Montreal: The Montreal Film & TV Commission has launched an attractive and resourceful website just in time for the North American ‘faux boom’ production rumble and the looming performers strike in the u.s.

Montrealfilm.com is an easy-to-navigate destination featuring an extensive filmography of local and u.s. shoots, production statistics, location photography and industry news. One of the site’s most practical features deals with shooting permits for the Montreal region and the popular Old Port/Vieux Montreal location. Producers can directly access online permit applications for public buildings and parks, and print and distribute standardized forms, circulars and letters to area residents and merchants.

The website also includes contact information (and direct e-mail) to the Quebec Shooting Guide and industry associations such as the apftq producers association, the stcvq freelance film technicians union, quebecanimfx.com (representing special effects producers), the Directors Guild of Canada – Quebec Council, the actra performers guild, and other regional Quebec film commissions (see sidebar-listing).

Over the years, Montreal has stood in for Paris, Budapest, the cities of the English Midlands and New York on feature films and tv dramas. Last fall, it even played itself in the new Robert De Niro crime drama The Score, costarring Marlon Brando, Ed Norton and Angela Bassett and directed by Frank Oz.

New major motion picture action in the city this winter includes Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, starring Johnny Depp and George Clooney, from director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects), and The Sum of All Fears, a Phil Alden Robinson-directed movie backed by Paramount Pictures. It’s shooting at the Cite du Cinema/Technoparc, which hosted Eddie Murphy and Pluto Nash last year, while The Sound of Thunder, directed by Renny Harlin, is prepping at suburban CineCite Montreal studios. The latter is from Franchise Films (Driven) and producer Don Carmody, in association with Nicolas Clermont of Montreal’s Filmline International (The Art of War, Eye of the Beholder).

Location mantra

The availability of locations and production design services are two of the principal preoccupations of film and tv producers planning location shoots.

Nicholas Barker, location officer for the Montreal Film and TV Commission, says his newly created post is the result of city managers understanding the rich and extraordinary asset of Montreal’s architectural heritage, from Old Montreal to Little Italy to the ‘Golden Mile’ on Sherbrooke Street West.

Barker sees the location department as an extension of the art department.

He says properly managing locations has become a major production issue and areas of Vancouver and Toronto are seriously overheated, as are parts of the residential sectors in Old Montreal, ‘the biggest carrot we have.’

Barker preaches a shoot’s producer has to understand locations are vital. And for the business as a whole, producers and their crews must realize the next shoot is as important is the current one. ‘I wish everyone would take the attitude they [the producers and crew] will be back [at the same location] in a year.’

He says there should always be someone from the locations department on set, something he says u.s. producers apparently understand a little better, because everyone else involved in the production is only preoccupied with the details of the immediate shoot schedule.

Care has to be taken, says Barker. A case in point, a recent shoot at the Universite de Montreal included a scene with some bare-breasted strippers. It created quite a stir, especially when the school’s administrators were informed, with the upshot the university is now refusing to allow new productions to use its facilities.

‘[Locations] is the first area where people try to economize, and I’m saying that’s a big mistake,’ says Barker. ‘Every time the location manager is not on the set, something happens. The locations department is putting together finished sets, back lots really, and it’s so important to look after that. I tell people if they’ve signed a contract with a house or building, they should be there. I’ve seen it so many times where the producer says, ‘We’ve signed a contract so we don’t need you [the location manager] anymore.’ They will always lose money, it’s save a penny and lose a pound, and I think it’s the biggest mistake.’

Barker recently gave a course to young film technicians in the stcvq and works hand-in-hand with provincial location officers at sodec (BAPE/Quebec Provincial Film and TV Office), providing producers with location photos and information typically based on a movie’s design and story requirements.

Design and service

Claude Pare, supervising art director on the new Paramount movie The Sum of All Fears, is building major sets to be used for the interiors of the cia, the Pentagon, the White House and the Kremlin. Pare started on the production Nov. 9, with principal photography set to begin Feb. 9 and running over 80 shooting days.

On The Sum of All Fears, which Pare says is his biggest shoot to date, the designer is working with Oscar nominee and production designer Jeannine Oppewall (L.A. Confidential, Pleasantville). Oppewall toured many of the spy and governmental institutions being recreated. Andrew Neskoronny is the shoot’s other supervising art director.

Pare says the u.s. industry makes about 100 films a year budgeted at more than us$30 million and perhaps as many as 10 to 15 with budgets over us$100 million. He says most of these lucrative design assignments go to a small core group of about 10 or 15 experienced professionals.

Pare has worked with such prominent production designers as Wolf Kroeger (Agaguk, Robert Altman’s Quintet), Jack De Govia (The Score), Godzilla creator Pat Tatopoulos (Battlefield Earth), and two designers ‘from the old u.k. tradition,’ Nigel Phelps (The Bone Collector) and Tony Pratt (Grey Owl).

Pare describes his current role as ‘an agent who gets calls from people in l.a. who all want to be reassured.’ He says there’s a short list of basic realities location service providers should keep in mind.

Firstly, producers arriving on location should always contact the production that immediately preceded them ‘so everything is known.’

Pare says the high number of set and assistant set people in the local crew are necessary, mainly because many specialized props have to be acquired from all over the world. ‘And after that it’s a question of budgeting, and there’s always a crunch there. It’s a negotiation.’ Pare says he’s only ‘blown a budget’ once ‘in the last 26 years.’

He says it’s important to pick a proven crew with ‘low-maintenance people who can perform independently and analyze and solve their own problems. On this show we are very lucky because most of the people are ‘first-choices,’ on my end anyway.’

Two primary Do Not rules in the design business: don’t assume anything (‘assumption is the mother of all f-ups’) and ‘never make the same mistake twice.’

‘Be a straight shooter and don’t lie,’ says Pare. ‘Obviously you can’t promise things and not deliver. You have to deliver and work very, very hard. Sometimes people are promoted too fast and they have to learn the hard way and go back to square one.’

Beyond his big-budget movie activities, Pare is prepping to direct a dramatic short called The First Time, which he wrote and will also produce. He and GPA Films producer Marcel Giroux (Liste Noire) are in the financing stage on Pare’s first feature, Motel Vacancy.

Specialized suppliers

The Sum of All Fears is budgeted at close to us$90 million, with cdn$13 million budgeted for the art department alone.

Some of the most experienced art department service providers on the production include Entreprises A. et R., Brochu for set construction, Alain Giguere for scenic painting, Dominique Gaucher for painted backings, Luc Poirier for transportation vehicles and set dresser supplier Jacques Arcouette.

Specialized art department suppliers on The Sum include s.m.a.r.t., which is building a ‘very complicated nuclear bomb,’ Atelier P+P, and L’Intrigue and veteran Louis Craig, who are handling local special effects for the shoot’s l.a.-based f/x supervisor. •

-www.montrealfilm.com

-www.quebecanimfx.com

-www.stcvq.qc.ca

-www.cinecitemontreal.com

-www.sodec.gouv.qc.ca