Vancouver: Here’s a tough lesson learned by overlooked producers applying for government funding: if your star is a marquee actor, your production will earn valuable points in the complicated Equity Investment Program grid that determines who among the applicants gets or doesn’t get Telefilm Canada production funding. If, on the other hand, your lead actor is unknown and a visible minority, your production gets nada, nichts, niente – this, despite Telefilm’s mission to promote the ethnic rainbow.

It’s the predicament in which Vancouver’s Force Four Productions finds itself as its CBC MOW Jinnah: Securities – the second MOW about an Indo-Canadian crime reporter and the precursor to a regular one-hour drama series – goes wanting for EIP funding.

‘We’ve put an appeal into Telefilm,’ says producer Hugh Beard, who like many other disappointed producers in Canada is looking at the fine print to make their cases. ‘In their mandate, they talk about cultural diversity and in the point system that isn’t taken into account.’

Beard will be a panelist at the Banff Television Festival on a session about cultural diversity.

Officially, the EIP doesn’t hear appeals because the process is subjective and the decisions final, while the Canadian Television Fund’s Licence Fee Program has in process about 24 appeals from all genres and in both languages.

Still, Beard is hopeful that Jinnah will go ahead and that he can pry out the $1 million he was hoping to get from Telefilm toward the $3.2-million budget. Force Four hasn’t freed up its $750,000 in LFP funding yet and believes it is high on the list of applicants if more EIP money materializes.

Before the EIP results were announced in early May, LFP had shifted $15 million to help Telefilm meet demand. A second gift of $5 million a couple weeks later – $1 million to documentary and the rest to other genres – means programs like The Atwood Stories (Original Pictures) for W Network, the CBC MOW New Beachcombers (Molly’s Reach Productions), the second season of YTV series 2030C.E. (Buffalo Gal Pictures), the fifth season of Mentors (Anaid Productions) for Family Channel and CBC arts special Death and the Maiden (Grimm Pictures) get reprieves and funding.

Death and the Maiden is a Toronto-based production while the other four come from Western Canada.

Jinnah, therefore, is still a possibility for a three-week shoot in September in Vancouver if new funding is secured by the end of June when the ‘go-no-go’ decision will have to be made, says Beard. He is also looking at other money from multicultural groups, second windows with broadcasters and equity from the CBC.

Another lesson: strong audience and broadcaster support doesn’t always translate into funding for renewals from either the LFP or EIP or both.

Among those lodging appeals with the LFP is Breakthrough Film and Television, whose trashy Showcase soap Paradise Falls, which aired 52 half-hours in its first season, failed to get funded.

‘Like any producer in Canada, we know that everything submitted can’t get funded,’ says Breakthrough partner Ira Levy. ‘[But] you need to prioritize the type of shows you want to fund. The drama series is a threatened genre. We made a formal appeal, but there is no more money in the system.’

That Paradise Falls – with its strong audience and broadcaster licence fee – should be shut out of the public funds is, says Levy, ‘a glaring example of how the system doesn’t support something successful.

‘We must be able to finance successful shows because there is an audience out there,’ he says. ‘This is the basis for successful business models. We were making something that not only had an audience but good recoupment potential.’

Levy says Paradise Falls has been sold to Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, France and cable in the U.S.

Because of the LFP and EIP snub, Breakthrough isn’t able to make up the $2-million shortfall. Levy says the production house will try to break through again next year.

Telefilm has already invested in the development of 26 half-hour scripts for the second season of Paradise Falls.

Yet another lesson: never underestimate the importance of a broadcast licence or marquee director.

Christina Jennings, chairman of Shaftesbury Films in Toronto, believes a smaller licence fee from CHUM penalized the proposed MOWs Accept the Dying and Poor Tom is Cold, the first two in a planned franchise of period mysteries inspired by the Maureen Jennings (no relation) stories about the cases of Inspector Murdoch in 1890s Toronto.

The MOWs, which were to be shot concurrently to save money, lost out on LFP and Telefilm, says Jennings, asked for a new financing plan.

So CHUM upped its licence fee by $150,000 per TV movie. Shaftesbury and coproducer Original Pictures trimmed $200,000 from each of the $3.35-million budgets and implemented deferrals. Working with director Jon Cassar (of 24 fame) allowed the producers to trim the 19-day shooting schedule to 15 days.

But to Jennings’ chagrin, the licence fee she applied with in February was the licence fee she was stuck with, despite the last-minute scrambling. Therefore, no luck at the EIP.

‘If you’re not a national broadcaster like Global or CTV or CBC, you’re penalized because you don’t have the same audience reach,’ says Jennings, hoping that CHUM’s expansion with new stations will help boost the application in the 2003 race for funding. ‘Specialty channels and regional networks are at a disadvantage.’

CTV movie Monkey Puzzle Tree, meanwhile, got LFP but not EIP. Jennings believes the downfall was not having a director attached to the project when it went in for funding, which cost points. She’s left with two scenarios: bringing in more money from foreign sales and/or sourcing more Canadian equity investment through programs like the Harold Greenberg Fund. One of the alternatives, she is certain, will allow the MOW to go ahead, albeit late. Originally, Monkey Puzzle Tree was scheduled for a summer shoot; it may go ahead before Christmas.

‘The system is not perfect, but good God, how devastating it would be if the CTF wasn’t here,’ says Jennings, who will be shooting the big CBC miniseries Hemingway and Callahan this fall.

Last lesson for today: have all your Daffy’s in a row.

Of the five proprietary shows up for government funding by Studio B Productions in Vancouver, only What About Mimi? got both LFP and EIP funding.

Family Channel series Into the Shadows and Treehouse series Georgie Goat were less strong on the creative, says Studio B partner Chris Bartleman, and the financing for Yvon of the Yukon was not as solid as Telefilm wanted. Both Into the Shadows and Yvon will go ahead, he adds, with Shadows pulling together more presales to bridge the funding gap. Georgie Goat will not proceed.

Being Ian, which received neither LFP nor EIP, has gone back to the drawing board since the CTF doesn’t think it’s Canadian enough, says Bartleman, even though it’s based on the life of its Canadian creator. Studio B will try again next year with Being Ian.

‘We always have backup plans,’ says Bartleman, adding that he doesn’t want to be dependent on Telefilm for funding. ‘We are one of those companies [Telefilm has] helped. And it’s worked. We employ a lot of people and we’re at a size where we don’t have to rely on government money. But CTF is sort of a litmus test about what can be raised in Canada. We apply hoping that it goes lock step with everything else.’