Vancouver: While there are no specific provisions to entice runaway production in the new Alberta film incentive program, domestic and international coproductions that offer equal ownership and generate expenditures for Albertans are eligible for the new Alberta Film Development Program, announced Dec. 8..

But elated lobbyists in Alberta are hardly complaining after nearly three years of effort to get the legislature to adopt a film industry incentive.

The cultural industries grant program – which bears a striking resemblance to tax-rebate programs for producers in other provinces, but isn’t a tax credit – will pay producers $5 million in each of the next three years.

Administered by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the grant is paid on 20% of production expenses incurred in Alberta to a maximum of 10% of the total budget or $500,000. The grant also has a corporate cap of $500,000 per fiscal year. (However, there is an exception for producers working on more costly series. They may apply twice per year for up to $1 million.)

The program officially goes into effect April 1, 1999, but reaches back to mid-October for eligible productions.

‘We can look to this to aid a broad-based recovery in Alberta for the next two or three years,’ says Dale Phillips, president of the Alberta Motion Picture Industries Association. ‘It will have the same net effect as a tax credit and is probably more efficient for producers because it doesn’t get them caught up in the tax grind.’

According to Phillips, the grant will stimulate up to $50 million in new Alberta production.

Allowable costs are tied to standards set by Telefilm Canada and include expenses such as research, acquisition fees, scriptwriting, financing fees, corporate overhead and producer fees (up to 15%), salaries, benefits, equipment rentals and eligible interest costs, among others.

The introduction of a production incentive should spell the end of a precipitous fall in production volumes since the collapse of the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation. In the two years since the ampdc was dismantled, indigenous production has fallen to $18 million from $50 million. (Service production has also fallen off, to $30 million from about $100 million over the same period.)

Applicants to the grant program must be Alberta-based and controlled companies operated by Alberta residents. Eligible projects pay 75% of all salaries and wages in Alberta to Alberta residents in the field of film and television production.

Principal photography must be undertaken in the Alberta boundaries and projects must be supported by broadcast licences or distribution guarantees.

Productions with budgets greater than $300,000 must have either 65% third-party financing or a broadcast licence sufficient to trigger the Canadian Television Fund.

Ineligible productions include sports, instructional programs, game shows, news and current affairs programming, reality tv, infomercials, infotainment, commercials, industrial videos, amateur video and pornography.