Although Marvel-ous Stan Lee – the brains behind Spider-Man, The Hulk and a host of other super-folk – will play a starring roll as a featured guest, this year’s VIFF Trade Forum is really about filmmaking dollars and scribing sense.

Running Sept. 24-26 and capping off with New Filmmakers’ Day on Sept. 27, the goal of the 18th installment of the event is to get creatives to respect both their bottom lines and the words that serve as bedrock to the process.

The forum returns to a bigger, brighter and refurbished Robson Square at UBC after a one-year hiatus at The Roundhouse Community Centre. With lots of press hype surrounding last year’s installment, better AV at hand and across-the-road convenience to the Hotel Georgia, event organizers hope this forum will do even better than the last, which drew 18% more attendees than in 2001.

The money talk begins right out of the box with a panel called The 5% Solution, which will tackle marketplace shifts in the last year. Later on the 24th comes Smaller Screens: Bigger Reach, looking at alternative markets for film: DVD and video, made-for-pay, the Internet and other venues. Panelists include: Shelley Gillen, head of creative affairs at Movie Central; Larry Meistrich, president of Film Movement; and Brad Pelman, senior VP of sales and distribution at Lions Gate Films.

Melanie Friesen, in her 10th year as Trade Forum producer, notes that the goal of the panels is to get filmmakers up to speed and open them up to opportunities outside of B.C. and Canada. To that end, day two of the forum offers Case Studies in International Co-productiona, then slides into Meet the Commissioning Editors, featuring ZDF Germany commissioning editor Olaf Grunert Sr. The capper is The International Marketplace, a panel looking at ‘soft money’ in the global marketplace: tax shelters, emerging financing sources and other funding streams that don’t involve a pact with monolithic powers.

The day wraps with Pitching Unplugged, a panel aiming to teach attendees the rules of the winning pitch. Friesen will moderate, being an expert in the field herself. Beyond having done much of the pitching for Martin Scorsese when she was VP at Scorsese Productions in New York, she still teaches the art to the European production community in Luxembourg twice a year.

‘The time will come when a producer, writer or director will have to sit down and pitch their project articulately and with enthusiasm, and give the impression that they will be a pleasure and a reliable person to work with for the next few years,’ Friesen says. ‘A lot of people think they’re too much of an artist to describe their film in a nutshell, or they get defensive… There are myriad reasons why people don’t put effort into a pitch, but it really counts.’

One of the absolutes Friesen stresses is that prospective pitchers should always investigate the company they’re wooing, to ensure the project is the right fit.

Two panels on the final day are also devoted to business: Breaking into the US Market (which will include panelist Tony Stafford, VP acquisitions and coproductions at 20th Century Fox), and Analyze This, a look at how distributors and sales agents size up their film picks.

The New Filmmakers’ Day, launched in 1994 as a resource for film school grads, has become one of the most important parts of the forum because, as Friesen diplomatically puts it, the content helps to ‘alleviate some of the naivete’ young filmmakers have about the business.

Panels include Marketing: A Producer’s Role in Selling a Film, Financing the Low-Budget Feature, and What a Difference a Medium Makes, which tackles how technology affects both creative and the bottom line. The day wraps with Success Stories, which Friesen personally thrives on. ‘The biggest tonic for me,’ she notes, ‘is when someone calls me a year or so later and says ‘Thanks to the Trade Forum, I got my film going.”

Telefilm Canada continues as sponsor of the International Tete-a-Tete, a chance for attendees to have one-on-one meetings with potential international coproducers.

‘Local filmmakers can sit down with the German and the French and the British, and hash out deals,’ Friesen explains. ‘I think that’s really the maraschino cherry on top of the whole split.’ Meetings are free and details can be found at the VIFF website.

Writing skills also loom large at this year’s forum. As Friesen says of contemporary films, ‘Without good writing, who cares if Johnny Depp is in it?’

Scribes begin their learning in the hands of Jim Uhls and Eric Axel Weiss, who adapted Fight Club and Buffalo Soldiers, respectively, in the panel 28 Drafts Later: Adapting Material for the Screen. Writing Comedy that Sells features a talk with Edward Kay (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) and Pat Proft (writer behind some of the Naked Gun and Scary Movie flicks).

Documentaries: Engaging Narratives in Reality concentrates on the art behind building captivating stories from life, and is followed by Episodic Television: Success Stories. Sure to be one of the highlights of the forum, this discussion features Laurence Andries (writer and co-exec producer on Boomtown) and Michael MacLennan (writer/producer on Queer As Folk).

Despite the diverse content, Friesen calls the appearance of Stan Lee the ‘jewel in our crown.’ Lee, who can be largely credited for bringing a fringe literary medium to the masses both in print and on screen, is really the poster boy for this year’s theme. ‘He’s such an inspiration,’ observes Friesen. ‘Look at this guy – 61 years in the business. What a tonic he is.’

As this year’s event will not be televised (Rogers used to air it), Friesen’s tip to filmmakers is ‘Be there.’

As Stan ‘The Man’ would put it, ‘Nuff Said.’