The Canadian Feature Film Fund, to be administered by Telefilm Canada, is due for a full launch in April. The announcement for the policy, From Script to Screen, mentioned the objective of ‘build[ing] larger Canadian and international audiences’ and spoke of a ‘new way of disbursing funds which includes a performance-based approach to supporting the Canadian film industry.’

Consultations continue across the country as to what the finished product should look like. Meanwhile, following the example of Telefilm’s nationwide consultations, Playback held an impromptu straw poll consultation with a cross-section of industry insiders on where they think the money would be best spent to achieve a greater measure of commercial success.

Brent Jordan Sherman, a literary agent with The Characters Talent Agency, puts ‘the lack of a Canadian breakthrough in terms of films with international commercial appeal’ down in large part to a ‘lack of the development and nurturing of ideas into broad-based storytelling.’

‘I can attest to the importance of the development process as a phase where projects take shape and can be tailored to a wider audience,’ he says.

Sherman points to Billy Elliot and Four Weddings and a Funeral as examples of smaller films that did find an international breakthrough.

‘With few exceptions, the Canadian film community does not have the infrastructure to nurture and develop this type of story,’ he says. ‘This is not to suggest that we are incapable of it, but there must be a concerted effort to embrace universal themes and translate them to the screen.’

Elizabeth McDonald, president and ceo of the cftpa, says, ‘Development is a whole process within this industry and it’s an area where investment is low, both in tv and feature film.’

Julia Sereny of Toronto’s Sienna Films recalls the usefulness of this process in bringing last year’s success New Waterford Girl to the screen. ‘I think that we always from the beginning felt that [New Waterford Girl] was a movie that was commercially viable. All kinds of things go into that success. It’s packaging, getting the script ready. That’s up-front risk and that takes time. It’s finding the right talent, it’s casting, it’s a whole conglomeration [of things]. You could make a brilliant film, not release it at the right time and it may not result in commercial success.’

One factor that seems to attract across-the-board agreement is the importance of marketing.

Says Sherman: ‘Most insiders in Canada look at the business as preproduction, production and post-production, where I find that true commercial success stems from the concentration on production, which includes thorough development of the material itself, and marketing. These two factors ultimately determine the success of a film.’

Getting screen time

And marketing can take many shapes. One thing is for sure: Canadian films cannot meet with commercial success when they are nowhere to be found on theatre screens.

Sereny says critical to commercial success is ‘ensuring that the movie has a chance to play in theatres. We’re competing for theatre time with blockbuster movies.’

McDonald draws attention to the different ways in which viewers choose television programs and films. ‘People cruise through [channels] with the clicker and may choose something [based on what they see onscreen], so there’s a better chance to tantalize and draw people in [in television].

Films, on the other hand, are chosen on the basis of such things as trailers, advertisements and reviews.

‘I don’t think we’ll ever be able to compete nose-to-nose with American features,’ says McDonald. ‘When we make Canadians aware of Canadian features and create some excitement around [them], people will want to go. There’s very little opportunity to browse [when in the market for a film to see] and very often the browsing we do [i.e., viewing trailers] is based on American films. When they have the tools to do it, people go.’

In Calgary over the Christmas period, Claire’s Hat writer Semi Chellas saw a film with an audience of exactly eight people in a nine-screen multiplex and wondered why the multiplex couldn’t turn that screen over to Canadian films exclusively. As it is, she says, word of mouth doesn’t necessarily work for Canadian films with limited theatrical releases. ‘A lot of times people hear about a film and want to go and the film’s closed. Even in larger cities [the film may not be playing on many screens] and a lot of times movies aren’t playing on more than two screens in the whole country.’

Actor and director Phillip Jarrett, currently onscreen in Blue Murder, goes further: ‘Telefilm has to get out of film production and into film marketing. Take the music industry that lobbied to have a law passed that 33% of music played on Canadian radio had to be Canadian content and now we have international talent that is very good [like] Barenaked Ladies and Alanis Morrisette.

‘If we spent a little more money lobbying for say 20% of films in Canadian theatres to be Canadian, that would actually improve the quality of film, making it much more commercially viable. That would definitely be competing and an audience would now be seeing a better product.’

Chellas mentions the possibility of other ways to share screens: ‘I was thinking about the idea of Sunday to Thursday for Canadian films and exhibitors can still play big movies on weekends. Or it could be a good idea for lower-budget films to have a lower ticket price; I don’t even know if that’s a good idea. I just think there’s a lot of innovative lateral-thinking ways to create an audience and no one’s trying it. They’re just putting [Canadian films] out there against a film with Julia Roberts, letting it die and saying people don’t like Canadian movies.

‘People haven’t necessarily got the option [of seeing the film] because they haven’t necessarily heard of the movie,’ says Chellas. ‘If you’re only going to the movies every two months it’s a gamble. People want to see something that’s going to please them. There’s no question in my mind that lots of Canadian movies would delight audiences, but the audiences just don’t know that. They’re not sure what it is or who’s in it, or they might not know anyone else who’s seen that film.

‘Marketing would have to go hand in hand with [any such initiative] – people knowing that the film is playing there and knowing the people in it and having heard a review. I think it’s important for people to think creatively about what can be done, because the status quo is not good enough.’

Divvying up the dollars

And how to evaluate which picture warrants these resources?

Says Jarrett: ‘It’s got to be a subject of universality, it’s got to be able to entertain a wide demographic – elders to kids – and has to have emotional range in it, from laughing to crying. I believe that name actors and a known director also help.’

Adds Chellas: ‘I don’t have any answers: there’s always going to be that question of how money is going to be dispersed. People are going to want it to be on merit or potential merit; there will always be a question of the combination of artistic and economic merit.’

Sereny moots the idea of evaluating track records: ‘Producers who have shown the ability to produce [successful] films should be supported. Success can be measured in different ways. You can’t force an audience to want to see a movie if those movies are no good. First and foremost is the movie.’

William Alexander of Toronto-based distributor Critical Mass represents the sector of the industry most likely to receive marketing monies. But having recently released the semi-autobiographical Martin Cummins flick We All Fall Down, which featured both mid-level names (Nicholas Campbell, Barry Pepper and Helen Shaver, who garnered a Genie nomination for her role) and a small-level budget, he’s uneasy with any evaluation based on track record.

‘Am I going to be judged on that film, where it’s a labor of love, because it is a huge-risk film? If I’m being evaluated on the criterion of box-office success only, I’ll be much more judicious in taking on labor-of-love films.’

An industry insider who wished to be quoted off the record was more frank: ‘If people were accountable for their box office there would be a lot of people not making a second film in this country.’ *