Results for the Annual Report on Independent Production are gathered from company responses to Playback’s questionnaire.

Playback asked companies to submit information pertaining to only those projects in which they participated as a financial partner, and requested that, in the case of coproductions, companies report spending based on their portion of the budget. We stipulated that dollar figures reflect only spending attributed to the calendar year 2008. Projects in development – some of which went into production over the year – are also listed. Production companies were also asked to separately indicate the amount of service work they completed.

In some cases where companies chose not to respond, Playback estimated production volumes. There were occasions, however, when we could not do an estimate because of a lack of data. Some of these companies – which have been known to represent significant production volume, and which may have been mainly in development mode in 2008 – are omitted from the list.

In total, 168 companies are represented on this year’s chart, down from 191 last year.