Montreal: The Montreal Film and TV Commission is set to launch an expanded website. The site will include an extensive online photo bank, appropriate industry links, information on current shoots and, within a few months, a new service making it possible for producers to apply directly for shooting permits.

As independent film and tv action heads towards the $800-million level, City of Montreal film commissioner Andre Lafond has expanded staff significantly, adding four permit officers; a marketing co-ordinator, Marjolaine Lalonde; a permanent set co-ordinator, Pierre Emond; and a senior location officer with many years experience as an ad/pm, Nick Barker.

‘It’s very important that we have a permanent location officer,’ says Lafond. ‘If you only have different freelancers on contract doing the job once in a while, there’s no continuity. Nick always has something new in mind, he can return calls and send out the latest pictures.

‘The set co-ordinator is also a new position for us this year. The position is specifically designated for Old Montreal to make sure preparations are well done, that merchants and residents are well informed in a timely way and that negotiations are undertaken properly, and that when the crew arrives on set everything goes exactly the way it had been agreed to.’

The Old Port is a precious asset for Montreal’s location aspirations, and it’s essential the location remain a businesslike but friendly destination for filmmakers.

The area’s versatility is a key selling point.

Lafond says a 360-degree panorama view from the corner of St. Helene and Recollets Streets in the Old Port reveals a Parisian perspective as one looks east, a view of 19th century London on the west, and then looking west on Recollets, a perspective that can stand in for London, or more recently, the Midlands city of Manchester. A century and a half ago, Montreal was a British merchant city, and if that isn’t exactly the case anymore, it does explain the wide diversity of Victorian architecture, says the commissioner.

As of Aug. 1, Lafond says indie film and tv production stood at $452 million – on track for a record $780 million to $800 million in calendar 2000.

Post a human problem

Montreal hopes to increase the number of u.s. tv shoots in the months ahead, but major motion pictures continue to look to Montreal, in part because of the availability of large professional soundstages and in part because credible studio producers like Elie Samaha, Lou Stroller and Michael Bregman have been booking return engagements.

Another area that needs to be sold is post-production and visual special effects.

‘We need more work for post-production, special effects and technicians, and it is not obvious the [big studio shoots] are going to spend more in those areas,’ says Lafond. ‘They might spend on carpenters, offices or on set construction, but we have to be careful. I predict we will keep on growing over several years, but how can I predict the number of jobs will actually grow? Each case is something new, and so it’s hard for the [service] industry to properly plan or assess the kind of growth there might be as a direct result of the volume of location or shooting activity. Sure, they [local suppliers] should get more post-prod work, but [selling the know-how] is a human problem.’

As for studios, Lafond says the new soundstage at Mel’s Cite du Cinema was built specifically for the wb feature Pluto Nash, and one of the fiilm’s producers, Lou Stroller, was instrumental in bringing the shoot to Montreal. Initially, says the commissioner, the $100-million production was earmarked for the sprawling Pinewood Studios in the u.k. ‘Lou likes shooting here,’ says Lafond. ‘Within three months that soundstage was built. Warner couldn’t believe it. And now they’ve been using it for a full year.’

2000 shooting highlights

Selected location and coventure production highlights this season include:

* Dead of Night, a Locomotion Films thriller starring Stephen Baldwin and Macha Grenon, directed by Marc Grenier, and distributed in Canada by Lions Gate and in the u.s. by Millennium Pictures;

* Champs (aka rpm), the new Sylvester Stallone cart-racing movie from director Renny Harlin and producers White Eagle/Franchise Pictures and Warner Bros.;

* The Growing Pains Movie from Film Atomic, starring Alan Thicke and Kirk Cameron and produced by Jim Green, Allan Epstein and Mark Bacino;

* Stolen Films’/Franchise Films’ crime caper Heist, directed by David Mamet (State and Main) and starring Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Rebecca Pidgeon, Sam Rockwell and Delroy Lindo. Art Linson and Elie Samaha are producing. Don Carmody is exec producer and Scott Ferguson and Josette Perrotta are coproducing.

* The hbo thriller Xchange from Locomotion and Toronto’s Coolbrook Media, directed by Allan Moyle;

* The prison drama The Warden, starring Ally Sheedy, a David Roessell production of a Stephen Gyllenhaal film commissioned by Granada Entertainment and Turner Network Television;

* Showtime Networks’ wwii tv movie Varian’s War, a Canada/u.k. coproduction directed by Lionel Chetwynd and produced by Kevin Tierney and Micheal Deakin, starring William Hurt, Julia Ormond, Lynn Redgrave, Matt Craven and Alan Arkin. Exec producers on the shoot are Barbra Streisand and Edward Wessex, better known as Prince Edward.

* The Score (Mandalay Pictures), a crime story starring Angela Bassett, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Edward Norton, with Frank Oz directing for producers Bernie Williams and Gary Foster;

* Cub Three Productions’ big-budget, futuristic, action movie Rollerball, starring Chris Klein, LL Cool J, Jean Reno and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos of X-Men fame. John McTiernan is helming for producers Michael Tadross, Beau St-Clair and Norman Jewison, who directed the original Rollerball for ua in 1975.

* The Eddie Murphy sci-fi movie Pluto Nash (Castle Rock/wb), directed by Ron Underwood and produced by Martin Bergman, Michael Bergman and Lou Stroller, who also produced Snake Eyes and The Bone Collector on location in Montreal;

* Live Through This, a teen music episodic for mtv and ytv in Canada, produced by Telescene Film Group;

* Jackie, a Muse Productions-serviced miniseries for cbs and Pearson International;

* BBR Productions’ (Spectra) miniseries Further Tales of the City, commissioned by Showtime and sold internationally by Hallmark Entertainment.

-www.montrealfilm.com