s. and France, if not everywhere, while there are a number of export successes that can be cited – the Alliance Communications Harlequin series, the Claude Gagnon mow, L’Ile Vert, the Rose Films series, Jalna, and the Cinevideo Plus mow collection, The Adventures of Smoke Bellew.

In the Quebec market, Roy says change is afoot.

‘With a producer with a track record like Francois St. Laurent going from Coscient to Tele-Metropole, and joining up with program vp Andre Provencher, there should be some form of opening to international coproduction there, too,’ he says.

The president of Montreal’s Filmline International, Nicolas Clermont, says the Canadian industry can afford to take a longer look at the value of marquee-sized talent.

‘It`s important to finally face up to the fact that a cultural industry is comprised of two often opposing facets, culture and industry,’ Clermont says.

‘Culture has to be preserved, granted,’ he says. ‘Yes, we should undertake all possible measures to do this, but, at the same time, we have to look at the business aspect and ask ourselves, `How can we build an industry?’

‘You cannot build an industry with only cultural projects. You need commercially successful products to build an industry. And to make viable projects, you need, somehow, to open the doors to what drives the success – mainly talent.’

In the face of a globalized entertainment market, Clermont says the essential turning point is the contradiction between protecting one’s cultural identity and surviving as a business in a borderless world market.

Different twist

‘In this context, co-ventures with the Americans take on a completely different twist,’ he says, adding all coventure and coproduction activity is a form of compromise.

‘Needing a partner means compromising some of the upside control on a project,’ Clermont says.

‘The motive for compromise can change,’ he says. ‘It could be because of the type of cast you need, or because of the financing or the markets you’re addressing your product to.’

And Clermont says all this has to be put into the context of globalization and the future role of Canadian content.

Officially sanctioned or not, Clermont says coventure is really about ‘partnerships’ with investors.

If a foreign distributor enters into a project with an upfront investment, then he says it is reasonable to call the arrangement ‘a coventure.’

Recent Filmline International projects with u.s. involvement include the $30 million Highlander, The Series, coproduced with France in association with Rysher, and this year in its fifth season of shooting in Vancouver, and The Breakthrough, an mow coproduced with the u.k. and the participation of USA Network.

‘Rysher isn’t a coventure partner in the traditional sense of the word, but they put some money on the table, and they get a product for a certain market,’ Clermont says.

In the production business, he says people who put up the money expect input on quality and casting.

‘Those are the demands,’ Clermont says. ‘They’re not going to tell how to shoot or what to shoot, or show up on the set and mix with your production schedule.

‘No, but they will say, `If you expect a certain amount of money for our market, we expect a certain level of quality, therefore, you have to give us a certain cast,’ he says. ‘So they do have the usual pre-approval rights, as every distributor has.’

The nature of the

dealpoints

Over the past two summers, Telescene Communications completed shooting on two big-budget productions, the syndicated lady cop series Sirens, and Hiroshima, a four-hour docudrama and the first shoot under the new Canada/Japan coproduction agreement.

Robin Spry, Telescene president, says the company’s one-third contribution to Hiroshima’s budget, and the pre-sale against world rights, were the primary conditions for Canadian control, ‘because we brought the project forward and invested.’

Coproduced with Daiei Co. Ltd. of Japan, Hiroshima’s $12 million financial structure included Canadian incentives and a Japanese investment, in addition to ‘a pre-sale structure.’

Spry says that included a sale to Los Angeles-based producer/distributor Adelson Entertainment, for the world rights, completed by Adelson’s sale to Showtime Networks and a subsequent Showtime sale to Hallmark Entertainment, New York.

Hallmark has u.s. video rights, while Telescene and Adelson have the right to further exploit u.s. sales, whether to network or syndication.

Hiroshima was directed by Roger Spottiswoode and premiered on Showtime in the u.s. and on Radio-Canada in the French-Quebec market.

Business deal

‘This is the way it has to be with a coproduction,’ Spry says. ‘If it is just simply a business deal, and there is no coproduction, then, in other words, the balance of initiation is different.’

He says Sirens, a network show first introduced on abc, was an altogether different story.

The 22-hour Sirens was shot on a budget of $27.5 million and produced as a Quebec-certified production after Telescene acquired all rights to the series and recast and retooled it from a to z for the u.s. syndication market.

Says Spry: ‘The problem with the coventure arrangement is that in the case of a $4 million feature film, where the u.s. producer brings in half, and the Canadian producer brings half, however the Canadian producer does it, all that has happened is that the money on the Canadian side, the Canadian incentives, have just been decreased by 50%. So it isn’t that often that attractive an arrangement.’

He says fairness is the guiding principle in structuring deals at Telescene.

He says, in general terms, when one of the partners has recouped investment, payments are made to the other partner(s) until they make back their money, and vice-versa.

‘And then, at the back end, you pool everything and share it on a pro rata basis from wherever the money is coming,’ Spry says.

‘Our principle is `Wherever the monies come from, all the parties have to be recouped before anyone makes a profit.’ ‘

Spry says the producer of a successful $2 million feature film can look to $500,000 to $700,000 in combined income from exploitation in theatres, homevideo, pay-tv, and a network sale.

He says, in the longer term, there should be additional revenues from syndicated sales.