Montreal: The Canadian contingent at last month’s Giant Screen Theatre Association conference in Frankfurt, Germany numbered 83, second only to the u.s. with 294 delegates, and ahead of the u.k., Germany and France, each with between 30 and 35 delegates, and Japan, which sent 25.

Delegations were made up of producers, technical service providers and exhibitors, says industry consultant Normand McKay, a member of Montreal-based Giant Screen Consortium/Secretariat pour le Developpement de l’Industrie du Film Format Geant.

With 28 screens, Canada has the highest number of giant-screen venues in the world, on a per capita basis.

While the 25- to 30-year-old museum market is now well-established, McKay says trade talk at gsta indicated the commercial sector has a problem with product supply, and secondly, commercial exhibitors are coming up short in marketing their films.

‘There are very few good 3D films available,’ he says, ‘and even if the next 125 theatres [to be constructed] are going to be 3D, there are only about 10 3D films [out of an international total of 60] on the way.’

McKay says large-format movies can’t be marketed like conventional films. ‘In the large-format market you need the school bus in the morning, the seniors in the afternoon and the regular clientele at night.’

gsta program highlights included a screening of the Oscar-winning Productions Pascal Blais film The Old Man and the Sea.

Toronto-based SK Films, with four large-format films in development, attended the conference, as did a large delegation from Imax Corp. and Montreal’s CineGroupe, the latest company to join the gsc.

gsc members are actively pursuing coproduction talks with Europe. The group’s program includes creating a financing fund, a five-minute theatrical promo film and the launch of a website later this year, says McKay. As it stands, large-format producers do not have access to ctf money or funding from Telefilm Canada.

Some 15 large-format films were screened at gsta, while another 29 are in production and about 25 are in active development.

The average budget for a 40-minute, 2D large-format film is in the us$6.4 million range; and for a 3D film, between us$8 million and us$10 million.

Montreal is an active giant-screen film production centre with eight producers in the gsc. Technically, the city still needs a large-screen laboratory. At the moment, says McKay, producers are required to go to Los Angeles (cfi), Paris or Tokyo (Imagica) for lab services.

At gsta, Blais Productions announced the launch of a new large-format subsidiary, Pascal Blais Distribution.

pbd president Bernard Lajoie has hired former Imax manager of international distribution Neils de Jong Franken as vp and Georges Valentine as East Coast sales manager. A third person will be hired to cover Western Canada and the u.s. Lajoie says coproduction partner Imagica of Japan is handling Asia, where The Old Man and the Sea has received some distribution.

pbd will mainly invest in its own productions, picking up world rights through coproduction, but will also pick up third-party and complementary titles, primarily in Imax science and destination titles. The Old Man and the Sea has been released in three u.s. theatres, with 10 to 15 additional bookings slated for January to April 2001.

‘All the [large-fromat] distributors are basically attached to a production house,’ says Lajoie. ‘We have new partners [including the Caisse de Depot and ficc] and we have about $5 million to $6 million available to invest in production and distribution.’ *

-www.oldmansea.com

-www.imax.com

-www.giantscreentheater.com