Telefilm quickly reverses controversial changes in face of producer pressure

Telefilm Canada took just a few days to reverse its position after releasing new application budget templates that new media producers say would have created an administrative nightmare in dealing with the Canada New Media Fund (CNMF). The funding body released on April 12 new budget templates to be used when applying for assistance that were no longer the same as those used for the past three years by the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, and producers were shocked to find that several categories of expenses were no longer included in new media budgets, including administrative expenses associated with projects – characterized by some as a dramatic reversal from years of film and television funding policy. The agency, already under fire for funding a new Montreal film festival that coincides with the Atlantic Film Festival, stepped off a potential fight with new media producers, the Bell Fund, and the Canadian Film and Television Production Association on April 21 when it announced it would reinstate the old budget templates. Telefilm detractors say the proposed changes would have left them to struggle with two different budgets for new media projects, which would have resulted in untold hours of extra work to track their expenses against both Bell Fund and CNMF envelopes. While the changes wouldn’t have jeopardized anybody’s project funding, the incident has left a bad taste in producers’ mouths. They say the entire controversy could have been avoided had Telefilm consulted the industry about the proposals, both with them and with the Bell Fund, and not slipped the new templates quietly into the guidelines just a few weeks before the May 9 application deadline. Telefilm, however, defends its decision to move the budget templates away from those previously harmonized with the Bell Fund’s, saying it is a first step toward easier online application filing, brings the fund’s budgets into line with those of the agency’s other programs, and will reduce the administrative burden on Telefilm’s end to provide reports to Canadian Heritage on its contribution agreement. Earl Hong Tai, new media sector head at Telefilm, tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the agency now has an extranet-based online application service available to film and television producers, and that there is an important push to offer new media producers the same service. Over the years, he says, a wide range of budgets have been submitted by producers across a range of project types, including TV/new media producers, and those working on projects for wireless, kiosks, gaming consoles and others. Hong Tai says that because it would be impractical to post several different budget templates to the extranet system, a compromise document had to be created. "You’re never going to be able to come up with a template that fits all the different formats, but we tried to come up with a middle of the road (one) and tried to allow for as much flexibility as possible for people to customize to their particular project. Most of those changes, at the end of the day were actually to align with existing practices." Asked whether the agency consulted stakeholders about the change, Hong Tai says, "We ran out of time, quite frankly. We had to get to our May 9 deadline, we had to hope that we could get this out there to get people to review it and be able to study it. Because we based it on historic budget documents that we had internally, we did as much research as we could and tried to reflect the industry practice." Hong Tai notes that the new budget templates will likely meet the needs of a greater number of clients than the single template that was previously harmonized with Bell Fund’s. He notes that many Canada New Media Fund applicants aren’t familiar with TV production models, on which the Bell/Telefilm template was based, and have expressed frustration at the difficulty of dealing with the different vocabulary. "We didn’t want to go into creating three templates, because for statistical and data processing and administration purposes, that was just not workable. We tried to create a single template that’s middle of the road. Obviously, there are some producers that don’t feel that was appropriate." He promises that Telefilm will initiate a discussion with Bell Fund on any further proposed changes, and emphasizes that applicants also applying for Bell Fund cash will be able to use the same single template pending consultations. Those will likely be held after the May 9 applications have been dealt with. Hong Tai also disputes the immediate reaction against perceived changes to the guidelines dealing with administrative expenses, which some observers have said goes against previous policy. He says the changes in the guidelines just clarify existing Telefilm rules that don’t fund corporate overhead. "I’ll give you an example. If you’ve got a head office and an office receptionist and her desk and her computer, that’s corporate overhead, right. It’s office expenses. What we do allow is that, for example, if for the production you went out and hired a production office and hired additional staff and bought new equipment, that stuff’s fine. We’re talking about corporate office expenses, and, that’s always been the practice in film and TV….It’s just that the language and so on wasn’t as clear as it should have been." While Telefilm has backed off and given producers applying to the Bell Fund the opportunity to use the same budget template, the episode has left producers and Bell Fund officials bitter about the lack of consultation. Changes to the budget template crafted four years ago between Bell Fund’s Charles Zamaria and Telefilm’s Keith Clarkson will have a wide-ranging impact on the Bell Fund, says its executive director Andra Sheffer. "We don’t understand why they went ahead and did it unilaterally. We don’t understand why they haven’t consulted with the industry. And, we now have to figure out what the impact is going to be and how we could possibly use two different templates, which seems like it can’t be done. Because, we can’t both be operating from different budgets because it means that in the end producers have to have audits that are different. It just doesn’t make any sense in a small industry, with the little bit of money that we’re putting into these things, that we would require (two budgets)," Sheffer says. "If they had talked to us about it, we could have probably in an hour worked out a new revised joint template that would have satisfied both their needs and ours, and would have been a single template for the industry. It is at that level. It is pretty petty. But, the fact is that they’ve gone ahead and done all of this which has made it all into a big issue." Producer Mark Bishop, head of marblemedia, backs Sheffer up. "Considerable work has been done by many people before us to try and put these plans in place. And then to turn around without even having any discussion with anyone in the industry, that I know of…to not consult with the other funding bodies, puts everyone in a bit of an awkward position now. Who knows what it can mean? From a logistical perspective, it can mean having to run two different budgets for one single project, upping the administrative costs… "They’re causing a lot more administrative headache for absolutely no reason. And, all of this could have been avoided by a simple conversation that could have been held a month ago. I mean, they haven’t hit a deadline in a year. You’d think in the course of a year, if there were problems with the budget, they might have found the time to call up Andra and Charles at the Bell Fund and say, ‘maybe we should talk about this.’"

Telefilm quickly reverses controversial changes in face of producer pressure

News | 04/29/2005 4:00 am EDT

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