Cinema Canada (Mar 1982)

) NO i. A ; Paul Donovan returned to Halifax from London, England, after completing film school there in 1978. Like others, he felt the promise of the new climate in the industry, and started to work. With his brother Michael, a lawyer by trade, he founded Surfacing Films, and made a first feature South Pacific 1942, a surreal comedy set in a Canadian submarine during World War II. Canada had no subs in World War II. Recently, the Donovans have completed their second feature Siege, which is in postproduction in Toronto. At present, they are the only feature film producers in Nova Scotia. ? Cinema Canada: How did Surfacing Films come into existence ? Paul Donovan: There are a lot of unemployed people in Nova Scotia, and we were amongst them. We wanted to utilize our skills, and my background was in filmmaking. We started to work at raising money. It evolved slowly, and as Ineeded more and more legal advice, Michael provided it and became more familiar with the mechanics of what we were doing ; and after a while we were a film company. John Walsh had just come back from Singapore or Taiwan, where he was working as a diver in shark infested waters. He likes Nova Scotia because there’s nothing big there, he says. Because people sit around and drink beer, they're skeptical. He liked the challenge of building a submarine. John Harkness, Toronto film critic, is a former Cinema Canada staff reporter. 1 6/Cinema Canada ~March 1982 PAUL DONOVAN by John Harkness Maura O'Connell was not in on the first film, she just started recently (as codirector on Siege). Cinema Canada: Why are you based in Halifax ? Paul Donovan: We like Nova Scotia. . Cinema Canada: What sort of ad vantages or disadvantages do you find there ? Paul Donovan: The disadvantage is that we're off on our own, and that’s probably an advantage also. Cinema Canada: What about the finalend: is it harder toraise moneyin the East or perhaps easier because you're the only people there ? Paul Donovan: I don’t know, because we haven't tried to raise money our selves. Sometimes we console ourselves, saying it's harder because people are extremely conservative with what money they have. It’s not huge amounts in Nova Scotia. They're not cowboys. On the other hand, we sometimes think the’ other way; that we're in untested. waters. Cinema Canada: The money for both your films has been raised through the Capital Cost Allowance. Has that been primarily in Nova Scotia ? Paul Donovan: Primarily in Nova Scotia, but a lot of tax shelter investment has been raised there for other films. The people who know, know, and people inside the financial world will tell you what films sold there. It’s a very cozy, well-organized, small back-room market. We're in a position, if we deliver, that we will at least find money for future films. We have a structure in place that’s very good for us at present. Cinema Canada: This structure for financing films, does it have to do with the fact that you have the creative and legal elements combined in a single company? Paul Donovan: It’s been a good balance for us. But my brother won some writing prizes while studying law, so I think he’s a reasonably creative person, and I'm reasonably business-minded, I’m intimately familiar with distribution contracts, etc., so that we can deal with it all ourselves. That helps us cut costs and it helps us take a realistic approach, Regarding the structure, what we have is an agreement with a broker, whereby the broker would like to keep us going and we have to deliver a certain amount of product. The tax shelter is an added bonus, but it’s not a fundamental part of the agreement. All we have to do is make low-budget films that make money. Cinema Canada: So the removal of the tax shelter wouldn’t have much effect’on you? Paul Donovan: Maybe it will and maybe it won't. It certainly makes the deal very sweet for an investor. It’s like a, net hanging underneath you. The tax shelter made the film industry. Films started being made when people realized how the shelter could be sold tothe general public, and I don't believe for one second that films could have hap pened without it. I don’t know if it will die without it; it may, but people are much more experienced and level headed than in ’77. Cinema Canada: What about the logistics of working in Nova Scotia? How much do you have to import? Paul Donovan: Everything. There is no35mm equipment for anything, that’s all there is to it. But what's the dif ference ? It doesn’t matter. It’s as much trouble to get a camera for outside Toronto to downtown Toronto as it is to ship to Halifax. Airplanes take one out in two hours. You do have to edit far away, and go without certain things, like you have to wait two days for rushes, which is not a rush. There’s no double system projection at all, so you can’t see synced rushes. < _