The Town of Drumheller is hoping to attract more Hollywood productions to the Drumheller area.
In the September 21 edition of inSide Drumheller, Mayor Terry Yemen described the Town’s plans, which would culminate in lobbying the provincial government, and how Alberta needs to do more to attract productions.
The Drumheller Mail had a chance to talk with Jeff Brinton, the Alberta Film Commissioner, to learn more about how Alberta entices productions to film in the province.
In Drumheller’s case, or any rural community hoping to attract productions, Brinton felt the best approach was working within the system.
“We have an Alberta Film Advisory Council, for the purposes of providing advice on improving our competitiveness. Engaging with Alberta Film and the Advisory Council would be a great start. I’ve had good experience with that,” said Brinton.
“We could work with all rural communities to ensure they’re doing everything they can to make themselves as attractive as possible.”
There has been a surge in the past two years in the number of productions being filmed in Alberta. AMC’s Hell on Wheels is filmed in southern Alberta and Heartland has been filmed in Alberta for all of its seven seasons. Brinton indicated there were also a number of productions slated to shoot in the fall and winter.
In Drumheller, filming for the opening scene of The Seventh Son earlier in the summer poured a considerable amount of money into the town in only a few days. Prior to that, it had been eight years since a major production filmed in Drumheller.
“There was a steep decline in production, but business seems to be picking up in the number of productions looking at and committing to shoot in Alberta. There’s been a dramatic increase in last year and this year in particular. Prior to that the production volume was considerably low mostly due to the global economic crisis and high dollar,” said Brinton. “We’ve continued to tweak our guidelines and increase the attractiveness of our program.”
Unlike other provinces, who offer tax credits to productions, Alberta has chosen to go a different route.
“Through the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund, we support film production through a grant program,” said Brinton. “It’s similar to the tax credit other programs offer. This program has advantages over the tax credit option in speed of payout and ease of application.”
“When we compared base funding with other provinces, Alberta has a very competitive
incentive program for attracting productions.”
Each year, Alberta has a budget of $20 million to give to productions through the Development Fund. However, each production can only receive up to $5 million. The goal is to ensure no one production monopolizes the fund.
The cap aims to ensure there is money available for many different productions, such as documentaries, television, indie films, and more.
“With that cap, we’re typically good for a $20 million to $25 million Alberta spend, we only provide incentives to the money spent in the province. Typically, for Hollywood films, we’re good for around a $40 million dollar budget,” said Brinton. “I think the largest Alberta spend in recent years is around $20 million.”
In the meantime, the Town of Drumheller has assigned Bob Cromwell, the Economic Development Officer, with the task of researching what incentives other provinces offer. From there, Drumheller and other municipal governments in the area hope to lobby to bring more productions, and therefore money, to the area.