A group of veteran Hamilton, Ont.-based film industry professionals have come together to form the Hamilton Film Board (HFB), with the goal of furthering the city’s evolution as a thriving hub for film and television production. 

Helmed by producer Christopher Giroux, the HFB is launching with a mandate to not only amplify Hamilton’s established reputation as a shooting destination for foreign productions, but also help grow the city’s homegrown filmmaking community, championing local creators and turning the spotlight on the many industry professionals who live and work there. 

Aligned with that mission, the HFB includes representatives from all manner of disciplines within the local sector. Alongside Giroux as president, the HFB executive team includes treasurer Ken Woychesko, co-founder of gear rental and location service provider Hamilton Film Studios (HFS); and Canadian Screen Award-nominated actress and producer Ann Pirvu (Reign, Workin’ Moms), who serves as secretary.

Other founding members include Woychesko’s HFS partner Zach Zohr; Nathan Fleet, executive director of the Hamilton Film Festival and Hamilton School of Media Arts; and Mike Bruce, co-founder of Aeon Studio Group, which owns and operates the Aeon Bayfront Studios soundstage and production complex that first opened its doors in 2021.

Speaking with Playback Daily, Giroux — who has called Hamilton his permanent home for the last five years, and has been shooting films in the city for eight — says that the HFB’s multidisciplinary makeup speaks to a rich local filmmaking ecosystem that has still not been tapped to its full potential. 

“Before, we were primarily seen as backdrops for Detroit or settings like that; it was typically big production companies coming in with their own established teams to use our [location] resources,” says Giroux. “With our organization, we’re trying to wave the flag that we have gear rental houses here, we have vendors, we have crew, we have studios and proper infrastructure. 

“And the other side of that coin is, we also have an independent scene of Canadian artists who are telling their own stories and fostering their own productions here in Hamilton, with Hamilton talent and Hamilton crew. So as much as we want the service productions to keep coming, we want to bridge the gap between the [filmmaking] community we have living and working here, and the [companies] coming to visit.”

Giroux, who most recently served as SVP of production for Vortex Media, estimates that he has produced as many as 30 films in Hamilton — many of them TV Christmas movies for the Hallmark Channel, a genre that has found an (at first glance) unlikely home in “The Hammer” in recent times. 

Those Yuletide staples have had to share space with a whole range of other productions taking place in the city, as Hamilton’s production scene fired up again in 2024 following a relative downturn in the face of Hollywood’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes in 2023.

Last year, the city government reported that a total of 139 film and TV shoots took place in Hamilton, which yielded approximately $59.5 million in revenue for the municipality. (The record year remains 2022, with 177 productions and $73 million in revenue.) 

In addition to Canadian productions for commissioners like the CBC (Murdoch Mysteries, Small Achievable Goals) and Bell Media’s Crave (Canada’s Drag Race, Late Bloomer) and CTV (Children Ruin Everything, Sullivan’s Crossing), in 2024 Hamilton welcomed productions from U.S. players like Netflix (FUBAR), Amazon’s Prime Video (Reacher), NBC’s Peacock (Brilliant Minds) and Warner Bros. Discovery’s recently re-renamed HBO Max (It: Welcome to Derry).

While praising the work that Hamilton’s municipal Film Office has done in fostering production in the city, Giroux asserts that this promotional and logistical work does not necessarily entail boosting local talent. 

“A lot of the bigger shows that come here hire for things like location PAs or background, but when it comes to the camera team, the crew, the cast, that’s all [coming from] somewhere else,” he says, adding that he constantly hears about experienced personnel from the city who are compelled to head to Toronto in search of more consistent work.  

To address this situation, Giroux says the HFB’s first major initiative will be creating a detailed registry of Hamilton-based film workers, covering everything from crew to cast, vendors, location services, casting, studio and equipment rentals and more. The group will then work in concert with the Hamilton Film Office to circulate that list freely to production companies, unions and any other industry organizations involved in shoots in the city. 

“We want a way to identify who in our city is actively participating [in the industry] — whether they’re a key grip, a boom op, an actor, a casting director, whatever — so that when big productions come in, or independent films are trying to crew up, there’s a database that they can pull from … instead of always bringing people in from out of [the] city, or out of province or out of country,” says Giroux.

On a parallel track, the HFB will also be doing outreach to the wider Hamilton community to foster a supportive environment for independent and lower-budget film productions, working to combat the inflated pricing that has come in the wake of so many large-scale productions shooting in the city.

“We used to come to Hamilton because it was more affordable to shoot, [and] now we’ve got semi-Toronto prices,” says Giroux, noting how the top rates paid by foreign companies like Netflix and Disney has created an expectation among Hamilton business and property owners that all producers are similarly flush. “So part of our work is to engage with and educate the community so that they understand that [film production] is a tiered system. So when Netflix comes to town, their price will be X; but when a TV Christmas movie comes to town, they’ll be offering something else.

“Obviously their prices will be their prices, but we want to do our best to advocate for filmmakers from Hamilton,” Giroux continues, adding that his own experiences shooting in the city has shown him that local tends to support local. “When I was dealing with locations or vendors, a lot of the pushback I would get was, ‘Oh, you’re from Toronto‘ or ‘Oh, you’re from L.A.‘ And when I then told them that, ‘Actually, I live four blocks over,’ that tended to change people’s minds very quickly. They knew that you weren’t coming here to take advantage of their resources and then leaving.”

The HFB will be holding its inaugural activation at the annual Hamilton Supercrawl music and arts festival from Sept. 12 to 14, with interactive demos, special guests and other activities taking place at their booth over the course of the weekend. 

“We felt it was really important to do our first event at a community event like Supercrawl, rather than a market or a film festival, so that we can reach not just filmmakers but the general public, and start bridging those worlds,” says Giroux, adding that the booth will also be the launching pad for local film professionals to start signing up for the HFB talent registry.

Following Supercrawl, the HFB will program panel discussions and nightly networking events during the Hamilton Film Festival, which runs from Oct. 17 to 26. (Fittingly, the first panel will be on TV Christmas movies.) The first draft of the talent registry is targeted for delivery by the end of the year, according to Giroux.

Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, Giroux says that discussions have already taken place about the HFB having a presence at major international film markets, potentially in a resource-sharing collaboration with the Hamilton Film Office. “This is something we really want to work with the City [on], so we were honoured that they approached us to ask our advice about [which] markets [to attend],” he says. “Having a bigger presence at some of these markets coming up, like Prime Time or Banff, is something we really want to work towards in the future.”

Pictured top (L to R): Christopher Benfey, CEO, Evil Empire Studios; Jeff Boulton, president, Crafthaus Ltd.; Mike Bruce, co-founder, Aeon Studio Group; Nathan Fleet, executive director, Hamilton Film Festival and Hamilton School of Media Arts; Christopher Giroux, president, Hamilton Film Board

Pictured bottom (L to R): Ali Goldthorpe, producer, production manager; Ann Pirvu, actress, filmmaker; Danielle Rizzo, owner-operator, Millworks Creative Studios; Matthew Watts, rental manager, Picture Perfect Package Lighting and Grip Rentals; Ken Woychesko, co-founder, Hamilton Film Studios; Zach Zohr, co-founder, Hamilton Film Studios

Image courtesy of Hamilton Film Board