At this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, 57 of the 114 films in the Canadian Images program hail from b.c. – a staggering figure that is the first quantitative proof of what the grassroots industry here has believed for years. The domestic industry is gaining momentum and driving it are aggressive filmmakers just now kicking off their careers.

Playback invited a handful of these mavericks to the third annual Producers Roundtable to talk about production in Vancouver.

Kellie Benz is a short filmmaker whose credits include The Second Coming and Cinderella: Single Again, which goes into production in December. She is also a writer, director and producer with Ken Hegan – one of the most visible young filmmakers in the city – on the new Comedy Network series Skullduggery, which is in production now.

Glen Lougheed has his own Comedy series called Slightly Bent, a sketch comedy show that is in post-production.

Adding serious content to the mix is Trish Dolman, a producer of documentaries, including her current project Ice Girls, a Hoop Dreams-inspired project about aspiring figure skaters.

Short filmmaker Ryan Bonder will see his first feature, DayDrift, a tale of a troubled photographer, premier at the Vancouver festival.

And Mark Sawers has scaled the heights of short film by winning the 1999 International Critics Week award at Cannes ($30,000) for best short for his work on Shoes Off!, a romantic comedy about love and footwear.

Hegan: I am just happy that we are being presented as emerging filmmakers and not submerging filmmakers. (laughter)

Playback: It’s true. You are all having some success in your early careers. How?

Benz: We were in the fortunate position – Ken and I – of having the Comedy Network approach us to do a show for them. The network really liked our scripts but was pretty certain we wouldn’t get any funding. Then we got our funding. Then we were told we wouldn’t find our crews. And we’re crewed.

Every step along the way, we’ve been told we can’t do it because we are low budget.

Lougheed: If you want people to jump on what you are doing immediately, then it helps to have a little more craziness.

Dolman: People [in Canada] think they have to do something wild or bizarre in order to be successful. But I don’t agree. My film is not risque, but it’s a really good idea that people respond to. Just going to Banff and going to different markets and festivals I know that people are really responding to Canadians. They want our ideas and they want our product.

Hegan: Certainly for the comedy pipeline.

Playback: But Canadian drama is less successful commercially. How are you doing, Ryan?

Bonder: It’s been hell. (laughter) But it’s also been great. We finally got some Telefilm money at the end. It seems that the agencies keep changing how they give out money. We did this feature partly out of our own pockets, but we also had private investors. Without a distributor or broadcaster, we went to Plan B, which was to scale down the production and hire people who were resourceful.

Playback: What about the Vancouver experience? What is it like working in the shadow of the u.s. service industry when it’s everywhere?

Hegan: A friend of mine was joking that the best way to watch a crappy movie is to wait long enough and they’ll film one on your floor. I respect the money that the Americans bring in and the experience they give to crews in town. It just gets tricky when we are trying to book post-production space and we get pushed aside by the money hose.

Lougheed: We do have a service culture here and, for our show, we were able to find people who were lower on the [service production] rung, but had tons of skills and tons of eagerness. We pushed them up into higher positions and said, ‘Okay, it’s time for you to perform.’ It wasn’t about money for them; it was about moving up. The same with me making Canadian television. I’m not making a huge living, but it’s more about building reputation and a catalogue of production that I can start shopping around.

Dolman: That is the upside to [the American business]. We have a large population of really skilled and talented people who I can go to now and say, ‘Hey, I’m making this $60,000 feature. You’ve been working on crap for five years. And I know you’d like to do something that has some meaning.’

Playback: Mark, you’ve sort of gone the other way – making short films and graduating to the bigger shows.

Sawers: They are still indigenous Canadian shows. But it all comes down to wanting to make a decent living.

Playback: Has the Cannes prize helped your career?

Sawers: I don’t know yet. It takes quite a while for [the opportunities] to filter back to me. I’m not expecting it to.

Dolman: But did you go to Cannes with a feature script under your arm?

Sawers: I’ve always sort of got one. (laughter) I basically write one a year and hopefully one day I’ll write one that I really want to do. I made the mistake with this feature Skyscraper I made in 1996 – I directed a script that I shouldn’t have. It wasn’t ready and it was thin.

Playback: Gambling though seems to be a prerequisite. What is raising the stakes higher?

Bonder: It’s not the crews that are the problem, it’s the equipment. We had to get equipment from four different houses. One of the best things we planned was shooting in Kamloops for a week and a half because we were isolated, the town was great and we had a truck with enough gear and free rein of the city.

Benz: I’m shooting a short film over three days in December. Last time I did a short, I was lucky to get Panavision to give me a 16mm package. This time, I’m getting a 35mm camera only because I started asking for it back in February. It took two months for them to agree, and they only did it because I approached them so far in advance of production and because I’m shooting in a dead month.

Dolman: Shooting this summer was very difficult because the service and equipment houses that I have very good relationships with gave the gear to the top bid – whoever was willing to pay the most money. It’s a combination of this being a busy production city and the way the funding happened – everybody finding out at the same time whether they got their money and having to deliver to broadcasters.

Playback: What about day-to-day living?

Dolman: The hardest thing for me as an independent is survival.

Hegan: I’ve got seven credit cards that are maxed. I needed that creative time to really work on getting this series launched with Kellie. So I took a financial hit, but I was investing in myself. That $15,000 or $20,000 that has been on my credit cards – well, I could have spent that on film school, but I wouldn’t have a primetime series.

Dolman: But you don’t need film school

Hegan: That remains to be seen. (laughter)

Benz: And Mark, you’re a director for hire?

Sawers: It’s a great gig as long as you don’t get caught up in making money. I see people who suddenly have a Volvo and a mortgage and they never take any time off. I make sure I only work six months.

Playback: You’re probably the senior member here.

Sawers: But I’ve also sold out. (laughter) I just bought a car that I’ve got to make payments on.

Playback: Do you look down the line – maybe to the potential for Blair Witch kind of success?

Bonder: I’ve had conversations with Fine Line, New Line, Miramax, but I’m not holding my breath. I have a better chance of being struck by lightning. (laughter) I think we’ll sell [DayDrift] to the European cable market.

The great thing about the low budget, though, is that the market has grown so large with cable and video that you don’t have to make that many sales in order to recoup your investment. I guess I’ll find out in the next few months.

Playback: How will you maintain the indie spirit in Vancouver?

Dolman: We need to cultivate more independent companies. My goal is to create a mid-sized company with a group of really talented people. There is a lack of qualified independent producers in this town. You get things made by being creative. For me, looking at international partners is one way and we also have to find a way to get the private sector more interested.

Playback: And in five years, where will you be?

Hegan: I’ll look back to say that I’ve never had so much fun and had so much creative control over a project. I just want to tell great stories and work with the best people.