To check the pulse of Vancouver’s production community, Playback assembled a group of producers for a roundtable.

Christine Haebler is the low-budget feature producer of Hard Core Logo and Kitchen Party, which debuted at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. Hollywood veteran Larry Sugar, now living in Vancouver, is producing the anthology Deadman’s Gun and is in preproduction on sci-fi series First Wave. Colleen Nystedt is forging a producing career through steady u.s. service work and sales of local stories, such as Kathryn, to u.s. networks. And Chris Haddock is producing DaVinci’s Inquest for the cbc, which goes before cameras in the new year.

Vancouver is on a roll, they agree, but on some issues their opinions differ widely. For example, what about that thorny East-West clash in Canadian film? Are Vancouver producers beginning to feel less alienated by the Toronto-centric film establishment?

* * *

Haddock: I’ve never felt that whole b.c.-Toronto axis. I haven’t been hampered. Federal funding has worked for me. Vancouver has this whole sense of change happening. Everybody seems to be ready to park it here.

Playback: Colleen, you have had more success working directly with l.a.

Nystedt: Absolutely. Toronto is very much a club. And everyone I know who has had success dealing with the Toronto broadcast establishment has spent time there and is plugged into the buyers in Toronto.

Haddock: Is that any different than you being plugged into Los Angeles?

Nystedt: l.a. comes here, so that is where my connections are. There has been very little Canadian product that has worked its way out to the West Coast.

Sugar: And when it does, [the Toronto producers] bring the people. It’s different. l.a. is product-driven. And Toronto is very parochial.

Haebler: I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. I’ve been embraced by Ontario, both by the distributors – broadcasters specifically – and filmmakers who have been interested in making movies out here.

Playback: Why is there such a mixed bag of experience?

Nystedt: The occasional ‘give a dog a bone’ is not the same as a regular, ongoing volume relationship. And if you look at proportional volumes in what happens in central Canada versus Western Canada, I think the answer is obvious.

Playback: Where are you finding money?

Haebler: I’m relying on broadcast or distribution presales and coupling that with provincial and federal funding. My next feature is a negative pickup with an American company so it’s a different deal altogether.

Playback: Are you having to go out and find more private sources?

Haebler: I’ve tried a couple of times in the past but they have fallen through. As far as the [federal] tax credit goes, it has been difficult to use because I can’t bank it and I don’t have the capital to finance it.

For the case of Hard Core Logo, we were supposed to get $74,000, but at the end of the day it was only $32,000. It may seem like peanuts to some, but it was an enormous amount for us. Now I’m looking at getting out of funding my pictures from the traditional Canadian structure. I’m working with companies like PolyGram, Fine Line, New Line, Miramax, and the independents that can finance projects.

Playback: Because you’re getting the track record to attract these companies?

Haebler: Absolutely.

Nystedt: I continue to sell my projects south of the border because the objective is to get to the largest possible audience. I use the Canadian tax rebate both for Canadian content and international coproduction projects.

I have been working over the past five years establishing relationships with the banks, including the Canadian Business Development Bank, which is now enabling me to cash flow the tax credit through my company without tying it to any individual project.

Haddock: My money primarily comes from the distributors. I’ve got a good relationship in that they recognize what I’m trying to do, which is to establish a quality television brand in Canada that I can sell internationally. That’s a really essential thing because then [the lenders] become more confident in investing in your project.

Playback: Are you looking forward to the promised b.c. tax credit?

Sugar: Definitely.

Playback: Why?

Haddock: It will make b.c. competitive for one thing. You can keep your b.c. project in b.c. if it’s a competitive tax credit.

Nystedt: I’m driven through presales and I’m gap financing maybe 15% of the budget. My profit is in my Canadian sale and my back-end participation in each individual project. So if I earmark a federal tax rebate to a project, I can cover my deficit that way. Then I can continue to use the provincial tax rebate to build the company.

You really need to be able to bring retained earnings into the company. It’s also what the Market Incentive Program under B.C. Film was supposed to do, which has failed miserably.

Haebler: Miserably.

Nystedt: And I’m hoping the new provincial tax rebate will do away with a lot of the snags in the system that were prevalent with the Market Incentive Program such as the non-b.c. executive producer catch, which is really crippling because it does not recognize the reality of the industry.

Haddock: [By not permitting non-b.c. executive producers, the mip] really has been a stumbling block for everybody. You hate to think about what could have been kept here or what would have been brought here.

Playback: What other issues in Vancouver are affecting your business?

Nystedt: It’s labor. Let’s be realistic. Things are very volatile in the labor community as you’ve seen plastered all over the trades in Los Angeles and here. It continues to be a problem for those of us who are trying to create stability.

The significant proportion of my business continues to be service. That pays the rent. I need to be able to convince my clients that we have a stable environment.

As indigenous production companies, we have to be able to pass on some savings to our clients. The philosophy is that if the unions support the notion of growing indigenous production companies, then they will give us a 5% or 10% advantage. They give us the lip service that we need to be supported, but I have not seen any evidence to support it.

Playback: What about you, Christine? Any union support for your low-budget projects?

Haebler: The biggest culprit for me is the [b.c. actors union] ubcp. I know quite a few different cases in Vancouver where producers have had to creatively cut characters out to make their budgets work because there has been no low-budget agreement with that union. The scale rate is a problem and the buyouts are untenable.

Sugar: It’s unconscionable: a buyout on a rehearsal. Wardrobe calls? To pay a buyout on that? A residual is a reuse fee. How do I pay a reuse fee on something I haven’t used?

Nystedt: The silly thing is people have a choice whether they want to work on these shows or not. If they can go work on the $50-million Universal picture, then God bless them. But if they want to come and work on a little cable movie or a low-budget feature, why should our ability to do business be inhibited?

Sugar: They have the choice. But their union takes it away.

Playback: So what advice do you have for unions in general?

Nystedt: Remember the home team.

Sugar: They can gauge scale on budgets. They can put in the same kind of parameters that Canadian content does. They do nothing.

Nystedt: I sat down with the joint council to devise a low-budget cable contract. We said: `Okay, if we take this percentage off rates, versus this percentage off fringes, this gets us down to where we need to be. If [the budget] goes over $1.2 million below the line or over a gross budget of $3 million then it doesn’t qualify.’

So we set up a series of triggers that would say it was a 5%, 7.5% or 10% reduction off scale. I believe the executive of the unions support this, but they can’t sell it to their membership, because the membership is not educated. How many Teamsters read the script for the movie they are working on? They don’t. It’s not about the filmmaking process for them.

Playback: Is the international buying scene more responsive to b.c.-made films?

Haebler: There are certain films that have put us on the map. They are looking at the talent coming out of here, specifically directors and writers, and they’re very interested. For instance, the Calcutta Film Festival is featuring a program just for British Columbia films, which is so weird. Cannes, Edinburgh and Berlin, yeah, they are interested in Western Canadian film.

Playback: What are you guys doing to invest in talent to ensure that we keep up the momentum?

Sugar: I have a course that I teach on distribution-financing-production to my crew two Saturdays a month. My ads – on the first season on [First Wave] – are directing episodes. I’ve bought scripts from my script coordinator here, my script coordinator in l.a. and my publicist here. And our makeup person gave me a treatment that I read last night. I am amazed at how deep the talent pool is here, but we need more directors and we desperately need more writers.

Playback: Okay, so if you had $10 million to enhance the production community in Vancouver, how would you spend it?

Haebler: I would take $4 million to finance a distribution company and then I’d make three $2-million films. A Western-based distribution company is an imperative. We could start small, acquire product. Distribution is the key.

Nystedt: Then you put yourself in competition with Alliance Releasing.

Sugar: Good. It can still be done. I hope you get the money.

Haebler: So do I. (laughing) I’d obviously need to find someone who knew a lot more about distribution than me.

Playback: Maybe Larry wants another job.

Nystedt: I’d take money into my company because, in my view, what I’m trying to do in building this company is going to be a general benefit to the community.

Sugar: Start a film school. I’ve been teaching for 12 years. It would be for people who have either a liberal arts education, formal or not formal, and who are serious about producing, directing, writing.

Playback: Is there a model somewhere that you would clone?

Sugar: College of Santa Fe. Nobody rents the soundstage there without hiring a student in every possible job.

Haddock: Well, (laughing) I’ve got $10 million and I’m making a series called DaVinci’s Inquest. Seriously, if you want an indigenous industry then it starts with indigenous creators. I’d spend that money on acquiring b.c. and Vancouver writers and their stories.