Playback asked Canadian film and television production companies what they had spent on independent production in 1995. Their responses revealed that total Canadian independent production expenses for ’95 topped the $951.5 million mark with about $892 million being spent on production and over $25 million on development. Approximately $553 million was spent on producing TV drama, over $171 million on features, over $134 million on children’s programming, over $29 million on documentaries and $38.5 million on other programming (such as info/mags and specials).

In the case of coproductions or coventures, producers were asked to include only their portion of the budgets during the 1995 calendar year. See page 23 for a complete financial breakdown and page 27 for a list of production companies and their projects and people.

When asked for his take on being a first-time producer, John Davis, vp of Halifax-based Eco-Nova Multi Media, says, ‘I wouldn’t recommend it for the faint of heart.’ Across the country, fledgling independents would be eager to add a rousing ‘Amen!’ to that.

And when they’re finished, they might ask a blessing for the specialty networks as well. Four out of five of the up-and-coming companies profiled here can thank Canada’s newest broadcasters for at least some part of their expansion and growth.

David Doerksen and his Saskatoon-based company The Edge Productions is the exception to that trend. Incorporated in 1994, the company is currently nailing down the details on Suspicion, a ‘based on a true story’ tv movie to be coproduced with Jerry Lambert’s l.a. company Prominent Films. If all goes as planned, the $3.1 million mow will shoot in Saskatchewan this summer. The completed screenplay is being shopped at abc, hbo, USA Cable and New Regency.

Not bad for a guy who was ‘only dreaming’ in 1993. Doerksen, who owns 75% of The Edge, was working in print merchandising when he decided he wanted to make movies. Three years later, he’s got a staff of five, a studio, and a $300,000-plus video and audio post facility in Saskatoon.

Looking at mows as a jumping-off point, Doerksen hopes his company will make its name in full-length family features – a genre his Mennonite community could happily support.

While some set out to be producers, others evolve into the role. Eco-Nova, initially a marketing company, built up an enviable collection of underwater footage through eco-tourism diving programs in conjunction with Parks Canada and the Nova Scotia Museum. A pitch to Discovery Channel for a series based on the shipwrecks of Atlantic Canada peaked interest, and the licence fee enabled the company to get the ball seriously rolling on a $500,000 one-hour pilot.

With their only previous production experience being their own promotional work and educational pieces, the Eco-Nova team is now helming Oceans Of Mystery, a 13-part series based on the pilot. In addition to a sale to Discovery, foreign sales have also been encouraging. Canal b and Premier Choix have picked it up, and sales are pending in Germany.

An extensive web of relationships and great timing are to be credited with the success of Oceans of Mystery, according to Davis. At a time when government agencies like Natural Resources Canada, the Department of National Defence and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans are looking to promote themselves and their relevancy, Eco-Nova has been able to avail itself of some of the world’s most advanced underwater mapping technology and footage.

Says Davis: ‘They look for geological features and we look for magnetic anomalies, like shipwrecks.’

Land-based interests, or more specifically earth-based interests, have been the catalyst for another Nova Scotia company, Pick & Shovel Productions. A partnership between Johanna Eliot, owner of Halifax post-production house Ocean Digital, experienced editor and director Michael MacDonald, and recycling expert Jennifer Corson, the company was formed to produce The Resourceful Renovator, a series for wtn. Thirteen episodes of the series have aired and orders are in for 26 more.

The content of the show, which is based on the idea of people reusing and recycling building materials when they’re renovating, comes mainly from Corson, owner of The Renovator’s Resource, a reuse/recycling store in Halifax.

Topics for the first season ranged from how to use solar energy to how to build a house from bales of straw. Eliot, the producer entity of the company, calls it ‘an informational, inspirational, environmentally friendly kind of show,’ timely in an era when there’s green to be found in going green.

There isn’t much green in the budget, though. Eliot credits a small, efficient crew for being able to produce each episode for about $2,300. ‘We can control our costs because the partners are the whole company.’

Catalyst has recently signed on as the distributor for the series, and they hope to have as much success on the u.s. specialties as they’ve had here.

A specialty gig was also the birthplace for Phyllis Laing’s Winnipeg-based company Buffalo Gal Pictures. Incorporated in November 1994 to produce a daily phone-in show called Call Us for wtn, Buffalo Gal, for all intents and purposes, replaced the previous company Winter Rodes ‘because we simply liked the name better.’

Buffalo Gal has done some serious growing in the past year. At the beginning of 1995 it had a staff of one. Now it boasts a full-time staff of 10 with another five to 10 subcontractors.

While going into preproduction on a documentary called Personal Alarm, to be coproduced with the nfb for cbc’s Rough Cuts, Laing also has two projects in post: My Mother’s Ghost, a tv movie coproduced with Credo, and Strange Empire, a documentary on Louis Riel and the Metis which was coproduced with Edmonton’s Great Plains Productions. Both are to be aired on CanWest Global.

Having cut its teeth on Call Us and two other series for wtn, a parenting show called Baby & Me and a series of profiles of Canadian women called Making It Work, Laing says the focus of the company is to retain a level of diversity – mixing one-off doc work with drama, series, tv movies and drama. ‘We’ve done a music video and a corporate video, just to diversify. It’s not so much for the money, but it helps to professionally develop the internal resources we have.’

Looking ahead, Laing says the company has about 20 different projects in development, running the gamut from docs to features. She hopes staying diversified will allow the company more time to develop features, ‘to give them the creative time they need rather than pushing them into existence before they’re ready.’

Further east in Ottawa, corporate and industrial video country, is another company that has benefited from the last round of specialties. Alan White’s Corvideocom, born 15 years ago producing corporate/industrial videos for the government and high-tech clients, has just been commissioned by Discovery to produce a pilot for a potential series called Human Nature about Canadians interacting with wildlife habitats. Corvideocom pitched it to Discovery at Banff last year and managed to pick up a little development cash.

Having only been in the television production arena for the last five years or so, White says the advent of the specialties has opened the most doors for his company. It’s done well with Discovery, producing a Gemini-nominated pilot for a show called Binary Groove and a special for ‘Aliens Week’ called ET and Me: One Man’s Quest for an Interview with an Alien.

Bravo! has also been an outlet. The broadcaster acquired the company’s art doc Speaking In Movies, and since Hot Docs last year, Corevideocom’s gone into development with the nfb to coproduce an extension of Speaking in Movies called Movies and the World Movies With You. ?? Backed by Telefilm Canada, the film will chronicle Canadian filmmakers whose efforts ‘overcame the onslaught of American culture.’

White believes it’s the national scope of the niche networks that’s opened up some space for companies outside the Montreal/Toronto/Vancouver loop. ‘It’s hard to be on the cocktail party circuit down there on a regular basis,’ he says. ‘We’re not there – we live and work here.’

His company, like many others across the country of similar stature, are eagerly awaiting developments in the next round of specialty apps. White’s hoping Corevideocom’s relationship with Discovery will spill over should Discovery be successful in its bid for a history channel.

‘It’s my opinion that the commission should license them all and let the Canadian market decide,’ says White. Another comment to which the new independents might chorus ‘Amen!’