Salter Street: No one ever said being a Canadian independent producer was easy, especially in the fiscally restrained nineties. But in 1996 there were a few bright spots to speak of, particularly $100 million of new money in the Canada Television and Cable Production Fund and a host of newly licensed specialty channels with time to fill.

In Atlantic Canada, specifically in Nova Scotia, the production industry has blossomed and Halifax’s Salter Street Films is in the forefront.

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In 1979, Michael Donovan and his brother Paul did a $250,000 project in Nova Scotia and for two years it was the only production activity on the provincial map. In 1996, Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation numbers show annual indigenous production in the province to total upwards of $43 million.

The Donovan brothers’ Salter Street Films, incorporated in 1983, is credited by many as being one of the cornerstones on which the province’s burgeoning production community has been built. The company itself has grown – with an office in England and production partners around the globe – but Michael Donovan has approached the expansions with caution.

‘We’re anxious not to build up overhead to the point where the tail wags the dog,’ says Donovan. ‘We don’t want to end up producing lower quality material in order to feed the costs. We want to keep ourselves lean and mean.’

Fundamentally, Salter Street is a lean, mean idea machine. The company has expanded its staff – adding an in-house lawyer and controller, for example – and added a distribution arm, but Donovan has consciously kept the infrastructure to a minimum.

‘A few years ago we were essentially a small family company with three other people. We were doing one project at a time, projects we were personally interested in. But then there were so many things we wanted to do, and so we began adding people to the company and developing expertise. Once the basic infrastructure was in place, I was liberated to do what I want to do, which is develop projects.’

Now, says Donovan, the time has come to take the company to the next level. ‘Our intention,’ he says, ‘is to do a public offering sometime in 1997 or 1998 to provide financing for an enhanced development and production slate.’

Donovan isn’t waxing philosophical about it. There wasn’t a defining moment or milestone behind the decision, he says. Just a desire to produce more. ‘Ultimately, how much you can produce stems from how much capital you have to risk.’

In the wake of Lexx – Salter’s first foray into computer animation and f/x-heavy sci-fi and a coproduction with Wolfram Tichy’s German company TiMe – Donovan says the company has several computer animation coproductions in the works for 1997.

‘Computer animation production is a fast-moving game,’ says Donovan, ‘but we’ve acquired the expertise, set up the right relationships. Canada’s a world leader in the field and it’s recognized to be so abroad. That helps make it relatively easy to set up agreements involving the transfer of Canadian computer know-how.’

1997 will also see production begin on a miniseries called Major Crime. The $5 million, four-part project for cbc was created and codeveloped by Steven Lucas. The crime drama will be ‘done in the style of Cracker and Prime Suspect’ and begins production in Toronto and Nova Scotia in January.

Although the company’s primary interest is in television production – building on successes like codco, This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Life With Billy – Salter does have a feature on its slate for 1997. Based on an adaptation of See No Evil, a book which outlined the case of two Canadians convicted of kidnapping in Brazil, Donovan has secured a Brazilian coproduction partner for the project. There’s currently no Canadian distributor attached.

Emily of New Moon, Salter’s coproduction with Montreal’s Cinar Films, will also be shooting into the new year, and Donovan says projects like Emily characterize the kind of project his company jumps on.

‘We find ourselves doing things we find creatively exciting and which have an evergreen value.’

It’s been a tumultuous and exciting year for the Nova Scotia production community, marked as much by power wrangling inside the nsfdc and the status of the Electropolis facility as by the influx of u.s. studio pictures and high-profile, respectably budgeted Canadian drama. Determined to put a positive spin on events, Donovan points out the highs. ‘The new super fund [the ctcpf] will do great things for producers in the province, and the tax credit continues to bolster production,’ he says.

Another bright spot on the horizon is the newest slate of licensed specialty channels. Donovan says that while he has yet to enter into discussions with anyone, he’s eagerly eyeing The History and Entertainment Network and he’d love to strike upon projects which would allow him to work with Discovery and Life.

As for the fate of the much-lauded Electropolis Donovan says he’s still willing to be a partner in the venture, but there’s nothing new to report. He points out that his own company’s production needs are already filled by warehouse space Salter owns, but he stands by his assertion that the facility is viable for the community as a whole.

But at the end of the day for Donovan, the infrastructure, the physical elements, are on the periphery. ‘I want to put my psychic energy into development and production, into creating good films,’ he says. ‘Content can live forever.’