Rather than celebrating its 10th year on Alberta pastures planning future bumper crops of homegrown and produced product, Great North Productions is being forced to look to other provinces to shoot its programs and worries over the future of the Alberta industry, the seeds of which it helped sow.

Facing similar deal-making dilemmas since the demise of the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation last year, Minds Eye Alberta president Josh Miller has shifted his projects to Minds Eye Saskatchewan where he can access that province’s fund. As things stand, the only incentive keeping the company on Alberta soil is the province’s low corporate tax levels.

And Drew Martin, a newcomer moving onto the Alberta field, is focusing his efforts on the greener international coproduction pastures rather than the slim pickings of the indigenous market.

Edmonton’s Great North developed the $9 million miniseries The Voyage of the Naparima as an international coproduction with Ireland-based Laserdene. Requiring a waterfront location, the shoot was to take place in Ontario where Thomson could dip into the provincial incentive. But also anticipating ampdc money, a high percentage of Alberta cast and crew were to be flown in. With the disappearance of both funds, filming has been moved to Quebec and, under the terms of the Alberta-Quebec alliance, a local coproducer – Montreal’s Productions La Fete – has been signed on.

With the Quebec incentive offering a 14% cost recoupment on Quebec labor and without the ampdc, Thomson won’t be bringing along the Alberta crew he wanted. ‘Just think of all the people that could have been employed and the activity and money it would have generated,’ he says, concerned for the future of Alberta’s cast and crew pool.

The tv movie Stranger In Taransay, a $3 million coproduction between Great North and Glasgow’s Scottish Television, would have been shot in Alberta if a fund existed, says Thomson, but now will likely go to Nova Scotia because of its generous tax incentive. He is looking for a coproduction partner in the province so he can access the money.

Without any financial incentive to continue to shoot the drama series Jake & The Kid (which received $500,000 from the fund’s bank account) in Edmonton, Thomson may have to move the series, coproduced with Toronto’s Nelvana, to another province. And with tax credits based on local labor, the 150 Albertans employed as cast and crew will be out of jobs. As well, he notes that ‘Jake is the engine for the whole production community,’ with at least $7 million of the $10.5 million budget spent directly in Alberta.

Lacking incentives to bring other series work to the province, Thomson foresees Alberta’s production industry drying up, and that will impact on Great North’s future development slate.

‘When we have an intrinsically Alberta story we want to do that needs to be shot locally, we won’t have a crew, our budgets will go up by 15 to 20 percent to import them, and we are going to say what’s the point,’ says Thomson, calling the situation a cultural tragedy.

At Minds Eye, Miller also forecasts a bleak future for Alberta storytelling. The Incredible Story Studio was developed as a Minds Eye Alberta production. In late 1995, short stories written by school kids across Alberta were chosen to be adapted into teleplays for the half-hour preteen series, budgeted at just over $3 million. But with word of the ampdc collapse, Miller moved it over to the Minds Eye Regina slate.

Moving the series to the Regina company has meant delaying production from the summer of ’96 to ’97, gathering additional stories from Saskatchewan schools, refinancing (a deal with scn as the provincial window is under negotiation), and hiring local writers to adapt the stories.

Miller also developed a feature, penned by a local writer and based on an Albertan story, as a Minds Eye Alberta production, with all cast and crew to be hired locally. But without any provincial fund he has been forced to give up half ownership of the project by coproducing with the Saskatchewan company and spending half the budget in that province.

Interprovincial dealmaking is affecting Minds Eye Alberta’s bottom line. Cast and crew will have to come from both provinces, and the budget is going to soar with the cost of moving them between locations and paying distant location union fees.

‘We only get half of any revenue through producer fees or international sales and there’s less to invest back into the company, so it’s hard to justify doing provincial coproductions,’ Miller says, noting that in the future he will be looking to projects for which he can get the backing of big-budgeted international coproducers, because ‘despite split revenues the returns make them worthwhile.’

Program content will be affected by this decision as he will have to seek out creative with an international appeal. ‘I won’t take on any new Alberta-focused projects,’ Miller admits. ‘If someone approaches me with a script based on a local story and the content requires an Alberta location, then it would be folly to get involved.’

Room for optimism

Amidst these grim forecasts from the well-entrenched players on the Alberta production scene, Martin, who opened The Idea Factory four years ago as a commercial/corporate house, has recently made the move into tv documentaries. But having financed his first projects through local coproduction deals and presales to network affiliates and without government funds, he is more optimistic of the province’s film industry.

Following similar financing tactics, Martin just wrapped a second set of 65 episodes of Company’s Coming: Everyday Cooking with itv Edmonton as a partner and sales to Montreal and Winnipeg’s ctv affiliates and wic nationally.

He’s also in development on Bright Side, a 26 half-hour, $20,000 weekly series, having picked up development funds from cfcn Calgary, cky Winnipeg and ckco Kitchener with the innovative pitch that he could offer them what their news departments didn’t have the money to do – Canadian and international good-news stories.

He will be packaging them so that local anchors can head up and bridge the program, making it appear to be done in-house.

But Martin is finding the Alberta partners that helped him break into the game – particularly cfcn, cfrn, Access, and cbc Alberta – are drying up under funding cuts and this reality is reflected in the fact that the projects on his upcoming development slate are relying heavily on international deals.

A $4 million tv movie, The Great Run of China, has interest from a Chinese and American coproducer, and a documentary on the life of composer Morbus Brahms has Austria’s Grey Panther Films on board. Martin needs to apply for Telefilm Canada funding for the first time for these projects, and says if the ampdc or another Alberta fund existed, he would have the leverage needed to access the Telefilm money he requires to get them off the ground.

But far from giving up, Martin is looking optimistically at Craig Broadcasting’s A-Channel for his projects.

‘We are aggressive, talented producers,’ says Martin of the independent Alberta production scene. ‘And we’re going to keep on hustling no matter what.’