Fireworks Entertainment and Maritime Entertainment Group are constructing a studio in Fredericton, n.b. The Kings Clear facility will house a 30,000-square-foot soundstage, post-production facilities, and animation studio.

In March Fireworks, a Toronto-based company, recently acquired by CanWest Global Communications, and meg, a New Brunswick management company, set up Live Productions nb, a 50/50 jointly owned Fredericton-based production company.

A source at meg, who declined to be named, confirmed that Peter Falardi will start shooting a feature, Ricky Six, at the new soundstage in August. A tv series is scheduled for September, and negotiations are under way for another two feature films.

In Nova Scotia, soundstage expansion is being planned for Mill Cove Park where the Black Harbour tv series has booked its two existing studios for a third year. Site preparation and architectural plans for an additional 12,000-square-foot soundstage at the facility are complete, says general manager Michael Montgomery, but construction will not begin until after a financial partner is found.

Tour Tech East is adding a 4,000-square-foot studio – complete with a carpentry shop and a cafeteria – to its existing studio space. A three-picture deal with Alliance to house a series of Harlequin Enterprise tv film productions has kept Tour Tech busy since late March and will keep the studio booked throughout the fall. President Peter Hendrickson is also negotiating with Blue Wave productions to bring a German co-production to the studio.

Other Nova Scotia soundstage projects in the works include a facility in Cape Breton and early talks are underway in Shelburne.

This proliferation of soundstage activity in the Atlantic provinces suggests that confidence in the region’s film and tv industry is running high. Whether this flurry of activity accurately represents the potential scope of the industry, or whether it simply reflects the rose-colored glow cast by the lens of eager producers and government agencies, remains the key question.

Montgomery believes that the Nova Scotia film industry is in a fairly healthy state. ‘Emphasis has shifted from u.s. feature films to domestic product,’ he comments. ‘The sustainability of the industry seems to be here.’

Cinesite’s studio manager, Nadine Halliday, voices some concern over both the extent and the trajectory of the current expansion. ‘Four soundstages in the region are more than enough,’ she argues. ‘In a 365-day year there is not going to be enough work to go around.’ Cinesite itself, she says, is not fully booked. While two out of three studios are being used to edit Imagex’s The Divine Ryans, she has no firm bookings for the fall.

Halliday contends that funds could be more usefully invested in services that would help to sustain existing levels of production. ‘Even if all these soundstages were fully booked, there would not be enough crews available to support them,’ she says. Government money, she suggests, would be much better spent on a film school for Halifax, or on a film-processing lab.

Hendrickson, however, is unruffled by the explosion of soundstage activity in the region. He predicts that the industry will continue to grow and that there will be sufficient demand for new and existing studio space. However, he stresses that film production represents only a portion of his business while the bulk of Tour Tech’s revenues are generated through the music industry.

At Electropolis Studios, Salter Street Productions has all four soundstages in use until February 1999 for its tv series Lexx ii. Rob Power, the studio’s new general manager, has no plans for expansion, and he expresses some concern about excess supply in the province. ‘If all of a sudden there were six studios in Halifax, it would be a problem,’ he says. ‘There is still a lot of growth possible in this industry, but I wouldn’t want to see more studios cropping up.’

With the potential glut of soundstages in Nova Scotia, studio managers are willing to be flexible over rental rates, particularly for low-budget indigenous projects. Director Thom Fitzgerald, for instance, recently shot his ‘no-budget’ feature Beefcake at Tour Tech East. ‘Local productions are underfunded,’ says Hendrickson, ‘so we try to be accommodating in terms of rates.’

Managers demonstrate a similar kind of flexibility when it comes to providing incentives for series producers to use existing studios rather than warehouses. Nadine Halliday admits that Cinesite wouldn’t want to lose a client to a warehouse. ‘We try to work out rates which will encourage production companies to use studios rather than warehouses for long term projects,’ she explains.

Newfoundland Film Development Corporation’s Leo Furey says production volume in his province has increased from $3 million to nearly $10 million over the last few years. Rink Rat Productions has just finished shooting Dooley Gardens, a $2.1-million cbc television series starring Mary Walsh. Misery Harbour, a $7.5-million joint venture between Newfoundland’s Red Ochre Productions and Norway will start shooting in the fall.

With production volume on the increase, Furey says, there is discussion of a soundstage for the province, but there are no immediate plans in place. In the meantime, producers have been taking advantage of facilities at the Independent Film Co-op in St. John’s. However, Furey concedes, ‘Only so much post-production work can be done in Newfoundland. The bigger budget features will often finish up in Toronto or Halifax.’

Louise Cameron is a Toronto-based freelance writer.