Pinewood Toronto Studios hosted a production of an entirely different kind on Monday as Queen Elizabeth stopped by and toured the 11-acre film and TV facility and got acquainted with 3D technology.

The British monarch and the Duke of Edinburgh – who began a nine-day tour of Canada last week – sported the somewhat inelegant 3D glasses, along with Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, to view a presentation of Deepa Mehta’s new series on the war of 1812. The Queen smiled throughout the display and reportedly remarked afterward that it was ‘fantastic.’

‘She was not at all what I expected,’ Pinewood boss Paul Bronfman told Playback Daily after the Queen’s visit. ‘She’s very well versed in music, politics, film… absolutely charming and engaging, and she looks you in the eye.’

Pinewood – which just hosted the prequel to John Carpenter’s cult classic The Thing and the ABC series Happy Town – had to leave much of its space available for the Queen’s visit, according to managing director Edith Myers, who says while business has been steady, they’d like to be busier.

‘We need a hit,’ agrees Bronfman. ‘We haven’t landed the big movie yet, and that’s timing. You have to get in there real early…in terms of making the folks aware,’ he explains. ‘Although L.A. is well versed, not everyone is aware that we’ve got a 46,000-square-foot mega stage or what that means.’

Bronfman says while Montreal and Vancouver have purpose-built stages, Toronto has traditionally been a warehouse town, and producers have to be educated that it’s worth the extra money to have the first-class Pinewood facility at their disposal. He also notes that without the 25% tax credit introduced by the Ontario government last year, the studio would be ‘out of business.’

‘So when Dalton McGuinty called at the beginning of the year [asking] ‘Could you please host the Queen?,’ you don’t say no,’ Bronfman adds.