A s the film industry grapples with a collapse in pre-sales, fewer minimum guarantees and expensive COVID insurance, having a “strong creative package” and digging into the new ecosystem of funding can help close the financing gap, film industry professionals told audiences at the Playback Film Summit.

Lauren Grant, founder of Clique Pictures, moderated a “Financing Film” panel on the first of the two-day virtual summit on Tuesday (Nov. 15). The discussion also featured Ken Dhaliwal, a partner at Dentons Canada; Damon D’Oliveira, producer at Conquering Lion Pictures; Shehrezade Mian, producer and founder of Markhor Pictures; and David Zitzerman, a partner at Goodmans.

Grant said the gap for the last piece of financing for a film is getting bigger these days, going from 5 or 10% to 20 or 30%. Meanwhile, “sales agents have become much more risk-averse in the last five years,” said D’Oliveira.

“That’s always been the case but more so now, where you might have been able to trigger even a small advance against a really strong script and a strong distributor, it seems to me the cast is the thing that is really driving a lot of sales deals,” he added. “Recognizable cast, whether that’s coming in from television or coming in from platforms, is certainly something that can offset someone’s decision-making process on acquiring a Canadian film.”

But there are increasing complexities to casting, Grant said, noting major movie stars don’t guarantee a film’s success anymore.

Mian said “a pre-sale is almost non-existent for someone that’s just emerging” and she recommends producers “approach a sales agent three months before a major film festival with a complete film.”

She also recommends anyone applying for funding from arts councils or Telefilm’s Talent to Watch program should “find producers or filmmaking teams or directors that have already received financing from these various different sources of funding and pick their brains.”

“A lot of the time people will approach me with their packages and I’ll say, ‘This is great but you can’t submit a package this way, no one’s going to accept it. You need to talk about this, this and this,'” said Mian, a producer on the Antoine Bourges-directed Concrete Valley, which was financed through funding from the Toronto Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and Talent to Watch.

Grant said Talent to Watch now has multiple ways to become eligible for funding and provides money up front, which can help filmmakers avoid interim financing challenges.

D’Oliveira, a producer on the Clement Virgo-directed feature Brother, said “there are a lot of resources out there, sometimes you just have to do a bit of digging.”

He heralded growing provincial tax credits in Canada and the “progressive track that Telefilm has built from a first film to a second film” through its regional and national streams. He also praised the Canada Media Fund for coming “on strong with film financing,” such as its Pilot Program for Racialized Communities, Indigenous Program, Northern Incentive, and language minority streams.

“That’s kind of a backdoor way of raising additional financing that I’m seeing more and more in feature from financing plans,” said D’Oliveira.

Bigger-budget funding at a national level with Telefilm “tends to be a more market-led decision where you really need to have a distributor in place, ideally additional market triggers such as a pre-sale or a sales advance that can help to trigger that level of money,” he added.

“Beyond that, there are smaller independent funds like the Shaw Rocket Fund, which is targeted for films that are children, youth and family-oriented. But for instance, our film Brother dealt with the high-end of that age group, and we were successful in being able to tap into financing. Also there is a digital marketing component that you will be eligible for through the Shaw Rocket, if your film is selected for production.”

Grant pointed out increasing funding coming from the Indigenous Screen Office and the Black Screen Office.

Then there are Canada’s coproductions treaties, which Dhaliwal said are great for accessing incentives and creative input in two or more countries. Coproductions also provide access to talent and an additional marketplace outside of Canada, said D’Oliveira.

But Dhaliwal cautioned that coproductions aren’t ideal for first-time producers, and Zitzerman noted they can be “very expensive in terms of legal fees and complexity.”

Interprovincial coproductions are “less formal” and allow producers to access funding in more than one place, said Dhaliwal. But the tax incentives are “based on jurisdictional spend. So what you spend in Ontario, for example, you’ll get a credit on that, what you spend in Manitoba, you get a credit on that, but you won’t get credit on the whole thing. So you have to think about what you’re losing out on potentially, in doing a coproduction in terms of financing.”

The need for collaboration was also raised during the panel “State of the nation: market trends,” moderated by Elevation Pictures co-founder and co-president Laurie May, and featuring producers Shant Joshi and Loretta Sarah Todd;  Susan Kelly, senior director, business and rights, scripted and acquired programming at CBC; and Landmark Cinemas of Canada CEO Bill Walker.

There is a growing need for broadcasters and other platforms and exhibitors to stop looking at each other as competitors in such a complex market, according to Kelly. “We need to look at them as our partners, because films are getting more and more expensive [to make] and demanding long, exclusive windows where people might not be able to find the film doesn’t really benefit anyone,” she said.

Landmark’s Walker said the exhibition business is evolving in Canada as gaps in Hollywood releases have created a need to experiment with shorter windows, increased event screenings, and more limited releases.

“We can’t live on [tentpole films], that’s just too volatile of a business,” he said. “For us, on the exhibition side, we’re saying we need to fill out that slate and create a venue where movies of all sizes can find a way and be successful.”

With files from Kelly Townsend