The Alberta film industry has completed its biggest year ever, with more than $254 million in production activity recorded in the province in 1999.

The last benchmark hit by Alberta’s film and tv sector was in 1996 when production budgets totaled $150 million. However, in the two years following – and since the closure of the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation – production levels plummeted, reaching only $98 million in 1998.

The Alberta Film Development Program – a $5 million, three-year fund that supplies production grants on a first-come first-served basis to local producers – has played a crucial role in the bumped up production activity, as has a healthy gain in offshore work.

Of the $254 million in budgets, roughly $47 million is from indigenous production, four times the volume of $12 million registered in 1998.

The return to stability in the province’s film and tv sector over the past year also included the incorporation of the Alberta Film Commission and the nomination of a board of directors composed of the film industry, municipal and provincial government reps and business leaders.

The past year also saw the former Currie Army Barracks become a production centre hub housing the Alberta Film Commission, a number of production companies, offices of iatse 212 and the local dgc, William F. White, as well as five studio warehouses.

With production back on the upswing, the next step for the Alberta industry is to ensure the sustainability of the province’s producers. Crucial to this goal is helping to grow small production companies into sustainable self-sufficient companies, something the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association is now working towards.

The Industry Development Initiative is a $500,000 three-year project that is supported by Western Economic Development, Alberta broadcasters and other shareholders. The idi funding is being used to develop an ampia website (launching May 1) and to aid corporate development of Alberta producers through needs assessment and hiring of consultants to help producers build business plans to help them access capital.

The Alberta Cultural Industries Association has a new pool of money – $1.5 million – for the publishing, film, magazine and music industry in Alberta.

The film and tv sector has chosen to use its portion of the funds for a loan guarantee program to aid corporate development: i.e., the funds will be used to guarantee loans and lines of credits and backstop bank applications. The initiative is expected to be up and running by this fall.

‘Through the idi, companies will gain the expertise to develop business plans and then the acia program will help producers access capital by back-stopping loans given to producers,’ explains ampia president Josh Miller.

The Alberta Film Commission’s Murray Ord says the high levels of foreign work have been key in building up the province’s crew base, which had become sparse after a couple of years of low volume. Although the Honey, I Shrunk The Kids series has not been renewed for a new season, other foreign productions are moving in, such as l.a.’s Rosemont Productions, currently in Calgary shooting a remake of High Noon on the Lonesome Dove set.

A priority for Ord this year is to team Alberta producers with American and overseas partners in coproductions and joint ventures. ‘International coproduction is an area which hasn’t been tapped here,’ says Murray. ‘We have foreign productions but I am aiming for true coproductions, not service work.’

Ord says he is targeting independent yet sizable production companies in l.a.

A couple such projects are currently in production in Calgary. Franchise Films’ Kingdom Come has involved local producer Doug Berquist, and Franchise has also teamed up with Minds Eye Pictures on Viva Las Nowhere.

Minds Eye’s Josh Miller says that War Brides, the Canada-u.k. Copro with Random Harvest and Vanguard will likely shoot this spring.

Alberta producers all appear to have a hefty slate of projects ready to go this spring/summer, although many of these projects are pending Canadian Television Fund decisions. Great North is projecting 100 hours and $27 million worth of production in the coming season, up from last year’s 80 hours and $18 million. Bradshaw-McLeod has a number of movies on its slate, including another project in the North of 60 anthology.

Many of the smaller production companies are also in expansion mode. Souleado Entertainment, Dinosaur Soup Productions, and the production arm of The Image Works, all of Edmonton, are teaming up on a larger office together.

Souleado Entertainment’s Connie Edwards is currently in development with wic on a one-hour documentary, Punch Buggy, No Returns – an affectionate look at the history of the ever-popular Volkswagen Beetle, which helped define the counter-culture of the 1960s and the pop culture of the 1970s, and was a retro hit of the late 1990s. Edwards is also putting together final financing for a one-hour documentary Cut to Pieces for vtv and wtn. To be shot this summer, the film asks how many of the 60,000 hysterectomies performed each year in Canada are necessary. Edwards is producing and directing and Gayle Helfrick is the writer.

On the development side, Edwards has just wrapped a demo for the one-hour arts documentary Luthier about the people who craft violins. She is also pitching a one-hour special called The Millionaire’s Club – a one-hour about lottery winners.

Coproductions are spurring new projects for Gerri Cook at Dinosaur Soup Productions. Three more specials based on Stories From the Seventh Fire (coproduced with Vancouver’s Scorched Wood Communications and Edmonton’s Karvonen Films) are in the Canadian Television Fund line and licensed to aptn and crfn.

Additionally, Dinosaur is partnering with Media Giants Entertainment of Toronto on two half-hour lifestyle series that have accessed wic development funding. The Home Inspector is a $700,000 13-part half-hour series that raises red flags and takes a preventative approach to house hunting problems. Licenses are currently being negotiated with Life Network and hgtv in the u.s. Pure Adventure, a cross between an adventure and a travel series, is set in the West and is hosted by a cop who is an explorer in his spare time.

Two half-hour animated Christmas specials are in development with ctv. The Elfkins’ First Christmas, to be coproduced with Beaver Creek Creations of Saskatoon and with Gail Tilson as co-executive producer, is a 2D animated preschool show budgeted at $400,000. Geared for 9- to 11-year-olds, the $340,000 Night of the Snow People is a coproduction with Edmonton’s L.S. Enterprises.

A science fiction feature is in development with A-Channel. Set in the prairies in the future, the script is based on the book by Candice Jane Dorsey who is also penning the screenplay.

On the funding front, the early word out of Alberta is optimistic. Margaret Mardirossian of Anaid Productions has learned that the children’s series Mentors (coproduced with Josh Miller of Minds Eye Pictures), which lost out in the funding round last year, has received its lfp money. A 13-part order for Family Channel will begin shooting this summer. Mardirossian is also shooting a third season of The Tourist for Discovery u.s. and Outdoor Life Network. Mardirossian says she is also looking at getting into features.

Looking forward over the coming year, the Alberta industry is gearing up for a lobby effort to renew the Alberta Film Development Program, which will reach its three-year time-frame next year.

In addition to securing the renewal, the producer association and film commission are looking to build on the fund. There is concern that this year’s program will be oversubscribed.

Furthermore, Miller points out that because of the per project caps, the grant works best on lower-budgeted projects but becomes a smaller piece of the financing pie on higher-priced projects. ‘Because labor tax credits don’t have a cap, we are finding that the Alberta program isn’t as competitive when it comes to higher budgeted projects.’

The first step, he says, is increasing the allotment of the fund.

On the broadcasting side, the year ahead will also be pivotal. Alberta is at a bit of a standstill as it waits for crtc approval of the sale of the wic assets to Corus and CanWest Global.

wic has played an important part in developing and licensing local projects, the producers say, and has always been an accessible broadcast partner. Producers are looking favorably on CanWest’s takeover of wic’s stations. The deal will shift Global’s assets – which up to now have been heavily weighted (roughly 75%) in the East – more favorably towards the West, where 60% of its broadcast outlets will be located. Furthermore, the broadcaster has plans to open a development office in Edmonton, and the benefits package is looking promising for Alberta producers.

‘ampia is looking carefully at the wic purchase and the benefits packages being offered,’ says Miller. ‘The challenge is to focus the benefits back to Alberta.’