Before the 1990s, it was rare to find a film equipment supplier located within a studio complex, but as the one-stop shop has emerged as a coveted business model, an increasing number of studios have embraced the convenience of bringing equipment suppliers in-house.

‘Twelve years ago, it didn’t make sense to a lot of film people,’ says Rob Sim, president and owner of supplier Sim Video Production, which launched its Vancouver office at Lions Gate Studios in 1991. ‘The reaction to our presence on the lot was, ‘Well, what are you doing here?”

Over time, Sim Video’s Vancouver location has successfully established its presence. Sim has provided equipment and services to such series as The X-Files and Dark Angel, as well as the Schwarzenegger feature The 6th Day. The success Sim has enjoyed in B.C. has led him to open an L.A. office in Raleigh Studios.

Raleigh, situated across the street from Paramount Studios, is the oldest studio facility in Hollywood – the one-time location of silent legends Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Sim Video is one of several Canadian suppliers to set up shop inside a studio. In Montreal, Locations Michel Trudel has a home in the huge Mel’s Cite du Cinema/Technoparc facility. Locations president/owner Michel Trudel, also a partner in Cite du Cinema/Technoparc, opened the equipment supply office there in 1994.

‘When you own equipment, you need to get the studio to help supply clients. I really like the idea of [providing] a one-stop shop,’ he says. Trudel’s recent clients have included the Hollywood blockbusters The Sum of All Fears, the futuristic Eddie Murphy film The Adventures of Pluto Nash (slated for an August release) and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, George Clooney’s directorial debut.

This approach of consolidating businesses under one roof is shared by Toronto’s The Comweb Group, which has subsidiary equipment supplier Moliflex-White (affiliated with Toronto’s William F. White International) located in its Cine Cite Montreal studio, where action flick Rollerball was shot. WFW has also opened a location in Los Angeles’ Center Studios, an affiliate facility with six 18,000-square-foot soundstages.

It’s all about making a facility as producer-friendly as possible. Production schedules today are tighter than ever, and, as Trudel says, ‘Everybody looks to book everything at the same place.’ As a result, suppliers endeavor to offer producers the gamut of gear and services.

Sim Video’s Lions Gate Studios location, for instance, covers two floors and about 8,000 square feet. The main floor is the equipment prep area, with the second floor for storage. The company is even involved on the post-production end, offering five Avid edit suites. That way, even if a production will be doing the majority of its post back in L.A., they can at least put together an assembly cut to give the director and producers a sense of the film’s progress.

‘The last time I was there, we had all five suites going,’ says Sim.

Sim’s focus at Lions Gate Studios was initially on film-related equipment, because, as he says, when compared to other Canadian production centres, ‘Vancouver is much more of a film city.’ However, Sim is stocking a lot more camcorders and VTRs these days. He is an especially big proponent of the groundbreaking Sony 24P HDCAMs, and has just begun supplying HD gear to the PAX TV series Just Cause.

The company has also been tapped to supply Avids and video playback for The Butterfly Effect, a New Line Cinema drama about a man who finds a way of re-inhabiting his childhood body, and the company will provide motion control for the currently-shooting F/X-heavy X-Men II.

Walk-ins not as big

Sim and Trudel report that they get more rentals from projects shooting within the studio walls than from walk-in business. The biggest sales are connected to in-house projects as well as those shooting at neighboring studios. Sim says that most of Vancouver’s major studios are within eight kilometres of Lions Gate, which helps generate traffic.

One supplier no longer co-located with a studio is PS Atlantic, the Halifax division of PS Production Services, due to the closure of the Cinesite studio. ‘It’s a great environment, if you can get it to work,’ says PS Atlantic GM Rob Riselli. Despite this strategic loss, Riselli says his company remains busy since about 80% of PS’s work lately has been on location. He provides the example of the Alliance Atlantis/CBC series Made in Canada, of which he says, ‘If they’re shooting for 20 days, they may have two to three days in studio, and the rest on location.’

Aside from being able to promote themselves as ‘one-stop shops’ with a supplier onsite, studios also appreciate the suppliers’ monthly rent cheques, according to Lions Gate Studios VP and GM Peter Leitch.

‘It gives us a mix of long-term and short-term tenants,’ he explains, referring to suppliers with a permanent base in the studio and the productions that come and go. This also reassures investors of a steady cash flow, even during production lulls.

The advantage to the cost-conscious producer, Leitch adds, is that if an unforeseen piece of gear is suddenly required by a production, or something needs to be fixed, the in-house supplier can provide instant service, which, given the costs of production delays, is no small benefit.

-www.whites.com

-www.lionsgatefilms.com

-www.cinecitemontreal.com

-www.micheltrudel.tv

-www.psps.com