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Five reasons why foreign producers
enjoy shooting in the area
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What is already a known fact to many film, television and advertising industry players : Québec and its metropolis Montréal rank among the most foreign producion friendly locations in the world.
This past year, provincial government reiterated his belief in the importance of foreign productions on our local economy by unveiling various incentives and policies. One immediate result was the increase of the Québec Production Services Tax Credit on Québec Labour expenditures for foreign productions from 11% to 20%.
While the above initiative go a long way toward strengthening Québec’s reputation as a sought-after destination for film, TV and advertising productions, it is merely part of a much larger whole. When queried as to why they chose Québec over other top international locales (or even popular Canadian cities such as Toronto or Vancouver), foreign producers’ answers are as varied and numerous as script rewrites. Yet they usually fall into one of the following five general categories: financial incentives; studio facilities; labour and technical expertise; outdoor locations; and quality of life.
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Dollars and sense
Not surprisingly, over and above the ideal backdrop or the perfect studios, the number one criterion in a producer’s decision process when seeking a foreign location is the budget – and, more specifically, how much of it can be saved. Very often, it is those very savings that will determine whether a project gets greenlit or remains shelved – or whether important scenes will have to be dropped from the script to get the movie made. Financial incentives most likely played a role in Montréal welcoming two of the largest Hollywood film shoots in its history these past years, Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow and Scorsese’s The Aviator. To bring their large-scale visions to the screen in all their breathtaking details, the directors and producers of such big-budget epics need all the financial breaks that can be made available to them. Thus, in addition to an ever-advantageous Canadian dollar, American and European productions of any size or budget also benefit from various tax credits related to Canadian labour (see details on page 37).
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Lights, camera… and everything else
Filmmakers have often observed that, as opposed to those in other Canadian cities, Montréal studio facilities allow for minimum travel time from one set to another – and therefore maximum efficiency and expediency in shooting. In an industry where the old adage “time is money” never rang more true, it is easy to understand why this would be seen as such an advantage for Montréal over other locations. Indeed, much of the studio space currently available in the area (over 350,000 sq. ft.) is found within two large, state-of-the-art facilities, both owned by Mel’s Cité du Cinéma/Locations Michel Trudel. In addition to vast indoor square footage and high ceilings often reaching 50 feet, these Hollywood-scale “cities-within-a-city” feature so many additional on-site amenities as to redefine the word turnkey. Among them are:
• equipment rental;
• make-up, costume and hair facilities;
• luxurious dressing rooms;
• set construction facilities;
• fully equipped production offices;
• air conditioning;
• back lots;
• simultaneous access to multiple sound stages/sets;
• etc.
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Crafting art
During his last day on the set of The Terminal in the Montréal suburb of Mirabel, actor Tom Hanks spoke for many in the film business when he told the local crews how much he had been impressed by their work. Time after time, foreign productions are amazed at the dedication, skill and professionalism of a work force comprising specialists in all areas and covering the entire spectrum of filmmaking, from financing to post-production and beyond. These productions are also able to witness firsthand a widespread misconception about Québec labour: that they are poorly versed in English. In fact, it is just the opposite: bilingualism is as much a part of local crew members’ abilities as is their knowledge of their craft. And a language barrier has as much root in reality as a Spielberg production shot in Swahili.
A better-known fact is Québec’s position as a world leader in animation and visual effects. Renowned software such as inferno and flame, used among other things to create some of the dazzling effects in such films as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (all three nominated for Best Visual Effects at the 2004 Academy Awards) originated at Discreet in Montréal. The province’s leading-edge expertise includes 2D and 3D animation, interactive imaging, game development and multilingual browsing. Special effects of the physical kind (e.g., pyrotechnics, stunts, flying rigs, hydraulics, underwater shoots, miniatures and models) also rank among the province’s many areas of expertise, with special equipment and machinery often designed and built for a film shoot’s specific requirements. Case in point: in a land where winter often takes on Siberian proportions, an effects crew from local Intrigue Productions had to create an entire artificial winter vista for outdoor scenes during the 2003 summertime shoots of D.J. Caruso’s Taking Lives (starring Angelina Jolie) and the Johnny Depp starrer Secret Window. And most recently, the feature film The Day After Tomorrow where all winter scenes were shot in Montréal studio facilities.
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Anywhere, Québec
What do you get when you combine 400 years of well-preserved history, a European cultural and architectural heritage, modern urban cityscapes, quaint rural backdrops, four distinct seasons and a geography of mountains, fields, lakes and a river that gets so wide it can be mistaken for the sea? In essence, the ideal conditions for outdoor shooting. Often, when a production leaves its homeland to shoot abroad, and especially when the motivations are mainly financial, the chosen destination is meant to act as a substitute for another location depicted in the script. Filmmakers and producers have often been pleasantly surprised by Québec and Montréal location scouts in their ability to come up with credible stand-ins for such hard-to-find locales as a New York winter street at the turn of the century, a 16th-century Paris neighbourhood or a Maine seashore village buried under gold- and red-coloured autumn leaves.
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A little bit of cosmetics is often all that is required to relocate such faraway places as Shanghai or St.Petersburg only a few miles from a production’s home base at a major studio – a substantial saving on the schedule and overall budget, and a welcome relief in terms of logistics. A recent example involves The Day After Tomorrow production, where Montréal-area indoor and outdoor sets allowed the filming of scenes taking place in New York, the Arctic, New Delhi, Scotland and Tokyo almost simultaneously. Film and TV offices in various regions of Québec including Montréal, the Laurentians and UNESCO-recognized Québec City have gone to great lengths to ensure accessibility, expediency and efficiency for foreign shoots seeking their various locales – something producers are quick to point out when discussing their positive experiences filming in Québec. Furthermore, Film in Québec provides much appreciated assistance throughout this process (see back cover).
Temporary home, permanent enjoyment
One of the inevitabilities of foreign shooting is that many involved in the production will need to set up shop in a new, often unknown city for weeks and sometimes months at a time – and this move may even involve a cast or crew member’s entire family. When this fact is taken into consideration, the choice of a particular corner of the world extends beyond the simple requirements of a given script. What used to be one of Montréal’s best-kept secrets is gaining increasing publicity as more and more foreign productions come to the same conclusion: the city is one of the safest and most enjoyable in the world, and its quality of life is unsurpassed. Montréal is essentially a combination of the best of European cachet and American dynamism, where modern skyscrapers stand between a river and a mountain, where the old smiles at the new, and the trendy salutes the traditional. It is a place where a hundred thousand people can gather in the streets for one of the most famous jazz festivals in the world – and not worry about being the victims of a crime. Montréal is renowned for its fine restaurants featuring everything from Asian to zitis, as well as its first-class hotels, cultural events, and shop-till-you-drop districts. In Montréal, one can catch a top-rated show, play a round at a casino, have dinner atop a hotel with a breathtaking view, and enjoy a fine Cuban cigar ... all in the same evening. Thanks to an excellent infrastructure of roads and highways and the relative proximity of rural to urban, leaving town to enjoy some peace and quiet in the country or by a lakeside can be a spur-of-the-moment decision that won’t necessarily take up half a day’s travel – something much appreciated by cast and crew alike on typically unpredictable shooting schedules with brief and often unforeseen breaks.
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Setting the stage
Much like a production must meet specific criteria in order to take a script from the page to the big screen, a potential city or region must meet a production’s specific requirements in order to become a film set – and enjoy the various related benefits. Québec and Montréal have gone to great lengths to ensure they maintain their rankings among the most sought-after shooting destinations in the world. Current concerted efforts by key industry players, with a goal to create a one-stop-shop film and TV office, are but one tangible proof of the province’s willingness to allow cost-conscious filmmakers a smooth, hassle-free shoot.
Montréal area by the numbers
Population: 3.5 million
Flight duration from L.A.: 5 hours
From New York City: 1 hour
From Paris: 6 hours
Restaurants: 5,000
Bars: 1,600
Hotels: 350
Québec by the numbers
Population: 7.5 million
Total area: 1.5 million square kilometers (580,000 square miles) – more than twice the size of Texas
Number of lakes: over 1 million
Major mountain ranges: two (Laurentians and Appalachians)
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