Looking to escape the hectic pace of the Toronto market, producer Scott Westerlaken almost packed up and left the country three years ago, when out of the blue a friend called him about a producer position at a Newfoundland ad agency. Two days later he headed east and has never looked back.

Upon arriving in Atlantic Canada, Westerlaken spent several months producing in Newfoundland before relocating to Halifax. ‘But I still wasn’t happy because I wasn’t able to do the quality of production that I was normally used to doing in Toronto,’ says the veteran producer, who had a long career in Toronto including partnering in the prodco Roundhouse Films in the early ’90s.

When he arrived in Atlantic Canada, smaller budgets were still synonymous with lower production values. And this is where Westerlaken realized he could make a difference.

By taking advantage of lower overhead, carefully forged relationships with suppliers and crew as well as developing a new way to work with clients, Westerlaken set about producing spots with national production values on regional budgets, giving regional advertisers a choice beyond going to Toronto.

Westerlaken’s commercial production house CENEX, based in Halifax, took on a challenging regional production market at a time when even established production houses in major centres were struggling, and not only has the independent company managed to more than double projected production volumes in its first year, 2001, but has also developed a business model and approach which has secured Westerlaken a steady flow of return clients. He anticipated doing between $100,000 and $200,000 worth of business in his first year and ended up doing close to half a million.

Regional commercial production houses such as CENEX face unique challenges, the most obvious of which are smaller advertising budgets and a shortage of blue-chip clients. But they work with lower overhead and smaller communities where it is easier to form steady working relationships with clients, creatives and production crew, advantages these producers say far outweigh any potential drawbacks.

Such producers have also developed a slate of cost-saving approaches to making commercials that could teach a thing or two to their brethren in larger urban centres.

Unique experience

When Brian Saint, head of marketing for CompuCollege – Atlantic Franchise Schools, which has eight campuses in Atlantic Canada, hooked up with CENEX through Cossette Atlantic, he says it was clear that working with CENEX was going to be a unique experience.

‘If there were not a CENEX in Atlantic Canada, we would probably have ended up shooting [spots] on Betacam even though we wouldn’t want to,’ says Saint, who claims his advertising budgets over the last five years have remained relatively stable. In 1998, he shot three Betacam spots for the same budget with which Westerlaken produced three spots on 35mm. ‘You can’t compare the two,’ says Saint. ‘You look at the two products and they’re like night and day.’

When asked how Westerlaken managed do three 35mm spots on a budget that would have otherwise only supported Betacam, Saint responded, ‘I have no idea, but hey, he does it, so at the end of the day as a client I’m happy he can.’

On top of getting more for his money, Saint says one of the things that will keep him coming back to CENEX is how involved the client is in the entire production process. ‘With CENEX it’s very much hands-on,’ says Saint. ‘On location, before every scene is shot, they involve the client in the process and you don’t often get that. Scott is very much a people person, which is one of the key attributes which brings us back as clients.’

Jeff Peeler, whose Winnipeg production company Critical Madness Productions does spots for regional clients in addition to longer-form projects, says that like Atlantic Canada and unlike major production centres, Manitoba production companies have closer relationships with clients.

‘Plan more’

He says it is partially because the production company has to have a more developed understanding of what the clients are after, because with tight budgets they cannot afford to over-shoot.

‘The budgets drive us to shoot less and plan more,’ he says. ‘We’re working with lower budgets so we make it work. It’s a different market and it all comes down to philosophy in production and being careful how the money is spent.’

Peeler says that increased cost control in smaller production centres contributes to a producer’s ability to complete good-quality spots on budgets ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 that wouldn’t even get touched in Toronto.

‘Locations are cheaper and you don’t have a lot of miscellaneous costs,’ he says. ‘But they’re still spending a fair chunk of change and it’s important that they get value for their money.’

Working closely with both creatives and clients is also an essential element of CENEX’s success in Atlantic Canada. What is essential for Westerlaken is knowing where he can cut and where he can’t.

For example, even on a limited budget, the transfer is done in Toronto and he sends the director and the cameraman to Toronto to supervise. In the end, the actual transfer takes about half the time because the people who have the exact vision of how it’s supposed to look are there. Westerlaken also rehearses with his actors, understanding that although expensive, an actor’s hourly rate is nothing compared to the approximately $3,500 per hour it costs to be on set.

Westerlaken doesn’t start cutting costs at the top by going with less expensive or inexperienced directors. In fact, he has found that choosing an established, experienced director often saves money because they work faster, saving expensive on-set time.

However, sometimes he can’t afford to pay big-name directors their full fees and can’t promise them more than a few days work, so he has to find other ways to attract star directors to Halifax for shoots.

Veteran commercial director Peter Thompson, who has directed more than 3,000 spots in his lengthy career, adores going to Halifax to work with Westerlaken and says it is primarily because he enjoys the work.

‘I can’t tell you how rare it is to have a client relationship where the client and the production company are exactly on the same page trying to do the same thing, and that’s because of Scott,’ says Thompson. As an almost exclusively dialogue-based director who likes to be involved in each stage of production, working with CENEX allows him to ‘get involved with editing and casting and with all that stuff that directors used to do.’

National quality

On his first job with CENEX for Pizza Delight, an Atlantic regional restaurant chain, Thompson says extensive preproduciton and planning helped Westerlaken deliver a national-quality spot on a regional budget.

‘We started preproduction on this little one-day shoot a month and a half ahead of time on the phone,’ says Thompson. ‘What has to happen, and this is where I think Scott really shines, is the client has to understand where you can cut corners and where you’ve got to go full tilt.’

Pizza Delight’s Sylvia MacNeil Gautreau says the spots CENEX produced for them were as good as any of the ads the restaurant has done in Toronto or anywhere else. ‘They were very much a partner in the project with us and they came with a really great attitude and a willingness to understand our business and how we wanted to approach the spot,’ she says. ‘We’ve just finished our second round of shooting with them and we’ll have a third…[Westerlaken’s] work says to the rest of the country that good ads can be done here and we don’t sacrifice anything for them.’

One of the other things that allows Westerlaken to achieve national production values on regional budgets is having been extremely loyal to clients and especially his crew. He is able to offer crew members slightly less money (about $20 less on a day) than they’re used to in exchange for bringing them more steady work. Over the last two years, Westerlaken has built up a steady crew that works together on almost every job and whose efficiency once again cuts down on time and cost.

‘Well-oiled machine’

‘Scott has an incredible team that he has pulled together and uses on a regular basis,’ says Paul Douglas, VP and creative director for Cossette Atlantic. ‘With CENEX, you’ve got an incredibly well-oiled machine that can turn around the most amazingly ambitious shot list. These guys are outstanding. They think as one and there’s never a roadblock thrown up.’

Westerlaken’s experiences in Atlantic Canada have encouraged him to look into other potential markets, and for his next trick he plans to target regional advertisers and agencies in the U.S. that face the same challenges as those in Atlantic Canada, namely being forced to go to major production centres such as New York, L.A. or Toronto where production values are relatively inflated or accepting lesser quality production closer to home.