OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Directors Guild of Canada is starting up an ad campaign just in time for TIFF,
When Hollywood’s A-list descends on Toronto this week for the Toronto International Film Festival, they will be bombarded at the airport and in the city’s downtown core with billboards and signs declaring that Ontario is open for show business.
The Ontario branch of the Directors Guild of Canada will launch a “Hey Hollywood” campaign starting Tuesday, reminding Hollywood producers that the guild’s 2,500 members, who work as directors, designers, production management, locations staff and editors, are available for work.
The Star got an exclusive sneak preview of the campaign. A digital campaign is also being launched in Los Angeles, minus the billboards.
One ad asks, “Hey MGM, not sure if you should make your next picture with Toronto editors? Just ask Fox. And
Shape of Water’s 4 Oscars.” It’s the most ambitious campaign of its kind by the guild. Toronto is undergoing an unprecedented surge in production fuelled by movies and, in particular, the television industry. Production hit $1.98 billion in 2018.
While that has meant everyone from caterers to carpenters and camera operators being booked solid, many Hollywood productions tend to use imported talent for the creative roles, such as the director, while using local technical crew.
While the guild’s editors, designers and directors have racked up an impressive slate of Emmy and Academy Awards for shows such as The Handmaid’s Tale and movies like Shape of Water, Hollywood has been “sluggish” to catch up to the trend, the guild says.
The advertising campaign aims to change mindset during the film festival, which runs Thursday to Sept. 15.
“We’re just reminding our friends at the studios that when they shoot in Toronto, they should remember that we’ve got talent sought after by the biggest names in film and television,” said Alan Goluboff, chair of the DGC Ontario, in a release.
“As a Canadian producer, I’d love to keep all this talent to ourselves,” adds Best Picture Oscar winner J. Miles Dale in a statement. “But as a director and a guild member, I know these people are too good at what they do for the whole world not to discover them.”