Vancouver: When last year’s exodus of Alliance Releasing staff added up to Red Sky Entertainment, one question top of mind in the industry was ‘What the hell were they thinking?’
By leaving the comfort and safety of Alliance and the center of the known universe – er, Toronto – for the wild west, scuttlebutt ran that Tony Cianciotta and friends, four of Canada’s most senior distribution executives, must be crazy to uproot themselves and head to Vancouver to start a fledgling feature distribution company focused mainly on b.c. and Western Canadian product.
Skepticism is heaped on all pioneers.
After a year of toying with the idea of moving west (after local Mark Ralston offered to raise the capital for them) and a couple of months of frantic organizing to actually make it happen last summer, Cianciotta, Mary-Pat Gleason, Dave Forget and Anna Maria Muccilli fulfilled a dream to homestead in a production territory that is expected to begin to thrive in the next few years.
Already smitten with Vancouver as a place to live, company president Cianciotta and Gleason decided to relocate to what they consider an underserved market, surprisingly brimming with unexplored talent. So now, just weeks after they announced their initial release slate, the Red Sky partners are beginning to pan for the gold.
‘At some time, you realize that you want to take a bigger role in the industry,’ says Cianciotta, listing the reasons why Red Sky was founded Oct. 9. ‘We get to be a big fish in a small pond. There is no [feature] distribution company here. We have the opportunity to get involved with filmmakers in a more substantial way than we did before and we wanted the challenge of acquiring the films and gaining support from the various companies here.’
Idealism aside, Cianciotta acknowledges the ‘unknown’ factors that create risk and anxiety in such a dramatic move.
Given their Toronto foundations, the Red Sky principals say they had questions about the depth of talent in b.c. and how they would be accepted by a market that often espouses anti-Toronto sentiment.
But they have been pleasantly surprised by the response from the Vancouver film community, which has swamped them with proposals and invited them into the local business with open arms.
‘Why should I be surprised?’ asks Cianciotta with some reflection. He says the Toronto-centric industry has created an erroneous perception that b.c. doesn’t have the depth of stories or talent to drive an indigenous industry. ‘But we’ve been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of good stuff.’
Since it opened its Gastown office, Red Sky has received more than 200 submissions in the forms of full scripts and treatments, a large percentage of which Cianciotta says are ripe for production.
Initial goals include Red Sky getting involved in up to three feature film productions (with Canadian box office potential of $1.5 million to $2 million). The company, says Cianciotta, is close to finalizing its participation in a couple of film projects in development, but it will not release details until the contracts are signed.
The potential for hands-on interaction with film creators is what excites the Red Sky principals. They want to work with local filmmakers in lending years of marketing expertise to create commercially viable projects that can build local momentum in the homegrown industry. Cianciotta and Gleason, as former instructors in Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnic University’s film studies department, want to continue to act as mentors to get b.c. filmmakers thinking about the distribution process as they create their film properties.
‘We are very lucky that we are four people who, after years of working together, think the same way,’ says Cianciotta when asked how Red Sky philosophy will differ from Alliance. The mechanics of operating a distribution company won’t change and Red Sky wants to continue to build on Alliance’s success. ‘But we’re shaping the kind of style [of distribution company] we want to be,’ he says.
Only three of the current slate of 13 Red Sky releases come from the company’s recent deal with Equinox in Quebec. And according to Cianciotta, promising releases that might excite the box office include The Climb (about 12-year-old boy’s relationship with his hard-drinking neighbor) and Sasquatch basketball feature Big and Hairy, while Asian imports and festival winners Hanna-Bi and Suzaku will test the group’s skill in creating excitement through promotion.
Red Sky actually gets down to business in late February when La Comtesse de Baton Rouge (about a filmmaker who falls in love with a bearded lady) debuts in Vancouver, Toronto and other key cities, followed by u.s. import American Perfekt (a thriller starring Vancouver actor Fairuza Balk). Red Sky will be attending the American Film Market in Santa Monica at the end of February as buyers.
Is Red Sky facing any discrimination because of its Vancouver address? ‘The perception,’ says Cianciotta, ‘is that we’re not in the foreground. Let’s be realistic. But by next year, we hope to dispel that perception.’
He adds that distributors outside of Canada have been very receptive to the presence of Red Sky.
In the big picture, Cianciotta predicts ‘tremendous’ consolidation in the Canadian film distribution sector and the creation of ‘mini-conglomerates’ that will tie up the top end of the box office. ‘But that leaves room for Red Sky,’ says Cianciotta, who believes the kind of film created or acquired by the company will slide into a ready audience fed by fewer competitors.
He also predicts strong growth in the number of venues for film creating demand for distributors to come up with the product to get audiences in the seats.
And while Red Sky settles into its West Coast rhythms, Cianciotta is already certain of one thing: running your own show translates into, as he puts it, ‘tremendous freedom.