Cinema Canada (Mar 1982)

them with a project well thought aut in all respects, financial, technical, and legal. The CBC is an extra-careful or ganization ; filmmakers, as a rule, are almost diametrically opposed. They lean to the spirit of the film, rather to all the other details necessary to make a deal with the CBC.” In April 1980, the CBC created an office for independent production, headed by lawyer Roman Melnyk, to establish an access point for independents. Melnyk’s job is to co-ordinate CBC programming with independent production; last year his office bought 20 series and several individual programs for mainstream television use. “I see myself as the independent’s advocate,” says Melnyk. “I’m not here to make a deal off the independent, but to help _him with his product.” From experienced producers with proven track records, to aspirant filmmakers with an idea but little expertise, many people approach Melnyk's office proposing everything from a short documentary to a network series. Developing an idea that Melnyk’s office likes generally entails first working it into a proposal or script, then examining the viability of the production itself who would star, what the market would be, where it would fit into the schedule, etc. Once this is satisfactory, the producer and the CBC negotiate the financial package. But Melnyk emphasizes his office is not the only place independents can make deals with the CBC. “My office does not pre-empt or preclude any other department head within the CBC in their relationship with an independent,” he says. Playing With Time's Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler negotiated their sale of three Kids of Degrassi Street episodes mainly with Nana Har court, head of the CBC’s children’s department. “The critical problem for the independents has been that the marketplace has been basically confined to the CBC. This obviously creates a_ bottleneck effect of a wide range of ideas being funnelled into the CBC,” says Melnyk. The most obvious difficulty for the independents is the CBC’s primary obligation to its own creative departments. “If a department is planning a series ona certain topic, then the independents shouldn't expect us to be a market in that area,” says Melnyk. The best advice Melnyk has for an independent is to know the marketplace. “A lot of producers have told me they don’t even watch TV,” he says incredulously. “You've got to know whatis being produced, what is on the air, what the broadcasters can use, what they can pay for the product, where the alternative markets are. You've got to know the environment you are working in very, very well.” An example of a production getting the most out of its marketplace is Atlan» tis’ The Olden Days Cost. Budgetted under $150,000, it has sold to virtually every available market: CBC, RadioCanada, U.S. network, pay, and educational TV, TVOntario, Access Alberta, and 15 countries around the world. Simpson's of Canada has sponsored its non-theatrical release ; Air Canada has bought in-flight rights for both English and French versions; and the federal government purchased several videotapes which they gave as 1981 Christmas presents to Canadian embassy personnel around the world. Michael MacMillan of Atlantis says that sales presently have returned 60 percent of the production costs from Canada, 20 percent from foreign markets, and with the contracts Atlantis has made, the production should be well into profit by 1983. “The lesson we learned is to really do it well, give it strong production values, use the best talent available — best director, best writers, best actors, best crew,” says MacMillen. “It really pays off. It gives you a production which is marketable around the world. You spend more money initially, but you're better off in the final run.” Like MacMillan, John Muller of M&M feels that only by producing quality product will the production industry maintain investor confidence. He feels the deal-makers who have characterized some feature film production in the past three years “have left town” and now those producers whose concerns With filmmaking are both creative i 0g Nase Vee AE ETRE | “It’s ludicrous that the gov. ernment spends so much money trying to force feed the feature film industry, whena small boost to the independent market would get it so much more in the long run.” —Jerry McNabb and financial should be encouraged. “We must turn around the negative attitude toward film investment. We should not be so feature film oriented, not so egotistical as to pressure a film into an investor's hands without a mar ket,” he says. Creatively, he would like to see a return “to the great Canadian tradition of drama, documentary, docudrama” before 1978, embodied in such films as Goin’ Down The Road and Why: Shoot The Teacher ; to achieve this, he believes producers should lower their sights financially and produce films whose budgets are tailored to their anticipated financial return. ‘‘We must control content, be able to overlook the distribution area, make a marketing plan before the film is made, realistically check off a film’s potential in the mar ketplace,” says Muller. “Producers must assure themselves that the property can recoup, so as to create new trust in the investor market. We as producers should find a home market that is realistic, then build it from there.” Impressed by the solid industry effort to convince the federal government to roll back the proposed CCA changes until 1983, Muller urges the production industry to take advantage of the mo mentum. “This effort gives evidence that a solid industry is in place,” he says, pointing to the $148,445,000 in planned production and $56.6 million worth of interim financing said to have been at risk by the original budget changes. He would like to “quickly educate the producers who want to produce this year and match them with the investors.” His producers education would include lessons in tailoring budgets, keeping overhead low to compete with the market, and sharing the financial risk with the investors. He feels strongly that producers and investors should work as teams. “If I can’t control a property from Ato Z, Ishouldn’t risk only my investor's money.” It bothers independents when investors consider their projects as risky as feature film ventures, because the producers feel most of their projects can assure investors a steady return over a long period of time. Small films may not make their investors rich quickly, but they do offer them a sound investment, according to Playing With Time’s'Linda Schuyler; she says many of the 12 to 14 investors in the Kids of Degrassi Street series were offered feature film investments, but declined in favour of her project, which has already made its money back on paper. Michael MacMillan says Atlantis has had a total of 6570 different investors, including repeaters, in the company’s history. He claims the success of The Olden Days Coat raised investor confidence enough to allow Atlantis to make Chambers: Tracks and Gestures without a big risk. But despite the success of Atlantis and Playing With Time, not every independent has confident investors knocking at their door looking for a sound deal: a lot of projects still get shot on deferred salaries and hope. Eric Jordan and Paul Stephens of The Filmworks have been making film together since 1975; they have a good track record producing documentaries for TVOntario and The Agency For Instructional Television in the United States. Their 1979 documentary, Running, was sold as a 30-minute prime-time special to the CBC, while a 10 minute theatrical version was financed by Famous Players and distributed by Paramount Pictures in 1980. When they decided to branch into dramatic production in the spring of 1981 with A Time To Be Brave, a 30minute project they developed themselves about an Indian family living in contemporary Northern Ontario, they found the investment market had gone cold. “We met some very nice people who were interested by the film, but said they were so badly burned in feature film that they weren't going to invest anymore,” said Stephens of his long, frustrating, and fruitless quest on Bay Street. Now in 1982, still committed to making the film, Stephens and Jordan will finance the picture'themselves. The only outside money in the $100,000 budget is “a little bit of financing’ from the federal bureau for multi-culturalism. “It's a tense feeling to risk the capital of the company, but I feel you've got to take those risks,” says Stephens. “We think it'll pay off. It'll pay off artistically — it will make us grow, It will also pay off financially. We think we can make money off of it.” Their plan is to shoot the footage this spring, then attract a distributor or a television buyer; Stephens says they already have strong interest from the CBC and an American non-theatrical distributor. “The main thing now is to do the best we can do researcher, and then show people,” says Jordan. To the filmmakers sustaining themselves primarily through the nontheatrical market, such as Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler of Playing With Time or Asterisk’s David Springbett and Heather MacAndrew, filmmaking is often morea lifestyle than a business. “We chose to be small,” says MacAndrew. “We havea certain kind of filmmaking we want to explore.” Springbett and MacAndrew, as the films they made last year reflect, are deeply interested in international development issues and social concerns. But financing these projects wasn't easy : while The World’s Children was financed by private investors, Springbett and MacAndrew had to sacrifice to make the other two films. A Moveable Feast, funded through a grant by the Canadian Pediatric Society, had such a low budget that both producer's salaries were deferred, and Asterisk assumed Canadian distribution of the film to help recover costs further. Old House, New House was partially shot on spec (filmed without a guaranteed buyer at the producer's risk) in a coproduction with another small independent, Fichman-Sweete; it wasn’t until Springbett had put together a demo film that the government departments came through with some financing. “After a year of writing them letters, memos, and telexes and getting nowhere...” says MacAndrew. Springbett endures the hardships of being a small independent because it lets him do what he’s always been interested in, documentary. “When I was at the CBC they assigned me to the drama department,” he recalls. “I think I was the only one in the company who wanted to get off the drama unit.” Both he and MacAndrew are genuinely disinterested in becoming cogs in the feature filmmaking machine; they are happy working for themselves, doing one big, and maybe two or three small, projects a year. If their projects can’t get off the ground, they meet ends by doing colleague’s films or other media-related jobs. “Its definitely not slumming, youre using skills you’ve acquired,” says MacAndrew, who has worked as a interviewer, and _ book reviewer between films. “Besides, it’s a treat to just work for someone else and not have the worries that go with being producer or director.” At Playing With Time, Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler have developed an entire production attitude towards children’s drama. With writer Amy Jo Cooper, they ‘have produced tight, and appealing stories with characters who are neither too good nor too slick but refreshingly ‘realistic. Their reward has been the security of guarantee from American non-theatrical distributor Learning Corp., which means they can complete 13 Kids of Degrassi St. episodes (six are already in the can or completed). But they are determined to do them on their own terms: four episodes in 1982, three in 1983. “If we had gone the pre-sale route, and had to do 13 episodes by the end of the year, I have every confidence we could do it,” says Schuyler. “But we would have had no choice but to be more administrative, hire more crew, work faster, and we don’t want to do it that way.” Careful financing, as much as good filmmaking, have kept Hood and Schuyler in production. “We've paid cash for every major asset we own,” says Hood. The Degrassi St. budgets, now about $65,000 per episode, can’t go much higher or else the investors won't see a 22/Cinema Canada ~— March 1982