A funding model that producers didn’t think could be replicated in Canada is exactly what it took to bring a large-scale project like CBC’s Bones of Crows to the big and small screen.

The five-part Indigenous-led limited series is written, directed and produced by Marie Clements and tells the story of the multigenerational effect of residential schools in Canada. It premieres on Sept. 20 on CBC and CBC Gem.

Bones of Crows (Marie Clements Media, Screen Siren Pictures, Grana Productions) required the production team to tap into a hybrid limited series and feature film model to secure the financing needed to make a series “that would reach the world,” Screen Siren Pictures’ founder Trish Dolman tells Playback Daily.

“We’ve seen this model before with the film and series Carlos by Olivier Assayas. But we didn’t think it was a model we could follow in Canada … and it was actually CBC that asked us if we had considered also making a feature,” adds Dolman.

Bones of Crows was intended to be a large-scale dramatic series when it was put into development by CBC in 2019. The project was greenlit in 2020 based on a pilot and second episode script by Clements, who linked up with Screen Siren Pictures in Vancouver to further develop the series and secure financing, eventually landing on a 5 x 60-minute episode order.

The financing phase began in late 2020, with CBC as the leading partner in production of the series alongside the Canada Media Fund and Societé Radio-Canada and APTN coming on board as broadcast partners licensing French and Cree versions. Other funders included the Indigenous Screen Office, the Independent Production Fund, the Shaw Rocket Fund, the Bell Fund, the First Peoples’ Cultural Council, and the BC Arts Council.

But the project needed international partners to achieve their aspirations of creating a series with the quality of a premium cable drama. “The U.S. was not really pre-buying within the thick of COVID… so we couldn’t pre-sell it internationally,” says Dolman, adding that even though the script received a lot of positive feedback, “people felt the subject matter was challenging or too Canadian.”

In early 2021, CBC floated the idea of doing a concurrent series and film format for the project to be eligible for Telefilm Canada funding, and the hybrid model was born. “Telefilm loved the [feature] script,” says Dolman.

The funder became a leading equity investor and Creative BC completed the financing, while Elevation Pictures joined as the film’s distributor in Canada. About 20% of the project’s overall budget, which was not disclosed, went to the creation of the feature film, while the remaining 80% was directed to the limited series

With financing secured, it was time for the massive undertaking of producing a series and feature film simultaneously. Filming took place over 57 days, across five regions of British Columbia, and was divided into blocks according to format and locations. The production had 160 speaking parts, involved roughly 180 cast members and a crew of 240, and was filmed on a total of 150 sets.

Clements says the team worked with three different editors while in post-production on the two projects, adding that “the sheer volume of it was something to see and we were in post close to a year.”

Despite the challenge of the massive scale of the project, Clements says writing for two different formats was, creatively, a “huge gift.”

“To understand how we could affect people who are witnessing [the story] in two different ways, one in a shared theatre environment, and one on a stream or an episode every week. It was a huge gift, as a creator, to understand stories on that kind of a cellular level.”

Trish Williams, executive director of scripted content at CBC, says one challenge of have a two-format project — which they’ve continued to use for upcoming limited series BlackBerry and Swan Song — is building audience awareness that the film and series “are different and that there’s a great extended series with additional storylines.”

The other is that “with the feature film model, there is a windowing period where it goes theatrical and it goes transactional” and there is a wait.

But the hybrid format has allowed the team to leverage the film in the festival market to create buzz for Bones of Crows. The film was also released to various Indigenous and smaller communities in tandem to the festival screenings.

“And hopefully, audiences are really getting the message that there’s this great extended series with additional storylines, and new characters that aren’t part of the feature,” adds Williams.

A version of this story originally appeared in Playback‘s 2023 Fall issue

Photo by Farah Nosh