Things are going swimmingly for Atlantic Canada’s film and tv industry. The evidence is everywhere. Audio production companies and post houses are starting up – as are film commissions.

The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation – located at the hub of the Atlantic industry – anticipates a record year for 1996 following a 500% increase in the number of applications filed for funds in the spring.

Emily, the latest tv series based on the writings of Lucy Maud Montgomery, is headed for the screens, and this time Prince Edward Island will be host to the shoot instead of the usual locale, Ontario (where Sullivan shot most of the Anne series).

New Brunswick is hopeful for a new tax credit and Newfoundland is awaiting word on a new film commission.

The only bit of bad news recently – the very serious snag in the proposed Electropolis soundstage in Halifax – is now being treated as a temporary nuisance by the local industry, like a bad storm blown in from the sea.

Paul Donovan runs Halifax-based Salter Street Films with his brother Michael. Salter has been a leader in the Atlantic industry for a good decade, and today the 15-year-old company is bustling – coproducing Emily (with Cinar Films), launching the innovative and f/x-laden series Lexx and working on season two on the kids’ series Works.

When the soundstage was put on hold and then-nsfdc president Roman Bittman was suspended – due to what has been reported as micro-management by the nsfdc board – Donovan jumped in with both feet to ensure that the project did not die. It’s ‘quite critical,’ he says, to the continued health of the industry in Atlantic Canada. ‘The way I look at it is the fact there is a film industry here in a way is pretty wacky. It’s quite amazing that this relatively small part of the country has quite a happening industry.’

Lexx could pretty well cover the rent for the studio for over three years, maintains Donovan, and although the coincidence is no doubt ‘a beautiful piece of timing’ for Salter, the new facility would also put into place ‘those critical pieces of infrastructure that will help the film industry survive into the future.’

Craggy, moody, windswept Atlantic Canada is pitched for its superb locations. Fine. But Donovan sees an opportunity that has been overlooked. ‘We tend to do work that is location-driven, and in Los Angeles they tend to do work that is studio-driven. In Canada, it’s -25 C and we go outside to do exteriors and at the same time it’s 25 C and they’re doing interiors (in l.a.). Something is backward.

‘When I look at some shows that are shot in Canada in the middle of winter and the actor’s breath doesn’t dissipate for yards, I think we’re crazy.’

Donovan says in the early eighties, when he stepped on to home turf after studying at a film school overseas, there was virtually no industry to speak of in Nova Scotia or anywhere down east – outside of the National Film Board’s Atlantic office. Although he calls the nfb ‘a spectacularly anachronistic institution’ today, he does attribute the same government outfit with creating the original spark that ignited the region’s film and tv industry.

‘Some key people at the nfb – and later at Telefilm Canada – got behind the idea of having an industry. Together, they primed the pump by giving money to people to make films that were essentially training films. It became a reality, part of the psyche, that films could be made here.’

Donovan remembers when it was more difficult to get projects made in Atlantic Canada. ‘Making films out here used to be more difficult and the logical thing for me to have done (then) was to go to Los Angeles. The social contract that came with (government) subsidies was to stay home and make films in less fertile soil.’

The new tax credit in Nova Scotia, which is at the heart of a 25% increase in projected production spending in 1996 to $21.5 million, has spurred New Brunswick to seek its own credit.

While government subsidies wane and tax credits multiply, the industry – across Canada – gains strength, suggests Donovan.

‘If I talk to someone in Berlin to make a coproduction and we develop it together, I can say to them that I will get 12.5% in the provincial credit and 9.8% in the federal one, which is a huge step forward from saying we’ll apply (for funding) but we don’t know.’

Donovan’s praise for the provincial tax credit is unabashed. ‘It’s a beautiful thing: there is no cap, it’s precise, and it’s predictable.’

There are a few things that Donovan would like to see changed in Atlantic Canada in order to secure a better future. One is to follow the example in Ontario of three technical unions (iatse, nabet and acfc) – ‘something people tend to undervalue,’ he says. ‘In Nova Scotia there were two unions, but they have formed into one and I’m very nervous that they will cause (trouble).’

Donovan maintains it’s unrealistic to expect the Atlantic provinces to gain more unions, but he says all signs are there will be some bumpy terrain to cross ahead. ‘The film union here realizes that the film business is very portable, but they’re going through a maturation phase and I expect there will be some tests in the next couple of years.’

The development of a regional post industry is another issue on Donovan’s list. It’s under construction, he says, and now is the time to move forward. ‘The post industry is reinventing itself as a computer-based thing so quickly that everyone has to start from scratch wherever they are. I think it’s just a short period of time before a lab and other facilities can fulfill just about anyone’s needs out here.’

The storytelling tradition of the Maritimes is well recognized as a key contributor to the development of any narrative-related industry in the region, whether it’s making music or movies.

Donovan agrees, but he has another, less obvious point about the region’s contribution to the evolution of its own thriving film and tv business: the relatively depressed economic state of the region.

‘From our perspective, it’s bizarre how little indigenous production is taking place in Vancouver, but my argument is that it’s because the housing is so expensive you can only pay your mortgage by working on expensive American films. The reverse works here to help the industry along.’

While the lower costs of living afford some freedom for risk-taking, the same climate also harbors what Donovan pins as the single most contentious issue that could bring down the Atlantic trade.

‘There is an old illness in Atlantic Canada: the mentality of entitlement,’ he says. ‘If the people in the film industry drifted toward that traditional mentality, which I consider a vestige of feudalism, then the industry will fail. But if people are enterprising and have a positive approach, then it will continue to work.

‘Right now, I think the mentality of entitlement is on retreat, but that’s new and if the old comes back in, it would be a catastrophe.’