Yesterday afternoon, Film Nova Scotia and Telefilm Canada had a bash at the Carleton on Argyle Street to celebrate their new initiative: The First Feature Project provides $50,000 from both the provincial and federal film funding bodies, plus an extra $10,000 for a mentor and marketing, to shoot a more-than-75-minute feature film by a director/writer/producer team that has only made shorts. It’s a first-time funding collaboration of this sort by Film NS and Telefilm’s Atlantic office.
On the up side, this will give some keen Nova Scotia filmmakers a shot at making a long form feature. On the down side, a $100,000 feature film is a student movie, any way you slice it. No professional, experienced crew would be able to work for the kind of salary these funds would pay. However, when announcing the initiative at the Carleton yesterday, Film NS president and CEO Ann MacKenzie said the project was designed so everyone would get paid and for it not to be a call-in-a-favour kind of production.
“I think the biggest concern was the lack of consultation,” says Gary Vermeir, business agent for IATSE 849, the union of Motion Picture Studio Production Technicians. He was at the launch with Tim Storey, business agent for the Directors Guild of Canada, and both were taken aback by the announcement.
“Just springing such a program on the industry, the unions end up in a bad position,” says Vermeir. “Filmmakers are going to want to work with the keys,”—the experienced on set technical crew—“the keys are going to want a contract and we’ll go to the producer with this tiny amount of money to spend. We’re trying to negotiate some kind of reasonable rate of pay and suddenly we’re being painted as the bad guys and we’re just doing our job.”
Storey suggests that a feature film project at that budget is simply unfeasible, with feature budgets of $1 million struggling to be realized, while referencing other government-funded programs in Atlantic Canada—such as the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Co-operative short film program Picture Start, a partly Telefilm-funded deal—that really work. “They’re paying over minimum wage at a full-crew complement,” says Storey of the NIFCO project.
This is certainly not the first time the film unions, looking to represent their members, and the government film-financing institutions have encountered communication difficulties—or flatly disagreed—over what’s best for the local film and television industry, though Vermeir gives Film NS points for hearing his and Storey’s concerns and immediately scheduling a meeting to discuss The First Feature Project in the weeks to come.
“We’re slowly training them to think of us,” says Vermeir. “They are in the business of facilitating production dollars and talking to producers. But I think it’s sometimes forgotten that they’re trying to create Nova Scotian jobs, and that’s us.”
This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2011.
I see a number of movies made under 100k on this list.
http://www.elistmania.com/juice/10_low_bud…
Not every one has to start with a million.
That’s totally true, Charles1. But maybe it’s the exceptions that prove the rule. Did all the crew get paid on El Mariachi, Clerks and Blair Witch? And how were those films insured? Was the health and safety of the cast and crew considered every day they were on set?
A great amateur documentary could be made for less than $100,000. Maybe something like Roger and Me or a Nova Scotia wildlife doc on coyotes or something like the Anvil story. I don’t think the intention is to fund a Titanic or Star Wars.
I’d like to say that as a young Nova Scotian who made a feature film for under $100,000 we would have been over the moon to receive this type of financial support. The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger has been a 3 year project which we hope to premiere at AFF 2011.
After getting turned down from every fund we applied for because we hadn’t yet made a feature film (the telefilm catch 22), we miraculously raised $50,000 on Facebook to make our movie.
We shot it in Cape Breton over 23 days in August 2008 using a mixture of young talent from Cape Breton and Montreal. We ended up getting some help from east coast companies like Whites & Power Post, for which we will be forever grateful =)
While I’m sure that filmmakers would prefer to work with keys, we found that there’s a super talented pool of young local East Coast entry-level players who are very enthusiastic to work for ~100k budget pictures, and who do a superb job.
Since we only raised 50k for production, and weren’t able to get any gov’t support for Post Production, it’s taken us 3 years to finish the film (almost there). I’m glad that Film NS & Telefilm has deciding to support folks in our situation, and I commend those in charge of this great initiative!
This fund is clearly a great seed fund meant to nurture the young emerging talent & I look forward to seeing what comes to fruition from this great new fund.