North Island welcomes funds for film training
Provincial funding to help train film crews on northern Vancouver Island this fall is well-timed and should benefit the film sector province-wide, say two Vancouver Island film commissioners.
“The hope is that this curriculum will be available for everyone to use,” said Victoria film commissioner Kathleen Gilbert. “As soon as it’s launched, it will be shared,”
Gilbert was reacting to Minister of Social Development and Social Innovation Michelle Stilwell’s recent announcement that $488,750 has been allocated to develop curriculum and pilot delivery of film and TV production training at North Island College’s Campbell River and Port Alberni campuses.
Joan Miller, head of Vancouver Island North Film Commission, had been pushing for such a program for years and was instrumental in its development, Stilwell said.
“It feels like forever,” said the INFilm commissioner, whose staff provides liaison and location services to production companies filming in communities from Nanaimo north.
“It started with a research paper,” Miller recalled. “We spent a year just interviewing and talking to everybody in the industry, talking to producers to try and confirm what we thought we knew. The timing is right because B.C.’s [$2-billion] production industry is just so busy in Vancouver right now and this is a great opportunity for the province to take some heat off it.”
Miller has had to turn away producers of some major projects, she said, because there weren’t enough crews available as “local hire,” meaning they wouldn’t have to be put up in hotels and paid per diems.
“The exciting thing is that money’s being spent to develop a curriculum for production that should work to transition more people into the industry,” said Gilbert, who currently facilitates local industry orientation programs at Royal Roads University.
Camosun College also recently announced that entry-level courses would be offered through its new Live Event, Audio-Visual Technician program at its Lansdowne Campus.
Curriculum for Camosun’s program, which focuses mainly in production of live events, was written with input from members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
“We’ll keep doing what we have been doing here through the film commission, but we’re also keeping a close eye on the North Island program to see where it goes,” said Gilbert.
In an attempt to beef up the capital region’s crew base, Vancouver Island South Film and Media Commission cohosted a film industry career fair in Esquimalt in January that attracted 1,800 industry hopefuls.
If the training program sparks an increase in employment opportunities on northern Vancouver Island, crews who live in those communities wouldn’t need to travel to Victoria or Vancouver to find work, Gilbert added.
According to WorkBC, the motion picture and sound recording industry is becoming one of B.C.’s fastest growing employers, with about 10,500 job openings anticipated by 2025.
Vancouver is holding steady as North America’s third-largest film and TV production centre, with more than $2 billion in direct spending and providing 35,000 jobs.
The north Island training program will include two streams — a trades stream to equip students and specialists such as carpenters and electricians with skills to work in departments such as set design and lighting; and a production assistants stream. The latter, says Miller, could prove particularly useful for First Nations workers interested in becoming production, location or office assistants.
“We have lots of wonderful locations on First Nations lands,” said Miller, citing as examples filming for Godzilla, Superman and The Crossing, the pilot for a new ABC-TV series that recently filmed in Ucluelet.
“The industry tries to hire locals, but it can be pretty daunting when you have the circus roll in and someone saying: ‘OK. We’d love to have you work in this department. Start now.’”
Familiarizing potential local workers with the unique, hurry-up-and-wait nature of film production would help make Vancouver Island’s potential filming locations more camera-ready, she said.
Miller said the training is particularly welcome up-Island since it can help increase employment in the creative sector for workers in industries such as fishing and forestry during lean times.
Current examples of productions that would have benefited from a higher availability of local transferable skills include Chesapeake Shores, the Hallmark series that begins shooting its second season later this month in the Parksville-Qualicum area; Light of My Life, the new Casey Affleck movie filmed in part in Maple Bay; and Crypto, the sci-fi thriller that showcases locations in Port Hardy.
Coincidentally, Miller and Gilbert are heading to Los Angeles this weekend to showcase their respective regions at the Association of Film Commissioners International’s annual conference in Burbank.
It was at past editions Miller sold producers of History Channel’s Alone reality series, and Patricia Rozema’s wilderness drama Into the Forest, on the benefits of shooting on Vancouver Island.