Will The Recession Take Away Our Film Sets Too?

By Katey Rich

I just finished writing an article for our upcoming issue, which will come out at the ShowCanada Expo in Alberta next month. The story is about the British Columbia film industry, specifically two government organizations that exist to support and promote film production in Canada's most western province. In the era of Giuliani and Bloomberg's support for film production here in the States, we forget how often Vancouver used to stand in for the fair city of New York, or anywhere else in America for that matter. I was surprised to learn while writing the article that British Columbia is the third-largest film production center in North America, just ahead of L.A. and New York.

The problem for the province right now, of course, is an even bigger problem for the U.S.: The American dollar is worthless, which makes the Canadian dollar valuable, which makes Canada no longer a cheap destination for location shooting. Even with the intensive tax breaks offered to foreign productions in the province, shooting in Canada instead of New York is not the instant budget-slasher it used to be. In fact, given aggressive tax breaks in New York and other states, it's probably cheaper to stay home.

The potential fallout of the looming recession has been analyzed from all sorts of angles in the media, including in one Variety article analyzing the labor cuts and stalling development in Hollywood. But no one seems to be discussing how it might affect what we see onscreen. With foreign dollars worth so much more on our soil, will we be seeing more Bollywood movies set in New York, or a Japanese horror movie taking place in the Arizona desert? Conversely, given the tightening of belts all over the country, will studios be scaling back on location work, confining their movies to soundstages as if it were the 1940s all over again?

The Canadian industry, from Montreal to Vancouver, is probably asking this question the loudest; despite increases in domestic production in British Columbia, foreign production companies still make up about 75% of the business there. American moviegoers may be getting movies that are actually filmed where they're set-- at least if they're set in places with hefty tax breaks-- but the Canadians may get a shriveling industry. British Columbia is far too well-established a production center to die entirely, but the lean times in America could get even leaner for Vancouver production companies.

Personally, I see the location shooting crunch as a perfect situation for the return of a classic genre: the film noir. The old ones were all set in Los Angeles and filmed largely on soundstages, perfect for a modern production company strapped for both cash and plane tickets for the crew. Your costume needs are pretty simple-- snappy fedoras for the men, waist-cinching dresses for the ladies-- and special effects are minimal, since the old movies weren't allowed to show fake blood. Hey, for true authenticity you could shoot it on black-and-white stock, with the money you save from staying on a soundstage. Yes, I think the gumshoes and dames are due for a comeback... teach the kids these days how murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle.