Documentary film making on rise, but quality may not be up to par, warns report

Canadian documentary films are enjoying astounding annual growth, but their quality and marketability could decline because of funding agency priorities, a study funded by government agencies and industry players concludes. The report, written by Michel Houle, a consultant with Industries culturelles et communications, says the number of hours of documentaries produced in Canada has increased 55 per cent in recent years. But it warns that the focus of films may become more narrow, and the quality may decline. The report says funding agencies want to give money to companies making regional documentaries and programs with distinctly Canadian themes. The future of Canadian documentaries was discussed by a panel at the Banff Television Festival last month. Paul Jay of Paul Jay Productions, Toronto, said it is more difficult for artists to make documentary films, despite an increase in funding and access to television schedules. "We’ve created a system of turning our independent filmmakers into contractors. We’re salesmen first and creators second," he said. "If you worked out the hourly wage of independent filmmakers, the UN would take Canada off the list of best countries to live and accuse us of using slave labour." Jay said fees are low because filmmakers get equity in a production. "It’s a joke, it’s a grand illusion. By and large, the equity is practically meaningless. There are producers who want to make money and are disciplined and smart and are making a go of it, but it’s not what culture is about." In September, the CRTC will introduce a program content category specifically for documentaries, which will help ensure better monitoring of the contribution of Canadian broadcasters to the funding and broadcasting of documentaries. Canadian feature-length documentaries will be included in the list of priority program categories. Network television stations will have to broadcast eight hours of priority programs per week in prime time. The report’s authors predict the demand for Canadian documentaries for broadcast on Canadian stations will increase at a "reasonably sustained rate" for the next three to five years because of the growth in the number of specialty channels, the licence renewal commitments made by CBC/SRC, Newsworld and RDI, and the new CRTC prime time rules. The report also predicts funding will increase as more money is put into the Canadian Television Fund (CTF) by broadcast distributors. Pressure from the market and from producers may push the federal government and the provinces to increase their production funding, it adds. The downward pressure on average hourly budgets is expected to let up, at least in the short-term. While digital specialty channels are not expected to have large budgets, the CBC will continue to be a big buyer of documentaries. The authors also expect there will be further fragmention in the market, with more documentaries being made by smaller companies and freelance filmmakers. Documentary buyers may find that the small companies can’t maintain consistent quality. And, the reluctance of distributors and exporters to put money into Canadian documentaries, "limits (their) national and international exposure and the possibility of operations and expansion outside the broadcasting framework." That situation will be made worse, they state, by the CTF and Telefilm Canada’s adoption of "universal rules (applicable to all production categories) apparently designed to correct certain problems of excessive concentration of production activities in the hands of a few firms, as observed in other sectors, and thus poorly adapted to the actual situation of documentary production, distribution and exports, which is affected by the opposite problem." As well, by pushing Canadian documentary producers to focus on Canadian themes, funding agencies are coercing documentary makers to create films that have little chance of finding off-shore buyers, the report says.

Documentary film making on rise, but quality may not be up to par, warns report

Broadcast | July 19, 2000

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