Cinema Canada (May-Jun 1975)

You're sitting by the phone, nerves jumping, waiting for The Call. The Distribution Centre is negotiating with the CBC for a TV showing of your eleven-minute impressionistic film on Toronto immigrants. Sweat, toil, and creative ability are about to be rewarded. The phone rings, and you answer, only to be told that they want the film, but they can’t show it. Remember that sequence that shows workmen building the latest bank tower while the Hart House Orchestra plays O Canada in the background? While O Canada can be used by anyone, because it is in the ‘public domain’, Hart House Orchestra has never granted you a license to synch or perform its version on your soundtrack. So even though the total sequence lasts only twenty-eight seconds, you can’t sign the CBC's Program Rights Agreement or Music Cue Sheet. The film cannot be shown publicly without risking a lawsuit. A minor detail? Far from it. Creating a film is a collaboration between writer, director, cameraman, talent and technicians, but showing it is even more of a group effort. Film-making is a curious combination of art and business; no film is complete until both sides are fully exploited and successfully handled. The business side is a meeting of elements of widely differing requirements and attitudes, but with the same goal: to show your film to an audience. And the same rules apply whether profit is included as an objective or not. Films cannot be made without this excursion into contracts, rights, agreements, and financial negotiations, but most film-makers consider these areas only after the film is complete, if at all. Business activity travels the same path at the same rate as creative activity. Otherwise, a brilliant work of art may sit, lifeless, on a shelf. This booklet is based on a conference on the Business of Film, held January 17 and 18, 1975 in Toronto. The need for communication about the business side was recognized by Frederik Manter and Marie Waisberg of the Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Centre, and they felt a conference, using the expertise of people involved on a daily basis with the business of film, would be a first step in informing the film-making community. Co-sponsored by the Distribution Centre, the Photographic Arts Department of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, and the Department of Film, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University, the two-day gathering hosted more than five hundred people, both professional film-makers and students. Interestingly enough, the former group numbered about 60% of the total, emphasising the desire among film-makers to acquire knowledge of the business side. Of course there are many more film-makers in the country than the number who attended the conference. The idea arose that a booklet, using the information transmitted at the conference as a base, and adding to it significantly, would be eagerly received by the rest of Canadian filmdom. The conference featured three panels of specialists in the areas of Money, Law, and Marketing. This booklet is divided into two parts, The Money and Marketing; Law enters the picture at all points, and is discussed as the need arises. A film is followed from the inception of the idea to dividing the profits and, as you will hopefully realise, there is much more involved than writing, filming, editing and printing. A hypothetical feature film, including various ancillary projects growing out of the feature, was created in order to illustrate how the original project can be exploited fully and is described below. From time to time during the course of the booklet, | will use this model to illustrate points or procedures that are being discussed. The Canadian Film Industry is unique in more than its struggle to survive and prosper: various legal and accounting facts, as well as direct government influence, shape our actions and thinking. This booklet is about the Canadian experience; foreign influences enter periodically, however, because film is such an international art and business. 4