Immaculate white trailers lining city streets, denim-clad pas in artfully torn t-shirts and baseball caps brandishing walkie-talkies, barricades blocking parking stalls, and cops wolfing down donuts. Yes, the telltale signs of a film in progress still abound in Vancouver.

It looks busy, in fact, ‘stinking busy,’ according to Mark DesRochers, manager of production/ location services for the B.C. Film Commission. But something’s changed, really changed. Invariably now, those trailers belong to productions with titles like Sabrina, The Teenage Witch; The Surrogate or Strange Luck. Gone are the big budgets, big names and five-month shoots of major feature films.

‘What we are seeing,’ says DesRochers, ‘is a shift in the type of production coming here. There’s a lot of people being employed in the industry, and the number of productions is even up from last year, but there’s less money being spent here.’

Currently, he says, there are only two features on the commission’s list of 20-odd productions; the rest are either mows or series. ‘If that’s the direction the whole industry wants to take, then I guess it’s fine.’

Others aren’t quite so sure. Don Ramsden, president of technicians union IATSE Local 891 says, ‘We feel what would keep us healthiest is to have more of a blended economy which would allow people more of a choice in the kind of work they choose to do.

‘But,’ he adds, ‘there’s no question the major studios are taking a wait-and-see attitude because they’re just not sure how the labor issues are going to play themselves out.’

The writing was on the wall last March, when executives from the Hollywood studios met to discuss their increasing discontent with the constant labor disputes in Vancouver. The bottom line message was, ‘Fix it fast!’ and ‘If you snooze you lose.’

Six months later, the labor problems remain, but now the entire film community has become a lot more concerned about finally sorting it out.

To this end, earlier this summer the British Columbia and Yukon Council of Film Unions filed an application under section 41 of the B.C. Labor Code, which would give the organization accreditation to act as a single bargaining voice for film workers in the province. While the thought of bargaining with a single group made many producers reach for their Maalox, ‘something needed to be done to end this impasse between employers and labor,’ says Ramsden.

‘Part of the problem,’ he says, ‘is that we don’t have a clear federal or provincial policy on film development. We remain in a holding pattern because b.c. remains essentially a service industry.

‘Production companies have not taken a leadership role as they have in other production centers, so what we have in b.c. is the unions and guilds driving the bus, and that’s why the issue of section 41 is now being debated.

‘We are saying to the government, `We are the custodians of the industry and we are being constrained, because unlike a business we have a separate set of rules to operate under.’ We are asking the government to help us sort out issues between employers and unions.

‘As the Joint Council of Unions, we would like to create a very strong infrastructure which will allow us to collectively bargain and put all those issues to bed on a three-year basis so that we can then jointly focus on all these other important new challenges facing the industry. That’s why we filed this application.

‘At the end of the section 41 application, no matter if it is win, lose or draw, the way we negotiate contracts will be changed forever. Through this process, we have achieved consensus with all the unions and guilds and employers that we need to find a new method of negotiating.’

The recent purchase of Cannell Films by New World Entertainment has also signaled a further increase in television production in the province. Earlier this summer, New World confirmed that Vancouver would be its primary production center and that the move would spell millions of new production dollars for the province.

Steve Sassen, vp and gm of Cannell Production Services, the newly created subsidiary of New World, estimates that production coming to Vancouver will increase by 30%. Two new series, Strange Luck and Profit, and mows have already been scheduled for production in Vancouver this fall under the New World banner.

New World’s beefed-up production slate also spells good news for local post-production houses. Gary Shaw, vp of marketing and sales for Post Haste Video, views the industry’s shift to television production as healthy.

‘With the production being divided over a larger number of productions and not so reliant on a few large features, there’s a lot more people employed,’ says Shaw, adding that tv has also provided the opportunity for local post facilities to complete the post on more shows. ‘Things have really changed for us. More l.a. producers are developing a comfort level, and combined with our dollar advantage, we’ve never been busier.’

Tom Locke, chief financial officer of Rainmaker Digital Pictures, the newly created public parent company of Gastown Post, reports similar activity.

When Gastown formed two new sister companies, Rainmaker Imaging and Rainmaker Interactive, the plan was to enable Vancouver’s largest post facility to do more digital effects for feature films. Luckily, while there hasn’t been much feature production, many of the tv series shooting in Vancouver such as Highlander, The Outer Limits, Poltergeist, Strange Luck and The X-Files have been more special effects-driven.

Apart from that, says Locke, ‘what has really changed for Gastown and many other Vancouver production and post companies is that we are getting more involved in multimedia and interactivity, areas we wouldn’t even have thought of getting into two or three years ago. But we’ve done it in order to fuel our expansion and not be so dependent exclusively on the film industry.

Asian front fizzles

The Asian market, which several years ago appeared to be the next production boon for Vancouver, has not born fruit.

Locke, who has played a major role in trying to facilitate the Asian connection, says, ‘It looks like our relationships with Asian producers are going to take a lot longer to cultivate before it begins to provide a substantial influx of production to the Vancouver marketplace.’

Indigenous production

Indigenous production continues its struggle to gain a foothold in Vancouver where service production dominates activity.

Says Wayne Sterloff, president of British Columbia Film: ‘The local production community is definitely returning to its cottage industry roots, but what has changed from before is that now they have more skilled people attached to their companies in the form of creative development, business and legal affairs. Local producers are also advancing more projects at once with a broader slate of development.’

Producer Matthew O’Connor, president of Pacific Motion Pictures and chairman of the b.c. branch of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, believes the single most important element that the local indigenous production community needs to boost activity is some form of a tax-incentive scheme.

Tax incentive

‘The fact that we are so far behind Quebec and Ontario presents a real problem for us competing for production. (A tax incentive) is such an important piece of the puzzle,’ says O’Connor. ‘Granted we have a long way to go before we have as many production companies as they do in those provinces doing Canadian production, but for us to even have a hope of getting there, we must have an investment plan.’

That said, O’Connor acknowledges there is little likelihood that will happen in the near future given the current climate of provincial government fiscal restraint. In the meantime, pmp, along with most other local production companies such as Crescent Entertainment and New City Films, continues to support its own development slate with the plentiful service production.

‘The reality in Vancouver,’ says O’Connor, ‘is that service work will support our production community until our indigenous industry has some kick-start to help it grow again.’

According to Ramsden, the industry has to become more business minded and master of its own destiny. ‘What lacks in Vancouver is that no one in our industry has a long-range vision,’ says Ramsden. ‘It’s always champagne, shoot, that’s a wrap, thank-you very much, see you next film. That needs to end for our film community to truly evolve into a thriving indigenous industry.’