Stability and consolidation

Stability is the buzz word in Alberta’s film and television production community these days.

Barely three years ago, Alberta producers were lamenting the lack of consistent production activity upon which to build the industry. Now three series are being produced in the province: Telegenic Productions’ u.s. syndicated series Lonesome Dove, Alliance Communications/Alberta Filmworks’ North of 60 and Atlantis Films/Great North Productions’ Destiny Ridge, airing on the CTV Television Network, cbc and the CanWest Global System respectively.

Garry Toth, general manager of the Alberta Motion Picture Development Corporation, says the arrival of dramatic series production served as a springboard for several other productions such as The Song Spinner, an mow developed and produced by Calgary-based Bradshaw MacLeod and Associates that’s currently filming in Edmonton; the sitcom pilot Nobody’s Business, created by WDC Entertainment and scheduled for production later this spring; and another new series from Great North Productions, Jake and the Kid, based on W.O. Mitchell’s radio plays and slated for spring lensing.

‘I think we’ve moved from our adolescence; now we’re in our 20s and the industry has a whole new set of responsibilities,’ says Toth. ‘It’s a much different game than it was two or three years ago.’

Toth contends one- or two-person operations in Alberta are going to find it a very difficult world to function in when they are competing against large multifaceted companies with film, television and multimedia production, distribution, recording and publishing all rolled into one entity.

Alberta producers are realizing that in order to compete they will have to build corporate muscle, and they’re doing this through consolidation.

‘People will probably wear fewer hats, but in wearing fewer they will probably do a better job,’ says Toth. ‘They will be part of a bigger team that will allow them to focus.’

‘If you look at the growth of Great North, Bradshaw MacLeod and Associates and Alberta Filmworks, these companies are dealing in multi-millions of dollars. The stakes for producers now on a national and international level are much higher. The competition is stronger.’

‘There are more markets and more opportunities, but it requires a new level of sophistication and marketing; that will be the next phase of development for our Alberta industry. We have a solid base which ampdc has helped companies build over the last 14 years, now it’s time to take that base and build for the future.’

Andy Thomson, president of Great North in Edmonton, says the two most important developments in the company’s growth over the last year were the impact of the new specialty channels, which provided a steady, ongoing stream of production on at least five different series, and the arrival of Toronto-based Atlantis Films as a major shareholder.

The 20% share of Great North which Atlantis purchased last August brought the company substantial capitalization, but more importantly, says Thomson, it brought the experience and expertise of Atlantis ceo Michael MacMillan, who now sits on Great North’s board.

‘Having Michael have a vested interest in the bottom line of our company was the single most important decision I’ve made in the business. He offers us invaluable ideas, direction and guidance,’ says Thomson.

Establishing a distribution arm, Great North Releasing, which specializes in quality documentaries, has also served to propel the company into the global market.

‘It’s given us an alternate source of income. We’re no longer tied to the Canadian broadcast production cycle for our cash flow; that’s made a big difference. And it introduced our production company to broadcasters around the world with whom we can now coproduce,’ says Thomson

Last year, Great North doubled its staff to 20, production volumes tripled to $9 million from $3 million the previous year, and by 1996, production revenues are forecast at well over $10 million. Distribution revenues have also increased, from just $200,000 in 1992 to well over $1.5 million in gross sales last year.

Thomson predicts there will be much more partnering between Alberta companies in the year to come.

‘It will become increasingly difficult to remain independent in the future,’ he says. ‘A small independent Alberta producer will have to get us to help in much the same way as we have gotten Atlantis to help us. A one- or two-person company will not be able to cut the mustard because of the increasing complexity of the industry.

‘You have to have tentacles everywhere in the world, you can’t just go to a few funding agencies and have enough money to make your film anymore. You have to put more pieces in place and you can’t do that working out of your garage glued to your editing machine. You have to be out traveling around the world talking to broadcasters, and if you can’t do that, then you have to link up with other companies that can do it for you.’

And joining forces is just what a number of Alberta producers are doing.

Song Spinner producer Doug MacLeod and director Randy Bradshaw are partners in Calgary-based Bradshaw MacLeod. MacLeod and Bradshaw, along with Tom Dent-Cox, are also partners in Alberta Filmworks, Calgary, which coproduces North of 60 with Toronto-based Alliance Communications. In turn, Dent-Cox and Edmonton-based writer/producer Glynis Whiting are partners in WDC Entertainment, which is producing the sitcom pilot Nobody’s Business.

As further evidence of the industry’s move to consolidation, Dent-Cox, Bradshaw, MacLeod and line producer David MacLeod (Doug’s brother) have purchased a building in southwest Calgary to house their production offices.

‘That’s testimony that there’s a real synergy here,’ says MacLeod. ‘There’s a lot of partnering and co-operation that characterizes the work environment in Calgary. It’s definitely not competitive.’

Dent-Cox agrees: ‘There’s great logic in this part of the world to pooling resources. It’s basically a method of ensuring that we maximize our resources, and certainly different partnerships work best for different projects and kinds of productions.’

Dent-Cox and Whiting want to pioneer a new arm of the Alberta industry – situation comedy. ‘It makes great sense to utilize the great television studio space at Allarcom to develop a whole new area of the industry using multiple camera crews and a live audience,’ says Dent-Cox. ‘It’s a very different type of production from location film shooting.

‘If you look in the u.s., sitcoms are the bread and butter of the industry. They are responsible for far greater revenues than any other genre of production. But strangely enough, Canadians have never really explored this area, yet we produce some of the finest comedians and comedic writing talent that write on sitcoms in the u.s. because sitcoms don’t exist here.

‘It’s always a surprise to me when I tell people we’re doing a sitcom pilot. They look at me askance and say, `Canada can’t do comedy.’ Well we are doing comedy, we just aren’t doing it for ourselves. That’s what we want to see turned around.’

MacLeod says MacLeod Bradshaw’s goal is to establish corporate stability by focusing its activity on developing material for certain key end users.

‘We’re interested in the business of episodic tv production. We’ve developed an enormous amount of expertise over last five years working with Atlantis on The Ray Bradbury Theatre for USA Network and our affiliated company, Alberta Filmworks, which is just shooting its fourth season of North of 60 with Alliance for ctv. We’re very comfortable in that kind of manufacturing relationship. We have proven we can deliver episodic tv in a timely and cost-effective manner.’

Finding ways to capitalize the company is next on the agenda, says MacLeod. He wants the company to get away from looking at projects on an ad hoc basis and to nourish the business for the long term. Among their plans are a private placement to underwrite a substantial development slate of development, and exploring new-media formats and markets.

Service production also took a big leap in the province last year. Five mows, one miniseries and two features shot in Alberta in 1994, employing nearly 600 Albertans and leaving behind an estimated $60 million.

That, added to all the indigenous production, created a big boost in the province’s recognition as a viable production center, says veteran Edmonton producer Arvi Liimatainen, who served as the production supervisor on the miniseries Children Of The Dust for the Konigsberg Sanitsky Company in l.a.

The recent critical and box office success of the feature Legends Of The Fall, directed by Ed Zwick and starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, which was filmed in southern Alberta in the fall of ’93, is having a similar promotional impact on Alberta’s service production industry that began with the Clint Eastwood feature Unforgiven.

The challenge for this sector of the industry, however, will be to build on what has already been achieved, says Liimatainen.

‘Alberta needs to be recognized as a place where you can shoot more than just westerns. It’s great when the genre of westerns is in vogue, like they have been in the past when Alberta was the location for Little Big Man. But the hurdle for us now is to rise above the western stereotype. We have great urban locations and we still have the same quality of work from the crews as we had on the westerns, which can be applied to films that don’t have horses in them.’

To this end, the Alberta Film Commission has been putting extra effort into marketing Edmonton and Calgary to ensure the international film community knows there’s more to the province than just windswept prairie landscapes.

Attracting more service work requires a well-developed support infrastructure, and while the growth of the production industry has encouraged progress, many areas of the industry such as post-production are still struggling to keep pace with the rapid expansion of production. Having two production centers in the same province compounds the problem through duplication of services.

The most obvious hole in Alberta’s physical infrastructure is the lack of a full-service lab and film transfer facility and an audio facility.

‘One of the difficulties here in creating these facilities is that we as producers have become habituated to working with certain companies in Vancouver or Toronto with whom we are comfortable,’ says MacLeod. ‘We would hope some of these established post houses would open up branch operations in Alberta.’

Crew availability has also started to present a problem, according to most producers. Last summer, eight productions filmed in Alberta and ‘we were tapped to the max,’ says Liimatainen. ‘We accommodated the production demands of everything that came here, but that was largely achieved through crew flexibility.’

This year, he says, unions are making efforts to increase training of new members and hopefully repatriate some of the talented Albertans who left the province to work elsewhere when there wasn’t enough to sustain them at home.

Another problem, says Thomson, is the thin supply of experienced local writers and directors.

‘We don’t have a lot of depth in the creative areas or those responsible for the content of the product – writers and directors,’ says Thomson.

‘It’s very difficult to convince the networks that local writers have the capability of handling series work when they don’t have three seasons of even Beachcombers to their credit. So we have to work on that, especially writers, because they reflect the culture of the community, they’re the ones who initiate it.

‘If we’re always bringing in writers from Vancouver, Toronto or l.a., we’re not going to get a strong Alberta perspective or regional perspective of our culture,’ Thomson adds.

Continued provincial government support of the industry presents the greatest concern to Alberta’s independent producers. The gauntlet that was thrown down by Premier Ralph Klein’s Conservative government towards hospitals and education is now being directed at film funding.

‘The government here has stressed the point that they want to get out of subsidizing any industry,’ says Thomson. ‘There is some merit to this, but the problem remains that this is an incredibly mobile industry, and if they get out of funding the industry and other provinces don’t, then production will just move to Saskatchewan or Ontario, wherever they can get maximum benefits.

‘It’s a very shortsighted vision of the industry. They don’t realize it’s not like oil and gas, there’s nothing to root it here. I don’t think they’ve been aware just how labor-intensive the industry is and the impact it has on the province. So they are way out of sync with making the industry competitive with other parts of the country. That’s a very big frustration.’

Adds Liimatainen: ‘We need to convince the province that we are not seeking a handout but incentives to help us raise more financing from private sources.’

To counter any reduction in funding, the Alberta Motion Picture Industry Association has strengthened its lobbying voice by expanding its base to represent not just producers but the entire industry.

Ironically, even though the industry faces the possibility of drastic cuts, Calgary producer and ampia president Nancy Marano says ‘now for the first time we’re really being listened to.’

‘We have found this government really wants to talk to private enterprise. We find that really encouraging. In the past it’s been harder to reach government. I believe this government is actually coming to us and saying, `What is it that you need? Prove to us how it will work and we’ll help you.’

‘This government is about cutting out excess bureaucracy and cost. They want to work directly with the industry to provide services in the most cost-effective manner,’ says Marano.

In anticipation of serious cuts, the ampdc has voluntarily cut back its operations over the last three years, reducing its staff by half to ensure the bulk of its funding goes directly to the filmmakers.

Toth confirms the government is planning changes to the way it funds production in the province, but says he is ‘optimistic’ ampdc funding will be renewed. In particular, he says, the Klein government is examining a rebate type of program to complement what is being done on a federal level.

The fate of ACCESS Network, Alberta’s educational broadcaster whose funding was decimated last year by the provincial government, also remains unsure pending next month’s crtc hearings on its purchase by Toronto’s Citytv under the banner Learning and Skills Television Alberta.

Alberta producers, while disappointed over the demise of a very important building block in the evolution of their industry, remain hopeful that the new channel under City will be a stepping stone to a national learning channel similar to what exists in the u.s.

Sadly, says Liimatainen, ‘(access) is destined to be either a private-based operation or nothing at all.’

On a positive note, Liimatainen says the specialty channels are serving as an alternative market and picking up most of the slack in production.