Western producers increasingly turning to foreign markets: report

British Columbia Film, Sask-Film and Manitoba Film and Sound produced a report titled Out of the West: Export, Growth and the Western Canadian Production Industry. Excerpts from the document appear below; the entire report can be downloaded from SaskFilm’s website (www.saskfilm.com). Overall, the Western Canadian production industry has evolved differently from the industries in Ontario and Quebec. Western producers have adapted to the vagaries of the domestic and international marketplace by undertaking a varied slate of productions that may include distinctively Canadian projects produced for the domestic market, internationally financed productions for the global market, and some foreign service production to generate revenues... The infrastructure and capacity exists for growth in the Western production industry....What Western companies need in order to grow is increased access to production financing opportunities and the expertise to exploit those opportunities. …According to Profile 2005, total volume of Canadian production activity was $4.9 billion in 2003/04. Of this total, the four Western provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba) had a combined production volume of $1.8 billion or 36.4% of the Canadian total. It is estimated that in the Western provinces more than 49,000 direct and indirect jobs were generated through the film and television industry in 2003/04. …The production industry in the West can experience significant swings in volume which highlights the cyclical nature of the business and regional variations. It is a growing industry in the West where growth can occur in spurts and can be affected by such things as changes to provincial and federal production financing initiatives and the levels of foreign production. …In order to assess the Western production industry it was necessary to garner additional data from the provincial agencies and the production companies themselves. Based on these sources, virtually all production companies in the Western region would be considered small-and-medium enterprises (or SMEs) based on the number of employees. Only 7% of the 283 production companies active in the West in 2004-05 have more than 4 to 7 full-time employees, including the partners of the companies. This seems to be a trend across the country. Many of the larger Canadian production companies that emerged in the mid-1990s and became publicly traded companies have since left the independent production business either by choice (such as Alliance Atlantis), by acquisition (such as Nelvana purchased by a broadcaster, Corus Entertainment) or by default (Paragon). With a few notable exceptions, most Western production companies are less than 10 to 12 years old. However, the Canadian film and television industry in its entirety has only grown in significance since the late 1980s. To a large degree the domestic industry in Canada emerged from the skills development and inward investment of foreign location production that first took root in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. With the possible exception of British Columbia, the production industry in the West has been slower to develop in relation to central Canada. Nonetheless, policies and regulations developed at the federal and provincial levels in the late 1980’s and 1990’s subsequently fostered the expansion of the domestic industry across the country.

Western producers increasingly turning to foreign markets: report

News | 04/21/2006 4:00 am EDT

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