Wayne Grigsby and Barbara Samuels have become experts at navigating the mountains of paperwork and intricacies involved in dealing with Canada’s various film and television funding agencies.

‘I never wanted to know about these things,’ says Grigsby, executive producer of the cbc drama Black Harbour, who along with fellow exec producer Barbara Samuels is also heading up their infant production company Fogbound Films, currently producing the series in partnership with Halifax’s Topsail Entertainment. ‘But now I know where all the bits are and I’ve got a vague idea of how it actually works,’ says Grigsby.

‘I’m less suspicious of somebody coming along with a song and dance saying we’ve got to do it this way because there is this mysterious thing that goes on in this closed room that you’re not allowed in.’

Perhaps Canada’s most successful television drama creative team, Grigsby and Samuels were the artistic force behind the many seasons of Alliance Communications product in the form of the tv news drama e.n.g. and the aboriginal series North of 60.

Yet with their latest drama Black Harbour (now in its second season on cbc), Grigsby and Samuels’ responsibilities have gone well beyond the creative. The pair have not only overseen the development, script, shooting and post-production stages of the show, but have also rounded up the financing.

Samuels contends their sense of timing in launching Fogbound and Black Harbour was a little off. ‘Black Harbour came about before the Sheila Copps fund [ctcpf],’ she says, curled up on a comfortable couch at the former army base compound in Hubbards, n.s. that is serving as the show’s production office. ‘Our friends at North of 60 said it would be the last one-hour Canadian drama. We knew a stack of people who were packing their bags and going to l.a. because there was no fund for indigenous drama.’

The announcement of the ctcpf came shortly after the show’s first-year financing had been arranged and Samuels recalls the time as one of the most bizarre she can remember in her many years in the business. ‘This influx of money a few months later was even more bizarre because we weren’t really affected by it. It was too late for us,’ she says

Another complication in the financing was the situation of ‘less tangible’ tax credits, which Grigsby contends make things much more precarious than the old system of tax shelters. ‘I think a lot of people who complained about tax shelters are wishing we had them back,’ he says. ‘They raised a chunk of money and stockbrokers and lawyers took 30% and whatever was left got passed on to producers, but at least they got the money.

‘Now financing is based on an estimate of what you think you might get in the tax credit, and a year and a half later Revenue Canada gets around to it and says, `Well I don’t think so,’ ‘ he says with a laugh.

‘You read the regulations and you say this qualifies, that qualifies, and you put it all in, and somebody with a very sharp pencil can come along and say well you’re full of shit on this, this and this and therefore you’re in big trouble.’

With the benefit of the Nova Scotia tax credit being the best in the country and their access to the ctcpf, this season’s Black Harbour budget is pegged at $940,000 per episode. But that still doesn’t mean the financing process was easy, says Grigsby.

‘It’s remarkable how complex that edifice of paper is. There’s a binder like this,’ says Grigsby, holding his hands two feet apart, ‘of the Telefilm papers, and it’s the same for the ctcpf binder and the Royal Bank who did our interim financing.

‘It was like a Monty Python sketch,’ says Samuels. ‘The papers were laid out end to end in the office and we were signing away our lives, our children’s lives, my cats, the tv and stereo with corporate seals. It was such a surreal situation.’

Being a small company has allowed Grigsby and Samuels to remain hands-on with all aspects of the production. ‘Once you’re a mega company like Atlantis, Alliance or even guys like Salter Street, you by necessity have to delegate,’ says Samuels. ‘Fogbound’s position as such a new little operation is that we can say oh, can we get this for craft service?’

But being small did not help Fogbound when it came to applying for Telefilm and other funding.

‘You have to get the agencies in line first and that’s what makes the agencies uncomfortable,’ says Grigsby. ‘They’re used to dealing with these large entities that have a bank account, so they can continue to wrangle about the framework of the deal knowing that the deal is not going to be slowed down because money is flowing and people are getting paid.’

Grigsby says Fogbound’s size made the funding agencies nervous at first. ‘When you put them in a position where you say they have to make a decision about this otherwise we can’t go forward, that’s when they start to get uncomfortable, because they look like the obstructionist party,’ says Grigsby, who admits that the initial meetings with Telefilm ‘were charged.’

With their initiation into the world of Canadian television financing completed and the pair looking towards the next projects on the Fogbound development slate, the veterans do have many good things to say about Canada’s funding agencies.

‘We could whine and scream about the process of funding in this county,’ says Samuels, ‘but where else could two people with no capital behind them, except whatever is in their respective bank accounts, turn around and get a series on the public broadcasting channel, which happens to be the biggest network in the country.’

Grigsby contends the ctcpf has been a real hero because ‘their process is so clean and transparent, you’re real clear as to what they need and you get it in and decisions get made and you get a letter very quickly.’

Samuels agrees, adding, ‘They do hire guys with great taste in clothes. Bill [Mustos] was always sartorial splendor incarnate and Garry [Toth] wears shorts better than any man I’ve ever seen.’ All joking aside, Samuels says both Mustos, former ctcpf lfp executive director, and his successor Toth, who took up the post June 1, have been great facilitators of the fund who have guided them through the process.

But understanding the funding agencies is never a walk in the park, as Grigsby and Samuels’ American agent will attest. The New Yorker, who helped set up their development deal with the cbc and their past pilot for abc entitled Dark Eyes, has been known to comment on the funding situation, according to Grigsby, by saying, ‘Normally I would say my inability to understand all this comes down to the fact that I’m just a dumb American, but the fact that my clients don’t understand, that’s a tip-off that things may be unclear.’