Turning the engine

As Toronto revs up for its annual mid-September 10-day homage to filmmaking, there is a growing sense within the domestic production community that the industry is nudging ahead to a new plateau.

The signs are everywhere, and not just in the big splashy stories about production companies going public. But also in the relatively smaller, though no less significant, stories such as the recent announcement that a coalition of industry concerns and government are spending $175,000 to try to get a reliable and comprehensive look at the state of the industry.

There hasn’t been a study of this kind in more than 10 years, and the companies behind it – the Royal Bank, Cinar Films, ytv, Cineplex Odeon, Famous Players and The Financial Post – provide fair assurance that the job will be well done. Interestingly, the federal government’s participation in this project is through the Department of Industry, suggesting that the perception in Ottawa is changing and that the business of film and television production is becoming an industrial priority.

Yet while there is good reason to feel encouraged, a few notable gaps remain in the emerging agenda, not the least of which is the industry’s attention – or rather, the inattention – to marketing. It is remarkable that with so much money at stake in each film or television production so little is invested in basic research and development.

A Toronto-based marketing and media research company, the Media Consulting Group, spent some time earlier this year to determine the nature and the scope of the need for professional motion picture research services in Canada.

mcg found that while there continues to be a polarity in the production community over the necessity of such services, there is growing pressure, particularly from investors, to demonstrate low risk in new film ventures.

‘As motion picture research and marketing consultants, we believe that the biggest challenge for the Canadian industry is not to direct or produce great cinema,’ says mcg managing director Tom Keane. ‘The talent is there to do just that. The big challenge is to make a profit doing it in order to continue to direct, produce and distribute great cinema.’

Keane adds: ‘Consider the playing field: proliferation of media, never mind the continually expanding number of film genres and the geometric progression of new releases each week.

‘Add on made-for-tv movies and now a stupendous growth in other forms of visual entertainment such as video games. Then add to this the increasingly limited amount of funding available and the number of regulations that must be satisfied to acquire that much-needed infusion of capital. The bottom-line is that the audience is no longer a captive one for film producers and distributors.’

In short, the market for motion pictures has become enormously complex and while gut feel and creative instinct will never be replaced as the engine behind any great motion picture, there is increasing need for the addition of marketing and research tools to help put it in fine-tune.