HANSARD
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Ms. Pam Birdsall (Chairman)
Ms. Vicki Conrad
Mr. Brian Skabar
Mr. Jim Boudreau
Ms. Lenore Zann
Hon. Keith Colwell
Mr. Zach Churchill
Hon. Christopher d'Entremont
Mr. Keith Bain
[Mr. Brian Skabar was replaced by Mr. Mat Whynott.]
[Ms. Lenore Zann was replaced by Mr. Leonard Preyra.]
In Attendance:
Ms. Jana Hodgson
Legislative Committee Clerk
WITNESSES
Film Nova Scotia
Ms. Ann MacKenzie
President & CEO
Mr. David MacLeod
Founding Member, Nova Scotia Motion Picture Industry Association
Mr. Tim Storey
Business Agent, Directors Guild of Canada, Atlantic Regional Council
Ms. Abbi Hennigar
Acting Director of Marketing
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HALIFAX, TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2011
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Ms. Pam Birdsall
MADAM CHAIRMAN: I think there are enough of us here to start, it's 9:00 a.m. Welcome, this is a wonderful day today to have you here, Film Nova Scotia. What we'll do before we start your presentation is we'll go around the table for introductions.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MADAM CHAIRMAN: This morning we have with us Ann MacKenzie, Mr. David MacLeod, Tim Storey, and Abbi Hennigar. We've asked for a five- to 10-minute presentation and it looks like you have some audiovisual to help us out, so we'll go through that. The procedure is you will do your presentation and we'll all have 10 minutes in the first round of questioning and then, given more time, we'll have more questions. Then you'll do a summation and we'll hope to be done a little before 11:00 a.m., if that works. So if you'd like to introduce yourselves.
MS. ANN MACKENZIE: I will do that. I'm Ann MacKenzie, president and CEO of Film Nova Scotia; Abbi Hennigar is our director of marketing; Tim Storey is the business agent for DGC; and David MacLeod - I'm sure he will be joining us, he's driving in from Chester - is a producer.
Tim is the business agent for DGC, but he's also going to be representing the IATSE unions - 667 camera and 849 technicians - and ACTRA. Of course, David will be speaking from a producer perspective. I'm going to give an overview of the industry, and then Tim and David are going to speak from their specific organizations' perspectives. If we have time at the end we would love to show you some short videos, they're less than four minutes. It's a lot more visual than what we're going to try to communicate verbally, so hopefully we can have that time and we'll be here to answer questions.
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Throughout the presentation I'm going to be saying "audiovisual" and when I say that I'm referring to film, television, and digital productions. It's just easier than saying all three words.
Nova Scotia's audiovisual industry is a real success story. It has been here for 25 years, it employs over 3,000 Nova Scotians, it generates $100 million-plus of production activity every year. It's the fourth largest production centre in the country and I don't think there are many other industries in the province where we can say that. As I mentioned, we do around $100 million of production activity every year; usually half of that is local and the other half is foreign.
In the past most of our foreign production has come from the U.S., but lately we've made inroads into Europe, particularly Germany. In the last couple of years, German productions have brought close to $50 million of production activity to Nova Scotia and that's for a series like Moby Dick that was in Shelburne, or The Sea Wolf here in Halifax, the Joanna Trollope series - I think that was in the Chester area - and the Artzooka! children's show that was here in Halifax in the studio. It's pretty clear how important this industry is to the economy, but it's also very important to the cultural industries as well.
Filmmakers from all over the world know who we are and what we have to offer, and they come here because of our talented crews and what we can provide.
On the cultural side, the audiovisual industry of film, television, digital production, et cetera - I said I wasn't going to say it all three times, but there I am doing it - it's a cornerstone of the cultural community or the creative industries. This industry hires writers, directors, musicians, actors, visual artists, graphic designers, costume designers, you name it. When I say $100 million of production activity, the foreign and the local, half and half usually, our industry is so successful because of this combination. It's because we have the local stories and the foreign production.
A little bit of history, 2008-09 was one of our best years on record, we had $150 million of production activity. The year before, $76 million - not so great - that was because at that point in time our tax credit was not competitive, it was one of the lowest in the country. When the tax credit was increased in late 2007, that accounted for the big swing in uptake of production. But the audiovisual industry is no more recession proof than any other industry, so 2009-10, it was pretty close to $100 million - we came in at $97 million - not so bad. I think we had some good overflow of a lot of the production that was triggered from the increase in late 2007.
This year - our year-end is March 31st, so 2010-11 - we're hoping to be right about the $100 million mark again, maybe a little more, a little less. Unfortunately, animation production declined this year, but with the recent changes to the regulations and the film tax credit, I think you'll see that segment of the industry rebound.
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Nova Scotia's audiovisual industry is still in the top four industries in the country and for a province with less than 3 per cent of the country's population, that's pretty good. So the success of our industry is, of course, due to the talented filmmakers, crews, and actors that we have in the province, but it's also due to incentives like the tax credit, the investment programs, and the dedicated Film Development Corporation that goes out and markets the province, brings back business, and works on the ground with local and foreign filmmakers to help them make their productions happen.
These 3,000 people who work in the audiovisual industry depend on Nova Scotia remaining competitive with all of the other jurisdictions because every other province in the country has financial incentives for the audiovisual industry, as do most of the states in the U.S., as do all of pretty much the developed countries in the world.
There has always been some debate as to whether the film tax credit is something the government should be spending on. We're here to say that the film tax credit is a good investment; it creates jobs and stimulates the economy. For every dollar that's paid out in tax credit on domestic production, an additional $4 is attracted or leveraged from somewhere else. For every dollar that's paid out on foreign production, an additional $9 is attracted or leveraged from somewhere else. It's a lot clearer to show this by diagram.
This diagram you have here shows all of the domestic production from 2004 right through to the end of 2009. They financed their total budgets: 18 per cent came from the tax credit, 7 per cent came from Film Nova Scotia programs, 39 per cent came from private industry, and 36 per cent came from the federal government. If we look at the same chart for a foreign production, you'll see that 84 per cent came from private industry, and these are all of the productions right through that five-year period. Mind you, a lot comes from private investment in these cases because they're coming from L.A. studios or Germany, but the foreign productions don't spend as much or as high a percentage of their budgets in the province as local productions. Only 10 per cent of the financing of these productions comes from the tax credit and 6 per cent comes from the federal government through federal tax credits.
These charts show pretty clearly how important or how effective tax credits and investment programs are at leveraging investment into the province from outside the province. When we say "private investment" in those charts, we're talking about private broadcasters, private distributors, private funding agencies. When we talk about the federal government, we're talking about Telefilm Canada, the Canada Media Fund, federal tax credits.
Programs like the film tax credit and the equity investment program bring business to the province. They are really good at leveraging money. If you actually combine the tax credits and the Film Nova Scotia investment programs together, for every dollar that goes out into local productions, they're still leveraging another $3 from outside the province and
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$9 from foreign productions. This money that's coming in from outside the province, like the federal government, they spend - I'll put it into perspective - close to $1 billion in Telefilm Canada funds and programs, Canada Media Funds, and federal tax credits. Nova Scotia production companies generally access between 7 per cent and 10 per cent of this $1 billion. Now that's pretty good for a province of our size when you look at the rest of the country.
When the priority in the province is growing the revenue at the top line, investments like this help by bringing this money in. The federal government is going to spend this money anyway and if Nova Scotia doesn't have competitive tools like the tax credit and Film Nova Scotia programs that the producers can use to leverage this money, they just won't get it and the federal government will spend it elsewhere.
Film tax credits, equity investments, and development programs that Film Nova Scotia offers, these are the tools of economic development that are used in this industry. If we don't have them, then Nova Scotia is not competitive and the 3,000 people who work in the industry, they're the ones who will suffer. In the past we normally only competed with provinces like Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, but just recently Ontario and Quebec have increased their tax credits to be competitive with ours and there's a reason that there's so much competition for this industry. Jurisdictions want the audiovisual industry for its ability to stimulate investment and create jobs in an innovative and productive industry.
The audiovisual industry is important to both Nova Scotia's economy and its cultural community. On the economic side it's pretty clear with 3,000 jobs, $100 million in production activity you can see it there, it's very labour intensive. It hires skills in every imaginable area from carpenters, electricians, lawyers, accountants, caterers, hairdressers, you name it, and that skill is employed on a film set.
When it comes to the creative industries, we already mentioned that it's a cornerstone of that industry hiring so many of the artists and enabling them to stay home and work. It's because we have a successful audiovisual industry that a stage actor like John Dunsworth can have a successful acting career in his 50s, or you have a young actress like Ellen Page, who can achieve international stardom like she has because she was able to develop her skills working on the dozens of shorts, television shows, and independent features that she worked on in Nova Scotia throughout her career.
The audiovisual industry provides an attractive career path for our youth providing them with high-paying, high-skilled jobs. It maximizes the province's investment into the education system of Nova Scotia by hiring so many of the graduates from the community college, NSCAD, and the other universities. NSCC has nine programs that are designed to support the audiovisual industry and in the last five years they've graduated 800 students.
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NSCAD has three and in the last five years they have graduated around 170 students. The audiovisual industry is the industry that is picking up these graduates.
[9:15 a.m.]
The audiovisual industry is the leader in technology transfer. It provides the skills and training to create real jobs for the 21st Century. It can put a place on the map like no other medium can, it can raise our profile or share our profile or our identity nationally, internationally. It can raise our profile in foreign markets when films that shoot here shoot elsewhere, and it can highlight social issues like gun control, the Rwandan genocide, or racial segregation, as the local filmmakers on Bowling for Columbine, Shake Hands With The Devil, and Little Black Schoolhouse all showed. It has a real tangible impact on other industries like tourism, retail, and hospitality. It's environmentally friendly. It doesn't have the footprint or doesn't have the impact on the environment that traditional industries like farming, logging, or manufacturing have. If anything, the audiovisual industry is typified by abundance, I guess, there's no limit to how many creative ideas someone can come up with.
The audiovisual industry is an industry that can help in the province's quest to get back to balance. It's an industry that employs 3,000 people and most of them are younger, and they're going to be paying the taxes on the draws on the system that will be created by an aging population. It's an industry that attracts so much investment from outside the province into the province, and it's an industry that can maximize the province's investment into education.
Film Nova Scotia - just a couple of things on us. We're a provincial Crown Corporation, we report to the Minister of Economic and Rural Development. Our mandate is to grow the economy by stimulating investment in employment and by promoting Nova Scotia's producers, production skills, creativity, locations, and global markets. We have a whole slew of programs to help us do that - everything from investment, industry development, export development, marketing.
I've listed just some of our programs here, we're going to hand out brochures on them later. There's a ton of information on them on our Web site and I'd be happy to answer questions on them. Plus, just to mention, we administer the Film Industry Tax Credit on behalf of the Department of Finance - and David MacLeod has arrived, so just in time.
The second slide is just some of our export marketing development services that we provide. Again, I'll hand out materials, information on our Web site, and we'd be happy to answer questions later. So, Tim, you're on.
MR. TIM STOREY: Okay, great. Thank you, good morning, Madam Chairman and honourable members. I'm Tim Storey, business agent for the Directors Guild of Canada, Atlantic Regional Council. I represent management and creative personnel in the sector. I'm
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also vice-chair of NSMPIA, the Nova Scotia Motion Picture Industry Association. I'll try not to throw out too many acronyms this morning because we are an industry that loves our acronyms, so pause me if I do go on a bit.
I'm here to speak to the committee about the workers in the sector, in the screen-based industries, or audiovisual - another term - as Ann has stated. My focus is on the unionized workers but I also wanted to bring out that there is a large portion of other workers in the sector that are not unionized, that we have a symbiotic relationship with. They are an important part of the industry as well.
There are three main groups in Atlantic Canada, and in Nova Scotia in particular, that represent film workers. They are the unions and guilds that consist of ACTRA, which is the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. ACTRA Maritimes represents throughout the Maritimes and has about 600 members and has been here since the 1960s. There is IATSE - the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts - commonly known as IA. There are three groups that make up the IA in Atlantic Canada: two are film-sector based; one is largely stage and traditional theatrical.
We have IATSE Local 667, which is the camera local, representing all the camera workers in Nova Scotia; they have 42 members. Then there is IATSE Local 849, which is the majority of the technicians on the ground, on the shooting floor. They have 290 members in 18 different categories. Then there's my organization, which is the Directors Guild of Canada, the Atlantic Regional Council. We have 110 members in Nova Scotia representing 22 different categories, everything from directors to production designers, editors, location folk - various different categories.
In addition to that, there are all the other non-union categories, as well, and non-union workers in the sector. We work with them very closely because they are the people who work in commercials. They also work on documentaries, lifestyle productions, and my members and the members of the other locals move back and forth between those sectors. When there isn't other film work that's going on that's under contract, they will work on commercials and they will work on television, lifestyle documentaries, that sort of thing.
We have a great number of highly skilled people, as Ann mentioned in her presentation. This is an industry that attracts young people, it is an industry that is highly skilled, requiring a great deal of technological knowledge. It enables a lot of the training from the colleges and universities and local people to stay here at home, because of the advantages that have been created by government and the previous governments enhancing the tax credits. It has allowed the development of a sustainable industry here at home so that people can stay here without having to go across the country or to other jurisdictions.
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One of the things that I really wanted to sort of put a face to these people, you talk about the 3,000 people that there are a great number of really interesting stories and people that have come out of the organizations that are represented here. Ann mentioned Ellen Page, who is one of the shining examples that everyone talks about when you talk about ACTRA and you talk about performers in Atlantic Canada, who has gone from working on Pit Pony - which is a project that you were involved in, correct?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: No.
MR. STOREY: No? Oh, I thought so, it was before my time - Pit Pony, all the way to, more recently, Inception which, of course, was a big blockbuster for 2010. Then you have people like Josh MacDonald, who started off as a stage actor, who has become a script writer and this year has had two productions, two scripts of his made into feature films - one of which was yours.
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: Yes.
MR. STOREY: Okay, good. One of the things that's key to think about somebody like Josh MacDonald is that he has been able to stay here and have his work produced. It has also allowed his family to stay here as well. His wife is also an actor who has had a recurring film role on Call Me Fitz, so they've been able to craft a viable career here in Halifax and in Nova Scotia.
The television series Haven has a lot of really great local actors performing in it and there was an active sort of pursuit of having those people take part and using the local talent. There are financial gains for it, as well as using local talent, but there's also building a homegrown base here and that's something that's very important.
The IATSE crews are some of the best and are recognized worldwide. There are crew members from the 667 camera local that have worked internationally, as well as across the country. To give an example, to sort of give a scope of the amount of work they do, of the 42 members who were in IATSE Local 667 last year, 24 worked throughout the course of the year and made over $1.4 million in wages alone in 2010. It's a substantive amount. By the time that you add in benefits on top of that, it's a big draw. What we've seen, as well, is because of the development of the industry here, homegrown directors of photography - the people who are actually shooting these films - are being hired now on bigger productions, on U.S. productions as well, which has been a huge advantage for building the industry.
Local 849 has also put out a great number of crew members, somebody like Mary Louise McCloskey, who is a script supervisor. She's the one who's making sure that the words all come out right and that everything looks perfect on the set. She is lured away to L.A. on a regular basis because of her skill and recognition. She has also been recognized
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with a research group and is now developing applications for the industry on a national level. These are some of the workers that we have here.
In my own organization, the directors are recognized across the country. Member David MacLeod - you're still a member?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: Yes, I am. Half of what he said here is absolutely right on. That's great. (Laughter)
MR. STOREY: David has been responsible for so many great productions, the biggest and largest productions that we've had in the last couple of years, and fostered and created so many partnerships across the country and around the world.
The other great shining example that I'd like to talk about for my organization is a young man by the name of Rob Cotterill, who in his daily life is a second AD, a second assistant director. He and a bunch of friends and buddies got together and made a little film called Hobo with a Shotgun. You might have heard of it - you probably will in the next little while. That little film went to Sundance, won a couple of awards, got a distribution deal, and has been made into a feature film which is now going back to Sundance and is going to be broadcast and shown around the world. That's a really great example of a little film that could. Those are films that all of our people have been working on, all of our films have been created by these people.
In addition to that, as we've mentioned already, there are all the support workers. There are all the other non-union people, the people who work on documentaries, there are the people who work in the equipment houses. These are all part of the industry that we represent. Thank you.
MS. MACKENZIE: Thanks. So, David, you're on.
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: Hi, my name is David MacLeod. I'm a partner and part owner of a company called Big Motion Pictures. I have the very lucky ability to work on the South Shore, in Chester. I apologize for being late this morning, I'm not used to dealing with city traffic in the morning - my commute is four minutes.
We primarily at Big Motion Pictures do scripted, big-budget drama for multiple platforms. We sell to conventional, cable, pay TV, and we produce all sorts of stuff, based on those shows, for the Internet. We do a lot of co-productions. In 2010 we finished a big Moby Dick mini-series that we were doing with German partners Tele München. Out of a total budget of $25 million - shooting was split between here and Europe - we managed to get about $16 million of the $25 million into the Canadian side of the budget, of which about $12 million was spent and stayed here in Nova Scotia, so that's the sort of money that gets
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left behind in those sorts of productions. It's all money from outside, in that case European money.
We are also co-producing with Canada's now biggest production entity, a company called Entertainment One, we co-produce this Haven television series that's being shot on the South Shore. We do all the shooting here, all the writing, and then the post-production is done outside of Nova Scotia but we still manage to keep over half of the $24 million budget here in Nova Scotia, being spent here.
I'm also involved with the 13 half-hour shows that Tim talked about, Call Me Fitz, shot in Wolfville-New Minas. We actually even get more of that - that's a $10 million budget and about 70 per cent of that money stays in Nova Scotia.
These sorts of things are critical for the crew infrastructure. The jobs, and many of them are union, highly paid, a whole range of people get them. We have to have highly creative, artistic types for some of them but some of them are tradesmen type of things. We use painters and carpenters, and grips, who would otherwise be plumbers in the rest of the world, a lot of blue collar, high-paying tradesmen type jobs. In order to keep those here we need a certain base of production for these guys to stick around. These big shows are very good at keeping that infrastructure there. When it is here, then all the local producers, of course, have access to highly trained, highly skilled people who are good at it.
[9:30 a.m.]
All sorts of ancillary businesses benefit when we shoot, obviously. We spend a lot of money on accommodations and meals and auto rentals and truck rentals. We spend tons of money at building supply stores, equipment rental houses, things you might not think of. We hire security companies, traffic flagging companies, all sorts of industries whose core business isn't film or television, they do get an awful lot of work from us.
The sort of thing that I do is one part of the business. There are several very successful production companies here. Probably the one that you would be most likely to know of is DHX Media - Michael Donovan, his Halifax Film and kids animation. That's very important. They have a whole ton of people working at computers. All the kids that we're putting through the community college and stuff, if we don't have work for them here then they're going to take their set of skills elsewhere. They're not going to stay and take McDonald's jobs if they have been trained to be animators. Michael is very important in keeping that gang around.
There's a whole documentary business that Tim alluded to. Here in Nova Scotia John Wesley Chisholm and his company, Arcadia, are known throughout the world, do tons of work for National Geographic. People all over the world see these beautiful - and he sort of specializes in stuff that has to do with oceans and sea. People all over the world watch
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National Geographic and these beautiful things, and half of them are done by John's company here in Nova Scotia.
We have quite a presence in lifestyle factual. There's a woman named Johanna Eliot, who runs a company called Ocean Entertainment that is very well-known in the industry for producing high-quality lifestyle stuff. Every one of these companies and my own company are trying to build up our Web presence. Whereas 15 years ago I did almost all my business with conventional television, we're now doing it with conventional cable, pay, and all of these things need ancillary support and marketing support on the Web, so we're also employing the younger, Web-savvy, computer-savvy kids to build us some very elaborate Web sites.
Almost everything being done on the Web, because we don't know how to monetize it properly yet - actually, most of that content is being made by existing companies that are already working and making their money in a more conventional route and we're basically experimenting a bit and using it as a marketing tool and hoping that one day we'll figure out how to monetize because it's another distribution platform, right?
We make content - whether you watch it on television or on pay cable or on your mobile phone or on your iPad now, is immaterial in a way. That's just the way you're watching it, so when computers and televisions - and they tell me they soon will all be the same thing - hopefully we'll still be able to figure out how to make money and sell our product.
Mostly in terms of the business here in Nova Scotia, what is by far the biggest money is attracting large outside productions to come in and it's not money that is being circulated inside the province, it's new wealth coming in and it keeps a crew here working and hopefully keeps all the NSCAD kids with a career path that they can follow here in Nova Scotia.
That's my presentation. Thank you.
MS. MACKENZIE: Do we have time to show the short videos? Okay, great. We'll start with one which is focusing on a lot of the foreign productions we shoot here and then the second one is highlighting a lot of the local shows. Oh, this is our Web site, too, this is Film Nova Scotia's Web site. All of those buttons have other videos, if you ever want to go on and take a look, then there's information on all our programs as well.
[9:35 a.m. Video presentations were made.]
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Let's establish a speakers list.
Mr. Preyra, would you like to start?
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MR. LEONARD PREYRA: Thank you very much and thank you, Ann, a great presentation. The film industry is a huge part of my constituency so I'm happy to be here to fill in for Lenore. I do have a couple of just basic questions. At the film festival you see some great Canadian and Nova Scotian films. I'm thinking about Eric Bednarski's The Strangest Dream or John Walker's Passage. Those are among the best films I've ever seen yet they haven't made it to the screen here, they haven't really gone out for general viewing. Why is that?
MS. MACKENZIE: In the case of John Walker's film, he didn't get a distributor so he is distributing that himself. It actually has been out but it hasn't got a theatrical release. So you're hoping to see why we can't see it in the theatres.
John is slugging away with that on the Internet and in private screenings. We screened it for him at Park Lane just before Christmas. He did have it, marketing it at the Cannes Film Festival, so he is going a non-traditional route. For sure, one of the most challenging things for filmmakers is to get distribution. When it's a television show, we call broadcasters the gatekeepers and when it is a feature film, it's a distributor. That's a big challenge and for a producer like John Walker to say well no, I'm going to keep it myself and market it myself, that's great. I'm sure he's going to do well at it but that's not his area of expertise, he's a filmmaker. It would be better for him, really, if a distributor had it because they might get it out a little more. You happened to actually pick ones that the producers have actually kept the rights themselves. It's challenging to get exhibition, for sure.
[9:45 a.m.]
MR. PREYRA: The other thing that seems to come up regularly when you ask people in the industry, what is it that we need here, they all say the sound stage.
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, and we agree.
MR. PREYRA: So what is it that keeps that from happening? I know you're talking a lot about, Film Nova Scotia doesn't do the investment themselves - I mean capital. What is it that would bring capital here?
MS. MACKENZIE: The thing that's stopping it is the money and we're actually working right now with some partners. We put a request for proposal up just before Christmas, it closes at the end of January. The funding for this stage is to get a feasibility study done - how much will it cost, what will it look like, where should it be? The partners that are funding this request for proposal are ERD, the city, and in the background is ACOA. Hopefully once this feasibility study is finished, and it closes at the end of January so we'll probably have the consultants selected and up and running by the end of March, hopefully, and have it finished this fiscal, then the challenge will be to take that business plan and go out and raise the money.
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I would think money is the real challenge. It's not a small amount, I'm sure it will be like $10 million, $12 million. It's not a convention centre but it's still a significant chunk of change, so that would be what is really holding it back. It is one of the biggest challenges the industry is facing now and it's recognized by all areas. It is recognized by ourselves, it is recognized by labour, it is recognized by the production community, and that's why we're doing this request for proposal right now.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Churchill.
MR. ZACH CHURCHILL: Thank you so much for being here today, it's obviously an exciting industry that you folks are part of. I guess it instills quite a bit of pride when you see well-known and successful people in the industry talking about the folks here in the Province of Nova Scotia doing good work, it's great to see. I guess the only line of work that might rival yours, in terms of theatre, might be our own at times. (Laughter)
MS. MACKENZIE: We cannot compete with that.
MR. CHURCHILL: Yours is better. I have just a few questions here. Out of the approximately 3,000 people who are employed in the province, those are people who are living in Nova Scotia and for most of the time working in Nova Scotia?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes.
MR. CHURCHILL: How many of the Nova Scotia graduates that you talk about from NSCAD or from the other programs that do audiovisual work, how many of those graduates actually find work, post-graduation, in the province?
MS. MACKENZIE: Well, we're told by the community college and by NSCAD - not as many as NSCAD but the community college tells us that the majority of their students are being hired here in Nova Scotia by local audiovisual companies.
MR. CHURCHILL: So over 50 per cent at least.
MS. MACKENZIE: I would say. I think it's a fair bit higher than that.
MR. CHURCHILL: Okay, that's excellent to hear. Of those 3,000 people you're talking about, are those only the people who are getting work through the tax credit or is that the amount of people involved in the industry in Nova Scotia?
MS. MACKENZIE: That's the people who worked on the productions over the last couple of years. So it's safe to say the majority of productions access the tax credit.
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MR. CHURCHILL: So it's safe to say that 3,000 people province-wide are the amount of folks involved in the audiovisual industry?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, that's the full-time equivalents of the people who work in this industry. The film industry is freelance, so the individuals work from project to project so they'll take a three-month contract on a Call Me Fitz and then they'll take a three-month contract on a TV with TV's Jonathan Torrens, but they work pretty much the majority of the year, so we call them full-time equivalents. It's a little different than the traditional nine-to-five, five-days-a-week job, but these are still people who work full time in the industry, they're freelancers and they choose to work that way, the professionals who choose to work in the freelance nature.
MR. CHURCHILL: And that includes everybody from creative to directing to technicians, actors and actresses as well?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, exactly, the whole gamut.
MR. CHURCHILL: What part of the industry does employ the most people here in Nova Scotia?
MS. MACKENZIE: What part of the industry?
MR. CHURCHILL: Is it acting, is it creative, is it the technician work? What would you say employs the most people?
MS. MACKENZIE: I would say the crew, it comprises the bulk of the budget. The production budget is . . .
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: Typically our budgets are divided into four categories: A, B, C, and D; B is the shooting category which is the bulk of the money - 65 per cent of our budgets would be spent in that category and that's the category that's employing the 3,000 people.
MR. CHURCHILL: Those would be the technical positions behind the scenes, cinematography, that sort of stuff?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: Exactly.
MS. MACKENZIE: But it's also the office workers, the office coordinators, the marketing and publicity people.
MR. CHURCHILL: Office workers, all that sort of stuff, okay.
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MR. STOREY: If I may, to give you an idea, I know that with ACTRA, the performers' union, the majority of their work comes from film and television work, lifestyle stuff, the things that they're doing, but I know that a couple of years ago, probably 2007, 25 per cent of their budget came from commercial work.
MS. MACKENZIE: That was the year we didn't do so well, we were down to $76 million that year, it was the first year in a decade we were under . . .
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: The commercials held up.
MR. STOREY: The commercials held up, so that's also part of where that comes from, so there is ebb and flow as well. In years sometimes where film and television work is maybe lower, commercial work might be higher and the work moves around, so that's the other thing to consider.
MR. CHURCHILL: Do we know how many people who prepare to be involved in this industry here in Nova Scotia actually leave the province or the country to do this sort of work?
MS. MACKENZIE: We don't know. We know from the educational institutions that the majority of their graduates are staying and working here, but we would have no way of knowing what that whole realm of possibility could have been.
MR. CHURCHILL: Right, that's a tough question.
MS. MACKENZIE: We don't know what we don't know.
MR. CHURCHILL: In terms of the tax credits specifically, how are those currently evaluated, by the board or by government?
MS. MACKENZIE: Oh no. The tax credit is income tax legislation so it's a fully refundable, labour-based tax credit. The key is you have to hire Nova Scotians to get it, that's the only way you get it. Obviously, it's audited, but there's no subjective, discretionary evaluation like should you get it or should you not get it. If you hire a Nova Scotia resident and they're working on a film television digital project, you will get it as long as you meet that eligibility requirement.
MR. CHURCHILL: What about evaluating the results of the tax credit? Is there a process to evaluate that?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, it's the same as our equity investments. There is an evaluation process for our equity investments because we have limited funds there and so it's a very competitive process. When we evaluate for those it's pretty key for us - you can see
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that we're an economic development agency - how much money is going to be spent in the province is our number one criterion, how many jobs are going to be created, how many Nova Scotians are going to be in key positions in that; it's a whole slew of things, what's the recoupment potential, what's your track record. There's a lot of that evaluation into the investment side. Both the tax credit and the investment side are measured in the same way and it's how many jobs did they create, how much money did they spend in the province, all those types of things.
MR. CHURCHILL: That happens annually?
MS. MACKENZIE: It happens every year and it's reported on every year, as well, in our business planning process and in our accountability reporting.
MR. CHURCHILL: The $4 return on every dollar invested in the tax credit you mentioned, is that coming from revenues from the industry? What does that number reflect?
MS. MACKENZIE: That is the production activity, it's the budgets for the productions. So David was saying for Call Me Fitz, you spend how much in Nova Scotia, what did you say?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: It's 70 per cent of a $10 million budget.
MS. MACKENZIE: Say $7 million, so those projects are audited, so we get the audited cost reports for every single production and it breaks down the financing. It says, okay, it costs $10 million to do Call Me Fitz, this much came from the tax credit, this much came from the broadcaster, this much came from a distribution advance, this much came from equity investment, that's how those numbers go, they're coming directly from the cost reports.
MR. CHURCHILL: That reflects how much money was spent in the province.
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes. Now 100 per cent of a budget is not spent in the province, but we track the spend as well. There's always some trickle-out, we don't have a lab, if something happens to still be done in a lab, it's fewer and fewer now, well, they're going to be developed in Montreal or Toronto, we don't have a lab here, so there's always some trickle-out, that indicates with co-productions, there's another company involved, they're going to have their costs as well, but we do pick that up.
MR. CHURCHILL: So that $4 represents the money that's spent in the province, not the money that trickles?
MS. MACKENZIE: It's the total budget, it wouldn't be all of the trickle. For the domestic productions, it's pretty much all here anyway, the majority of it. It's the foreign
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ones, that's why I cautioned on the foreign slide because you would say, wow, why don't we just do all foreign if so much is going to be private investment, but obviously not all of their budget is staying here and we do track what is spent here. Tom Selleck's salary is not staying here.
MR. CHURCHILL: In terms of the colleges that are doing work, that are producing graduates that can work in this field, is it Burridge and NSCAD that would be your two primary institutions that you draw from?
MS. MACKENZIE: Oh, no. Nova Scotia Community College has nine programs, Burridge is just one of their programs. They have their screen arts program, they have their television program, they have their animation program, they have their graphics program, that's one of them and NSCAD for sure on the above the line, the creative side, the writer, director, producer.
MR. CHURCHILL: Are there any formal partnerships between your organization and those institutions to ensure that graduates are funnelling into the industry?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, there is. What we do is fund the transition. In the case of NSCAD, we fund the thesis films for all the graduating students, so that's their calling card to get a job. We also fund the interactive cross platform programs that they have in their multi-disciplinary bachelor program. With the changeover of Joan going out and the new president coming in, we are just ready to launch something and we were going to do the same thing with their animation and computer graphics program. They do the training and we fund the calling card that the students can take to walk around and look for a job, so there's definitely partnerships there.
MR. CHURCHILL: Are there any internships available for students as well?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, so nice of you to ask all of these questions. We fund a national internship program and we have an Atlantic component of it where we partner with the federal government, Newfoundland and Labrador, and New Brunswick and ourselves, and a national industry association called the Canada Media Fund. We fund three Nova Scotia intern positions every year and actually, David, your company usually hires one of them for sure. What happens is we pay the salary for a six-month period and a lot of the time those interns stay on. The last intern you hired is still working for you, isn't he?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: No, he has started his own production company. The first thing he did was a short which won Best Atlantic Short at the Atlantic Film Festival. He's going to be doing an application for the Bridge Award that Film Nova Scotia and CBC co-sponsor. He's trying to eke out a career as a producer in Nova Scotia.
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MS. MACKENZIE: We have programs with the training institutions at that level. We have programs to kind of step them up, the internship thing that we do with industry. We have programs for when they're already in the industry, David was talking about so okay, they've got the education, they've done the intern, we have another program with CBC, it's called the Bridge Award which gaps people from doing a couple of short films to doing their first network production. If you go on our Web site you'll see we have a ton of programs. Skills development is really key for the industry, so obviously that's where we put a portion of our funds.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. d'Entremont.
HON. CHRISTOPHER D'ENTREMONT: A couple of short questions, maybe difficult, I'm not sure. When we're talking about sound stages, just to go back to that discussion, we do have the one sound stage in Shelburne, sort of in the midst of - God, I hate to tell you what I actually think about the whole thing but . . .
MS. MACKENZIE: You're being recorded, you'd better not.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: . . . there's a number of our economic development dollars for Yarmouth County that are tied up within this facility. In your experience, are we going to be able to sell the darn thing or is there any way that we can unbolt the darn thing and move it to Halifax and set it up here? It's not being used in Shelburne and we'd really like to get it used, or get our economic development dollars back so we can do some other things in Yarmouth County.
MS. MACKENZIE: To be brutally honest, it is very challenging to have a sound stage outside of where all the other infrastructure is because it becomes very expensive to move all the equipment, all of the crews. The production that has shot in Shelburne, a lot of the times we have put money into it so that it will go there, so it will try to help that area.
[10:00 a.m.]
The request for proposal that we have out now, we are looking for a Halifax-based sound stage. We're not even saying HRM, we need a Halifax-based sound stage. When Electropolis closed a couple of years ago that put a big gap in our infrastructure. It won't make up for it to have that in Shelburne or someplace else more distant, so I don't know.
MR. D'ENTREMONT: In your experience, though, I know there's a couple of companies that are looking at it and there's a whole lot of talk going on. What are your thoughts around that?
MS. MACKENZIE: There's a lot of fluff. I haven't seen a lot of substance.
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MR. D'ENTREMONT: That's kind of what I'm feeling too. Okay, change it a little bit, but it just sort goes in that same kind of vein, though, is the digital infrastructuring in the province - the high speed, the access to it. We're talking about Chester and being able to do Web-based pieces. Is the system the way it should be yet, or do we need to invest a little more in our digital infrastructure in the province in order to support the film industry in Nova Scotia?
MS. MACKENZIE: Well, I haven't heard anybody in the industry saying that they hadn't had enough band width. I do know there's the big broadband initiative going on right now, so I think that's still in process. That's only going to make it better for all regions of the province but I haven't heard of any lack of it in this industry.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Boudreau.
MR. JIM BOUDREAU: Yes, I'm interested in looking at the changes to the tax credits and the digital media tax credit that just happened. I'm interested in getting your opinion or your views on how the residency requirement, the change in that, is benefiting the industry right now.
MS. MACKENZIE: I think it's going to have a huge benefit for the industry because what it's going to do - and I'll give you some background so you understand. The prior requirements were that in order to hire somebody and receive a tax credit on them, that person had to have been resident in the province December 31st of the prior year of your production. So what that did was it kind of made it unattractive for people who would move to the province permanently, planning on staying here. It almost made them have a one-year cool-your-jets and not be hired.
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: You're in the penalty box for a year.
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, you're in the penalty box type of thing. What this is going to do is it's going to help the production companies attract this talent either to the province for the first time or back to the province, if they happen to have moved away to take temporary work somewhere else and they won't be penalized. They'll be able to work right away, the employee will be able to work right away, and the company will be able to benefit by having that financial incentive right away, so I see it as a win-win - actually, a win-win-win. I see it as a win for the employee, I see it as a win for the production company and I see it as a win for the province because they're going to have another permanent resident, for tax purposes, in Nova Scotia who is going to enhance the skills capability of the province as a whole.
MR. BOUDREAU: How well-known do you think this is right now? It was announced in December, right?
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MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, it was announced just before the holidays.
MR. BOUDREAU: Just before the holidays and I'm just wondering how the word can get out there because the quicker the word gets out there, the more advantageous it is for us.
MS. MACKENZIE: I think it's happening on many levels. First of all, on our level, we've done mass client contacts in Canada, in the U.S. in foreign markets, phones, e-mails, notes, that has all gone out. It's also happening from the production companies because everybody who thinks they have a project, they are calling now because they have to get those people on-side.
MR. BOUDREAU: So we're seeing it rolling out fairly well, then, considering the time.
MS. MACKENZIE Well, we've already had some results. We've had one project already; Huminah Huminah, almost like a week after the announcement, it was just before Christmas, they landed a piece of work with Corus Entertainment and I think they were going to - how many jobs was that going to create?
MS. ANNI HENNIGAR: Six full time.
MS. MACKENZIE: Six full-time jobs, for 50 weeks?
MS. HENNIGAR: Yes.
MS. MACKENZIE: So that was a small one but it was instant. DHX, they have made the decision already, they have a series called How to Train Your Dragon, based on the movie. They weren't going to do it in Halifax, now they're going to do it in Halifax and that will employ 60 animators easily, for like a year and a half.
Copernicus is going to - they're just trying to put the finishing touches on a deal they're working on. What you'll see is a big, big market coming up for animation and lifestyle and whatnot, called KidsScreen, and that's happening in a couple of weeks. So everybody is going and they'll come back with new business, you can be sure. It gets out very quickly, too, because there are actually payroll companies and law firms, like national ones that work internationally. It's constant, they do a one-sheet comparative of all the tax rates right across the country and it's out to their clients every time there's a change. It's happening on so many levels, probably overnight everybody knew.
MR. BOUDREAU: Well, that's good to know. I mean that's very positive, it's nice to see the enthusiasm that's being exuded. I see us moving in the right direction and
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obviously this seems to be a very big advantage. Putting that aside, what would you say is your biggest challenge right now?
MS. MACKENZIE: Our biggest challenge is the lack of a sound stage.
MR. BOUDREAU: The sound stage itself.
MS. MACKENZIE: In Halifax.
MR. BOUDREAU: In Halifax, okay, because I heard you say that, I'm just wondering. So that's your number one sort of priority.
MS. MACKENZIE: That's our number one priority.
MR. BOUDREAU: Now could I ask you for numbers two and three?
MS. MACKENZIE: Number two has always been, it's trying to make sure that when decisions are made at a federal level, because I told you the federal government spends close to $1 billion on this industry annually and we get a fair share of that. There are a lot of policy changes going on now and it's hard to keep your eye on every one of them, but they're all going to affect the industry and its changes to copyright and its changes to the Canada Media Fund, which is a $300-plus million fund which was designed specifically for television. Now it is morphing into what they are calling fully interactive entertainment properties.
David was talking about how everything he does now he has to have his Web- interactive component, because that's where the industry is going. So another challenge for us is to make sure that when all these decisions are made at the federal level, that our concerns and our issues and our interests are up there being heard, so that decisions aren't made that, at the end of the game, will go and maybe we'll access less than 1 per cent of those funds because that will hurt. That's always a challenge and that seems to be moving along.
Another challenge - Leonard, you mentioned it - is access, getting our shows out there, whether it is television, whether it is shorts, whether it is interactive, whether it is theatre, because the gatekeepers are the broadcasters, they're the distributors, they're the content aggregators on-line, so it's really important for us to keep relationships going with them all of the time and that takes a good chunk of our time, and we do that a lot. We're hoping to announce a new partnership that will bring a significant amount of new funds for the television industry, so that's working through the CRTC and broadcast distributing units. We work with the exhibitors, as well, to try to encourage them - we partner with the Empire Theatres on several things to try to get them to show local films more, so that the local audience can see them too.
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Access to capital is always big too. Though we have incentives, the producers have to take those incentives and somehow cash-flow them and finance them, so access to capital is a challenge. There's a slew of them: the sound stage, access to federal funds, access to the gatekeepers, access to capital - you said one but we could go on and on - and skills development is always right there because technology is changing the way this industry works. As David mentioned, it's driven by the creative, so we've got the creative and it's just making sure that they have the skills to be able to exploit their creative ideas across those multiple platforms, so skills development is always key as well. We're really pleased to see a lot of that in the jobsHere document that just came out because this is an industry that fits into that so well. It is a technology-transfer engine, it provides the skills and training to create these 21st Century jobs. This is an industry that does it.
MR. BOUDREAU: Thank you.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Ms. Conrad.
MS. VICKI CONRAD: Thank you for your presentation. I have to say I don't profess to know lots about the film industry or the audiovisual industry, but your presentation has given me a really good insight into the industry and some of the challenges.
It's quite impressive what I'm hearing: over 3,000 full-time jobs across Nova Scotia, well over $100 million invested in Nova Scotia annually - that's huge, it really is. The other impressive things that I heard - I wasn't aware of them until you think about it and go, of course! - all of the spinoffs happening when a production is made here locally, whether it be a film, whether it be a documentary, whether it be an animation video. The carpenters, the painters, I think you had mentioned the accommodations, the meals, equipment rentals, cars, security - and when you said security I went, of course, they have to have security. So really impressive when I hear some of the spinoff dollars coming in.
You also mentioned the competitiveness and the challenges around that in seeking some of those foreign production dollars. I believe you had mentioned that with every dollar spent, there is a return on foreign investment dollars of at least $9. Is that what you said?
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, they leverage $9 . . .
MS. CONRAD: It leverages at least $9, wow. So being competitive is very important in order to attract those foreign dollars.
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes.
MS. CONRAD: Could you just give me an idea of what that looks like? If you're promoting for foreign investment, you want to show that Nova Scotia has the crew that can handle the production, the site location is the one that a production is looking for, some of
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the comments that were made on the short clips. There was one chap who said, we're coming here, and we're going, we hope the crew can handle it, or we saw a site and we said, yes, that's the site. Can you just walk me through how you sell and promote, because there are a vast number of productions that you're just trying say, come here, we want your dollars?
MS. MACKENZIE: Sure. In a typical studio presentation, we might go into a boardroom, there might be six or seven and it's always lawyers and accountants and a couple of development people around the table, so that will give you an idea of what they're interested in - money is what they're definitely interested in. But we pitch the whole package because the money is no good if they come to an area and you don't have the crews that can deliver or you don't have a strong enough acting talent base that you can fill in the other roles, because they're only going to want to bring in their leads - it's going to be prohibitively expensive if they have to bring all of their actors in.
Typically when we're presenting we first set them up, we tell them here's where Nova Scotia is - just in case, you can't assume anything - and here's where we place in the national industry. We're the fourth largest and because we're the fourth largest, we have five or six crews, and we have the infrastructure, the equipment rentals, and whatnot. We have the diverse locations, we have the financial incentives - we have us. We take away their headaches, we put ourselves out there.
Film Nova Scotia is one-stop shopping. We're their point of contact from the very beginning and if we can sell them on what's there, they'll actually then send us a script. We'll have our in-house marketing department break down that script, they will build them a Web site of potential sites. If they like that, we'll actually fly them in - the director, the producer, anyone who makes the decisions. While they're here we scout them around the province, we introduce them to the business agents, we introduce them to potential producer partners, because we just bring the businesses in and then everybody else has to actually do the work and deliver. We sell all of that.
Our locations - in the here are some sample pictures - we have amazingly diverse locations and that does matter. The money is important, but you do have to have a look too. I would say somebody like Don Carmody, who did the Outlander film and he did the Amelia Earhart story, he said, the location in Nova Scotia is as distinct and important as the Rockies are to the West - you have a fresh look. We've done around 13 or 14 movies with Sony because they love our book, so we promote "look" and we can actually demonstrate it too.
People like things to be validated so I can tell them all these things, but they have no way of really knowing, so we always bring production manager/line producer resumés with us - I'll say 10 of them - so they can say, oh my God, Jumping the Broom was shot there, I didn't know that, I know so and so, I'm going to ask him how that went. So we get a lot of references from other studios, other independent producers. We do testimonials like this so you'll see on our Web site, we've got a lot of testimonials and there are a lot of people
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talking about how great it is to do business here. We always get quotes from studios and people who shoot here so that we can share that and give newcomers the confidence or relax their anxiety about something they don't know and they say okay, yeah, we know that was done there and we can ask them.
[10:15 a.m.]
Literally, we sell everything; we sell the skills, we sell the locations, we sell the infrastructure, we sell what's shot there, we sell the financial incentives. We bring them here so that they can actually see it, we drive them around, we pretty much do everything until they hire a local partner and open a production office. Then we step away and we don't become involved again unless they have an issue, so we might step in and out of a production, they'll want help getting a location or they'll want help shooting on public property.
There's a provincial government guideline policy in the manual on shooting on provincially owned property, and Film Nova Scotia administers or handles that policy. So anybody who wants to shoot on provincially owned property, we also help them go through the hoops of getting in there. We work with the city - basically, we pitch the whole area and we fly them in. If we can get them on the ground, most times we can convince them that this is the place they want to be, so we really try to get them to come and do a scout.
Throughout the year, companies that may not have shot here and we would really like them to shoot here, we'll do familiarization tours. They might not have a project that they're thinking about Nova Scotia, but we'll fly them in and tour them around and introduce them to the industry, show them our infrastructure to give them an idea and give them a little bit of comfort so that they can think about that if something does come up. Basically, we're selling the whole region, not just the financial incentives.
MS. CONRAD: Thank you. You had mentioned, as well, that another area of competitiveness or a challenge is having creative minds keep up with the new technologies, because it is quickly changing. Pretty much every week there's something new to be learned. Are our community colleges or the programs out there available for mentoring creative minds, are they keeping up pace, as well, with being right on with all of the new changes?
MS. MACKENZIE: They certainly are. Plus there are other industry-specific organizations, too, that we partner with that are also keeping up. You have organizations like the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, they have an amazing program called FILM 5; you have the Centre for Art Tapes. We also partner and send local filmmakers to the Canadian Film Centre for programs, we send them to the National Screen Institute for programs, we'll send them anywhere they can advance their skills, if it's industry-specific and it's a true training organization. We support the skills development in the local community and the
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local community is not falling behind, they're offering great programs, but sometimes they have to go away and we support them financially to go there as well.
MR. STOREY: The unions and guilds also do training programs to professionally develop the members, particularly with regard to the new gear coming up with cameras and the like. A lot of the equipment houses will put on regular education seminars, there's going to be a couple coming up in the next two months for some of the new cameras that are going to be coming out. Our members will go to that - both the producers, so they know what they can promote and what they can work with, but also the guys who are actually handling the gear on the floor.
We are actually just about to launch a partnership with NSCC, to continue sort of professional development work, as well as developing our own projects, in-house, at the guild. Again, we send members off to various different institutes for further education as well.
MS. CONRAD: David, you have mentioned that as we move into the bigger, techie future, that computers and TVs will probably kind of be one in the same and that's going to create lots of challenges. I was trying to think of an example of what that would look like. Can you elaborate on that?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: I shouldn't elaborate on that, I'm too old. (Laughter)
MS. CONRAD: I'm thinking TV, computer, we'll be doing it?
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: In terms of all of those different places where you can watch this content, it makes for a fragmented marketplace so it's really just a question of how you get the big bucks, because you have to spend all of this money up front before you get all those sales. So that's just an evolution of the business and the distribution models, that's going to evolve itself in some interesting ways.
My predictions don't mean much because I would only be guessing anyway, but I foresee the death of net neutrality, frankly, even though all the kids love this idea. I think it's already happening that people are going to partner with the Internet service providers and they're going to stream certain content. In order to have true net neutrality in the future, all you're really going to need is a bigger cheque book because they're going to start tiering access to the Internet the way cable television is tiered. So if you want access to your e-mail and stuff, you'll get a $15 account; if you want access to streaming video all day long, you're going to have a $75-a-month thing. So somewhere in there that content will get paid for, but how to track it and how to get paid properly for that product is going to evolve over the next - I guess, forever now.
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MS. CONRAD: So the industry has to be very conscious about that and to evolve with it as it moves.
One other question, Madam Chairman?
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Yes.
MS. CONRAD: I want to say that when we watched the silent clips, I was really moved about the number of Nova Scotia productions produced here in Nova Scotia, or parts of, by Nova Scotians. I was really like, wow, I didn't know that. Not that all of us need to know that, but how do we help market the fact that there are so many great productions that have Nova Scotia content, or are produced by Nova Scotians? How are you marketing it?
MS. MACKENZIE: The challenge is, right now there is so much media coming at everybody, it's like media overload and it's difficult to filter that and get just what you want. We probably do a press release every month highlighting - we'll have one going out on Rob Cotterill and Jason Eisener, Hobo With a Shotgun, because their film is going to be screening at Sundance this week, so we'll have a big press release on that. We do produce a press release probably monthly, but the production companies do too.
The challenge is just there's so much media out there, it's how to focus. The best thing to do, I suppose, is to watch some of the stuff because that's great, that improves the viewership, and then that means it will get commissioned again by the broadcaster. That means the production company gets to do it again and employ all of those people, and talk about it and share it.
My husband's a banker and I'd say, oh my God, you get you bankers together and all you do it talk banking, it drives me crazy, but I find when we're out socially all I'm doing is talking about the television shows that I watch and the movie that I went to see and how great this actor is becoming and how I love this director and whatnot. You just have to talk about it and share it because we can put out as many press releases as we want, do as many interviews as we want, I probably do 10 interviews in any month, radio, television, newspaper and I'm just Film Nova Scotia, the industry would do a lot more, the actual filmmakers. I'm just speaking for Film Nova Scotia, but there will be a lot more. There is just so much out there trying to get people's attention and I guess the thing is, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So just start talking about it, watching it and sharing it.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Colwell.
HON. KEITH COLWELL: I have a little bit different question here and before I ask the question I'm going to first talk about the question a little bit. I'm very impressed with what the industry does in Nova Scotia and have been right from the beginning, and I was in government when this whole process started. When it first started it was sort of, will it really
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work? And, of course, all of you are living proof of that and it's growing every year. I think it's terrific, it's a terrific industry.
The big thing that I find is if you talk to the general public they have no concept in the world of what you're doing, how important it is to Nova Scotia and really, how many jobs you create, how you also give exposure to Nova Scotia, a tremendous amount of exposure that we would not have. So that, in itself, is worth a lot to Nova Scotia.
The question I'm going to ask you is - and there's no way I'm suggesting this or ever would support this in any way - what would happen to the industry if the tax credit disappeared? That's a question I want to ask because maybe if you answered that question people would become more aware of just how important what you do is to the province.
MS. MACKENZIE: It would walk out the door. It's pretty easy to see that in real action because several years ago - it must be around 10 years ago now - Alberta did the same thing. They thought, well, the industry is at $150 million, back then they were booming - they haven't returned there yet in 10 years - so they were at $150 million, they said the industry is booming, let's get rid of the tax credit now, it should be able to just stand on its own. Literally overnight, within a year, that industry went down to $30 million and that was only because there was one series there called Honey I Shrunk The Kids and they were locked in and they had to finish that. They have been struggling for 10 years to try to get back up; we're still higher than they are. A lot of the work they're doing is still foreign service work; their local industry was decimated. It's easy to see what happens because it happened once in Canada already, it just goes.
MR. COLWELL: That's an important answer because when you really look at this industry and the diverse group of people that it employs and the very talented people it brings into the province and all of the spinoffs from this are so important. One suggestion I would make - and I know you're doing this anyway - is if you can promote this more to the general public because with elected officials, everybody says, what are these guys doing? What are they wasting the money on now?
I know you're not wasting the money and the more that you can do, I think the better it is because it makes it easier, then if you're going to make a change that was made - which I think was a great change - that helps the industry, it's easier to make that change and we're not getting calls at our constituency offices saying, what's going on here, why didn't you spend the money fixing the pothole in the front of my house, which needs to be done, but it doesn't have any economic impact to the province in reality, immediate, like you do. That's the sort of thing that I think is very, very important to the province as we move forward, as all the industries in the province are.
The industry you have is sort of a fluid industry, you watch it on television or you go to a theatre and you watch something and you say, oh, that's neat, it must have been made
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in the U.S. or somewhere else, not realizing that so much is going on here and the number of people, as you've already described here, that are employed and the really talented people you're managing to keep here, which means then you can do even more things that you couldn't do a few years ago. Would that be a fair statement?
MS. MACKENZIE: Oh, for sure, absolutely.
MR. STOREY: One of the things that is important on so many levels is reminding people that these are your neighbours, they may be your relatives, they are people all around the province, they're in every jurisdiction that you have. There are members of our groups or people who work in the industry, so it's promoting it on that level as well.
They may not see the direct impact of it, but there's all the spinoff, as you've said, of how that money gets spent throughout the province. There are things like just encouraging people to go to see the movies when they come out on that first weekend. The First Weekend Club is an organization that puts on Canadian shows in theatres. They try to get as many people out in that first weekend because if they make a good impression that first weekend, then that show will have a continued run.
A lot of the problems with the Canadian shows is they don't get that market share in that first weekend so they aren't distributed down the road, so that's an important thing as well. That's all part of reminding your constituents that this is an industry that supports the people around you as well.
MS. MACKENZIE: What we do, too, is we really do want to get out to the general public so we do campaigns throughout the year. Last year we did a Thank You Nova Scotia campaign where we had advertisements throughout the newspapers and we were highlighting individuals. We would show a gaffer or an electrician or a director in the picture and we would say something like, thank you, Nova Scotia, for letting us shoot in your community and here's the value of it.
We have another program where we partner with organizations in town like Empire Theatres, the Delta, Alderney Landing, various malls where we put down these - think about red carpets but they're not, they're decals on the floor. They have stars in them all throughout and it's about the film industry and it has individual profiles, like the script supervisor, she's a star, and we engage social media. You'd be surprised, we have a Facebook fan page and we get a lot of people. We've had people lying down next to their stars, taking pictures of themselves and posting it on our Facebook page. That's trying to engage the community.
[10:30 a.m.]
We go out, we speak regularly at career days, all the universities have us in at least once a year to speak to some of their classes. We speak to RDAs, we partner with the
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chamber of commerce, they focused on the industry a year ago in their annual spring dinner. I'd love to throw out the invitation, we would be happy to come to any of your communities, do an information session. We'd be happy to provide you with any type of a clip that you'd like to put on your Web sites because we are all about promoting the industry and getting that message out there and we'd love your help. If you'd like to have some of that, we'd be happy to provide it.
MR. COLWELL: I appreciate that offer. I'd probably take you up on that.
MS. MACKENZIE: Good.
MR. COLWELL: I think the industry is fantastic and the work that you're doing on both sides of that is very, very important and the fact that you are actually going to talk and meet with people outside the province to get them to come here, I think that's very proactive and very positive.
What thing would help you the most? We already talked about your number one priority, I know the sound studio and other things, but on the soft side of things, what would help you the most? Would it be better training? I understand the training is pretty good and getting better all the time. What would be that part of it because that's sometimes the things you don't look at. I mean tangible things like a sound studio is very important and should move forward, but on the soft side of things?
MS. MACKENZIE: The soft side would just be support, like speaking about how positive the industry is, speaking about the impact it has on the economy and the cultural community in Nova Scotia because that counts. People like to feel proud of what they do and when they hear this recognition and support, particularly the people working in the industry, then they feel validated in their career choices.
Let's face it, money helps too, so with more money we could invest in more projects. With more money we could fly more people in. With more money we could build a sound stage. But we're talking today and I know we have years and years to go so I guess for today, if no money is available, it's the support, it's the helping out in that way.
MR. STOREY: I think, as well, it is also consistency. The government has shown a consistent support all the way through and I think that's really important because one of the things that we've seen in other jurisdictions is the sort of highs and lows - oh, it's great, the industry, oh it's not so great, oh it's great. We've been very consistent here and the government has been really supportive and I think that is equally as important. It is seen as a stable market, it's a stable environment for making films, that the crews are stable. That kind of consistency of support is also very important.
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MR. COLWELL: I think it's very important, too, because our traditional manufacturing industries are disappearing in the province because of all kinds of reasons and the film industry can pick up some of that slack, because you are exporting products.
MS. MACKENZIE: Everything is exported.
MR. COLWELL: That means - you say it's 9 to 1, the return, basically, the dollars invested?
MS. MACKENZIE: That's on the foreign ones. It's not returned, what it is is dollars leveraged, so a dollar in is going to attract nine more dollars on the foreign stuff, to get that budget made. The local one is different.
Every single project is exported, even the domestic stuff because that's where the sales are made. In television, the Canadian broadcasters commission has shown they have exclusivity in Canada ad nauseam. It used to be three years now it is seven years as a minimum, so what happens is that project has to be sold all around the world because they can't sell it in Canada, but they can sell it all around the world. So even the domestic stuff is exported.
MR. COLWELL: I know, I was in manufacturing for a number of years and did a few little jobs for the film industry, very few. One of the things that anything I exported, the Department of External Affairs told me it was 7 to 1 ratio, so if I spent a dollar here and I sold it in Nova Scotia, recirculate money which really doesn't generate anything, but if I sold it outside of Nova Scotia it was a 7 to 1 return. So the industry is probably around that same way for products that you finish and sell and the money comes back into Nova Scotia, especially local production. Did you ever do any investigation to see what the return is that way?
MS. MACKENZIE: We've done various economic input analyses, but they would have been the traditional input-output financing model that the Department of Finance uses. We haven't done anything specifically tagging those export sales. I'm not an economist, I'm not sure how the minutiae of the province's input-output model works, but we have done two strategies which had input-output analyses of the economic contributions of the industry. We did one, I guess, in 2007 and another one in 2005. It was specifically looking at the export sales that would have been included in the total, but it would be interesting.
MR. COLWELL: It would be interesting to see because I think the number would be quite significant when you really look at it, especially if it's a local film and something that you've done here and then the return keeps coming into Nova Scotia from that.
MS. MACKENZIE: Well, we do know - now production companies track that. Arcadia, as David was mentioning, does a lot of their shows for National Geographic and
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Discovery. They have television shows that have sold in 60 different countries and in a multiple number of languages because they just get re-versioned. DHX Media, with their animation shows, they also have sold all over the world. The local companies actually track what territories their projects are selling in. I'm sure the information is there to be captured but we wouldn't have the financial resources to do that type of an analysis.
MR. COLWELL: I just wondered because that's important information. You see, that's a long-term return on your investment and as has already been said here, it's real dollars flowing into the province. It's not the leveraged dollars, it's actually dollars coming in at the end of the day, when everything is all done and all the other work is done. I think that would be a very interesting number to know about.
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: It would be very significant in kids animation. They have a new audience every couple of years for their stuff. I am going to regret, when I retire, that I did not start my business in kids animation, I tell you. That's a good place to be.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Colwell. Do we have any more questions in the first round? If not, Mr. Preyra.
MR. PREYRA: Thank you, Madam Chairman. I just have a few comments and maybe a question in there. I'm really very interested in creating opportunities for Nova Scotians to tell our stories abroad and to develop local talent. I know a couple of years ago, when John Wesley Chisholm of Arcadia's Chasing Wild Horses went up, I was surprised at the number of people who actually saw that and it wasn't really all that well promoted here.
It was important to people outside Nova Scotia to know about Sable Island, for example. I'm wondering whether or not all this fragmentation that we're talking about really creates more of an opportunity for us to tell our stories, whether it's in Facebook or YouTube or cable or the Web, or anything like that, and whether or not maybe we should look a little more at smaller initiatives that we can bring forward, given that it's so easy now to develop, not the big-budget 3-D films but something smaller, and whether we can create opportunities for people to tell those stories.
I know ViewFinders, for example, it's really quite extraordinary the range of stories that come out at ViewFinders and many of them go on to do very well outside of Nova Scotia. I know we've talked about the larger purposes of this area, but I wouldn't want to discourage us from going forward in those areas and creating those mentoring opportunities and those smaller opportunities that might turn into something bigger.
I had a little follow-up on Mr. MacLeod's comment about cable, the Web, and how things are developing so quickly. It struck me when I met with Paul Rigg and Copernicus, when they were advocating for this change in the tax credit, that we're really ignorant - we,
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as in politicians - about what's happening in the industry. It seemed like a lot of things happened just through sheer ignorance because we're not keeping up.
I'm wondering what mechanisms are in place both to educate the industry - and Digital Animators of Nova Scotia was not particularly good at bringing that forward because they're creative people and they don't want to get involved in all of these other administrative type things - what mechanisms are there to make sure that the industry itself is keeping up with developments? What mechanisms do we have for public policy - and they speak very highly of you and your understanding of it - to respond very quickly to this really fragmented, very changing industry?
MS. MACKENZIE: What we do is we have a lot of our own resources that we put into training and development, and that's in all of those areas. But Film Nova Scotia, as well, goes out and attends all of these various key markets, we're not at the small, little ones. In every market there's a learning component, there's a lot of okay, here's where the industry is growing, here's what happened, there's a lot of panels and plenary sessions and obviously, all of the filmmakers can't go to these, but we're at most of them. What we do is we disseminate that information back to the production community like oh, did you know that so-and-so broadcasters are only going to take things in 3-D now or a couple of years ago it was, they're only going to take high definition, so we disseminate a lot of that to the industry.
The industry itself has to take advantage of these new softwares, new technologies, new training programs and they do it. It's funny, always when something is transitioning there's a lot of talk about it, but then you're just there. I remember a couple of years ago, maybe five years ago, I took a Masters in Electronic Commerce at Dalhousie - it was called a Masters in Electronic Commerce - and it was all this Internet stuff, Internet law, law and technology, blah, blah, blah. Now it's just part of their regular Masters program; that's all it should have been then. It just so happened at that point in time, it was when all of these Web interactive things were happening. It's the same in the industry, there's a lot of talk about the transitioning, but the industry is just doing it, they're still working, they're still employed, they're enhancing their skills. With the new people there's no problem, because they're trained in it right away.
DANS - unfortunately, you're correct, there was a little confusion, they're creative and they couldn't really communicate the transitioning. You're thinking that the Digital Animators of Nova Scotia, the animators are all doing this interactive stuff. No, they're doing television shows, they're doing digital-animated television shows, traditional television shows. They're not the gamers doing the video games, they're doing television shows. So even there, that's a little bit confusing.
I think the training is there, the access to the money to advance the skills, the new people coming in, participating in what's going on, keeping aware, intelligence of what's happening here, there, everywhere, seeing where the industry is going, seeing what type of
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program is being shot, how it's being shot, what cameras are being used, and then having that information disseminated to the larger community. Now, how we can help there on a policy level is - again, it's that information overload. We could put in a mechanism to provide you with regular updates, but then would it be filtered out, or would you read it? What would be the best way?
Obviously, we keep Minister Paris and his team fully informed of all of the changes in the industry and we're regularly doing him hot notes, briefing notes, but I know that stays there, maybe because everybody is overwhelmed with information. We would love to be able to provide more information in the way that would work best, so if you want to share that with us, we'd be happy to try to help, on the policy level.
MR. PREYRA: I appreciate opportunities like this, because it's a real education for us in terms of what's happening in the industry. I think I have one quick question. It seems like a lot of the bread and butter of this industry, the digital animation industry, seems to be developing in the corporate field, as well, where they're doing a lot of work in telehealth and corporate education and large international corporations saying could you develop something to train our people in deep-sea safety, for example. The impression I got was that just as much money is being made or just as much opportunity is there in that area as developing some of these large projects.
MS. MACKENZIE: Oh, I'm sure, and probably InNOVAcorp would be the organization that could speak more to that because they're the ones who work with the venture capital and the new companies and taking new R&D, whether that's technology or bioscience, and commercializing it.
We work strictly on the entertainment, entertainment-educational side, we're not in the life-sciences side or even the broader multi-educational side. The educational programs that we're involved with are industry, entertainment industry, educational-entertainment-industry related. Yes, the same skills can be used in various other areas but that's well out of our area of expertise.
MR. PREYRA: Thank you.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Mr. Churchill.
MR. CHURCHILL: Madam Chairman, sorry to keep you, just a couple more questions. I would assume that the majority of people employed in this industry would be located here in metro, would that be accurate?
[10:45 a.m.]
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes.
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MR. CHURCHILL: Is there any mentor - Mr. Preyra mentioned mentoring - is there any mentoring done through Film Nova Scotia, through your post-secondary partners, to reach out to young, aspiring actors, filmmakers, directors, producers, cinematographers? Is there any sort of outreach in mentoring that goes on at a secondary level for those individuals who perhaps think about having careers?
MS. MACKENZIE: Maybe not mentoring but we do participate in career days, so we'll be there. A lot of times we'll bring other members of the community with us to talk about the opportunities. The last one I did, I think it was in November and it was down in Bridgewater. It was supposed to be Grades 11 and 12 and there were some as young as Grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 in these, so that's really early to start thinking about your career. We'll regularly participate in career days at the high school level, we'll do it at the university level and we'll do it any time.
There was a time when the regional development authorities used to invite us down and we'd do - we did like a provincial road show where we'd go to the RDAs that were more active in the industry and so we could talk about what the industry means and where the future career opportunities are for people looking, whether it is students - we don't do internships at that level because they're still in school. Our internships are for the people who are already in the workforce or just going into the workforce.
MR. CHURCHILL: Maybe a take your child to work day or something like that.
MR. STOREY: We do internships with NSCC. We're going to be launching a couple of those, bringing some of those students who are in their last year of the screen arts program and we're going to be looking at bringing some of those people into certainly the union and guild fold, and educating them. The unions and guilds go and speak to them, as well, and we do that sort of education.
Again, I get lots of calls from people saying, I want to get into the industry and that's a large part of what our time is spent doing, educating people who are interested and call, and we're more than happy to spread the word that way.
MR. CHURCHILL: Excellent. It might be interesting to look at the amount of graduates who are going into the industry and where they're actually coming from in Nova Scotia. I know that growing up, even in high school, thinking of being involved in the film industry, you know that's crazy because that's something that's going on in Hollywood and it's not something that's happening in Nova Scotia, let alone Canada. So there might be a lot of young people who don't know about the exciting opportunities in this industry.
Is there any long-term development strategy to grow this industry and make it even more important than it is right now?
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MS. MACKENZIE: We do have an industry strategy. We had it done a couple of years ago, it's on our Web site, but with the environment changing the way that it does, the large one is on our Web site. But the community got together, I guess it was a year ago - it was almost a year ago - and we did, in between the big impact analysis strategies, kind of an interim sector strategy, just because technology is changing so much and it's affecting how this industry works. So we have the one on the Web site but we also have a more recent one, more industry-driven. I'd be happy to circulate a copy of the strategy to Pam and she can distribute it to the committee members.
MR. CHURCHILL: My last question, the Atlantic Film Festival, is that something that Film Nova Scotia . . .
MS. MACKENZIE: We fund it.
MR. CHURCHILL: Is that in Halifax every year? I'm sorry, I don't know.
MS. MACKENZIE: Yes, but there's so many components to what they do, the ViewFinders, the TAP program, they have all kinds of programs, Strategic Partners. The main festival itself does take place in Halifax in September. The Atlantic Film Festival is very important for the local industry. It's great for raising exposure of the industry, for celebrating filmmakers. It brings in a lot of delegates from the rest of the country, but also international delegates. It has a co-production market component where deals can actually be made and money can be matched, it's important on so many levels. It provides a professional development learning component to it and, basically, I just love that time of year because film is everywhere, in the whole community.
It has a lot of community participation in that festival, outside of the film industry. It's a great showcase and celebration of the local talent. Although they do bring in a lot of nice films, foreign films, other Canadian films, the majority of the films in the festival are still Nova Scotian films. It's a great showcase.
MR. CHURCHILL: I wonder if it would be possible to have satellite events around the Atlantic Film Festival outside of the metro area.
MS. MACKENZIE: They do, yes.
MR. STOREY: They do some. They do the children's festival where they travel around, ViewFinders.
MS. MACKENZIE: I know that it's not the Atlantic Film Festival but the Toronto International Film Festival has a distribution arm where they show films right across the country, in communities that normally wouldn't get to see films and I know there are a lot in Nova Scotia. There's a lot to that, there's a lot of money involved in doing that, plus the
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film festival doesn't own the rights to the films, distributors do, so that would be a pretty big, onerous job for the film festival to take on, to be able to go right across the province and show various films because for one thing, the distributors wouldn't let them because then how would they make their money on the film?
What we are going to do, though, we partner with Empire Theatres now and we do three or four public screenings every year. We do it at the Oxford Theatre because it is such a nice theatre but we're talking now about rolling that out into other theatres across the province and that's where we showcase Nova Scotia films, or sometimes we'll even showcase films that have shot in Nova Scotia and have a lot of Nova Scotia components to it. We're hoping to get that off the ground this year.
MR. CHURCHILL: It would be great if communities outside of metro could experience some of these activities.
MS. MACKENZIE: There's a lot of very active film groups in areas across the province, too, and they're doing amazing things. Wolfville, for one, I think they have a film club or a film group there and they bring in some amazing films. I'm surprised at how they do it but they do.
MR. STOREY: Lunenburg does the same.
MR. DAVID MACLEOD: That will become easier and easier as theatres go to digital projection. Right now, if you have a 35 mm print, it costs you $2,000 to strike each print, so you can imagine how much it costs the big American studios when they go into a 3500 screen wide-release. I think that by the time the theatres get digital, it won't even be a DVD. They'll have a computer hooked up and they'll get an Internet feed and be able to download that movie and show it in a theatre. When that happens and you don't have to bring around five reels of film, it's going to be a lot easier to get the movies out there.
MR. CHURCHILL: Perfect, thank you so much for your time.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Would you like to do a quick two-minute summation, or do you think you've covered everything?
MS. MACKENZIE: I think we've said a lot. I'd like to thank you again for giving us this opportunity because we like to get out any chance we can to talk about how important the industry is to the province and to promote it and everybody here, that's kind of what we do. We just really appreciate this opportunity, so thank you.
MADAM CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much for coming. It has really been very interesting for all of us and has given us much greater insight into how the industry works. It's certainly a part of the creative economy that has been very important to me in my career.
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I'm very glad to say that the government is listening and reacting to the needs of the industry so that the industry will keep growing.
Thank you so much again, it has been a pleasure. (Applause)
We have no other business for the committee today, so the next meeting will be February 8th and that will be the Shelburne, Barrington and Yarmouth Chambers of Commerce.
The meeting is adjourned, thank you.
[The committee adjourned at 10:54 a.m.]
