{spotlight} feature reports

Toronto Film Festival 2004
Strategic Partners Co-production Conference, Halifax, Nova Scotia. [ 16th to 19th September 2004 ]

I attended both of the above events for the first time this year and found them useful and informative. I am certain my experiences at both will enhance my ability to get my feature film projects financed, produced and distributed.

Toronto Film Festival

In Toronto I was able to meet with my New York based co-production partner, Alex Twersky of Kinetic Arts. We are working on the feature film project Leonard. Leonard is set in Scotland and New York and we see a genuine opportunity to gain the benefits of making the film a co-production between the UK and Canada by shooting the New York part of the film in Canada, probably Toronto.

To this end we met with a number of potential co-production partners and financiers.

We discussed the possibility of working with them as Canadian co-producers. The discussions went positively.

Apart from these specific encounters I also found the exercise of attending the Toronto Film Festival for the first time quite illuminating. It is probably the North American film festival with the best combination of ‘creative’ and ‘business’ elements. In that respect it was recognisable as the same kind of event as the Cannes Film Festival or other equivalent European festivals where commercial activity in sales, acquisitions and marketing exists alongside film screenings and prizes.

I would certainly put the event high on my priority list for future attendance and would recommend to others.

STRATEGIC PARTNERS CO-PRODUCTION CONFERENCE, HALIFAX

This event is part of the Atlantic Film Festival. The best way to understand the practical workings of this event is to look at the Schedule for the event, which can be found at www.atlanticfilm.com. On the surface the event is similar to Sharing Stories.

The event’s objective is to explore the opportunities which exist for co-productions and co-ventures which utilise Canadian partnerships, international treaties and Canadian financial incentives at both Federal and Provincial level. This year the focus was on finding producers from the UK, Ireland and the USA who could team up with Canadian producers.

The essence of what I learned at Strategic Partners is straightforward and includes the following:

There are financial incentives and equity available for film making in Canada that are different from those in the UK but which can be accessed for UK led productions as part of a co-production.
The regulations governing this money is complex and varies between provinces.
Instead of trying to understand the detail of this yourself you should team up with a reliable local Producer who already knows how it works and has done it before.
The cost of filming in Canada is lower than in the UK. (The same budget would buy more in Canada.)

As well as panel discussions explaining some of the above there was a series of one to one meetings between producers.

I was able to meet with executives from a couple of US distribution companies and I also had good discussions with UK companies including Capitol Films and BBC Films, both of which will be followed up with London meetings. (it seems strange that someone from the UK would have to go to Canada to meet London based companies but that’s how it is!)

I also met a Canadian producer whose company is very experienced in co-productions and he is now reading the script of Leonard with a view to discussing it further with us.

I am pleased I was able to attend this event and believe it will produce concrete, positive results. The event was extremely well organised and conducted at all times in a friendly open and fun spirit.I would recommend it to other Scottish Producers on a one off basis but do not think annual attendance would be required.

Angus Lamont,
30th September 2004 [ http://www.firstfilm.co.uk/about.asp ]

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