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It’s a known fact in the film and television industry: Québec and its metropolis Montréal rank among the most production-friendly locations in the world.

Québec has long offered filmmakers a creative and inexpensive backdrop for their productions, which is not surprising, as we were the first place in the world to offer tax credits. In addition to our financial incentives and healthy domestic market share, there’s our distinct European cultural and architectural heritage. This Old World
environment offers a broad range of settings that can easily be mistaken for Paris, London, Munich, Vienna and so much more - for so much less! Naturally, our vast and diverse territory also offers unspoiled nature, well-kept heritage sites, pastoral backdrops and urban glitz, all within the zone.

Acclaimed for our technological innovations and superior CGI facilities, Québec has a strong digital animation infrastructure and is a world-wide resource for visual and special effects. Montréal also boasts the ultimate in sound stages, technology and equipment. In fact, Canada’s largest film production facility has been built from the ground up and is conveniently located within five minutes from downtown Montréal.

It’s not surprising that when asked why they chose Québec over other top international locations, foreign producer’s
answers are as varied and numerous as script rewrites!



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Québec Film and Television Council
The Québec Film and Television Council (QFTC) works closely with international producers to ensure that they benefit from all that Québec has to offer. The QFTC also provides a full range of complementary services tailored to the individual needs of each production:

• Information on the financial advantages of shooting in Québec;
• Professional script breakdowns, preliminary photo packages and location scouting;
• Full support for visiting producers during their stay in Québec;
• Coordination of visits with regional film offices for thorough location searches;
• Access to our digital location library and possible use of our head office in the heart of Old Montréal as a base of operations;
• Information on producers, crew, studios and labs, CGI houses and key contacts in finance, associations and unions;
• Coordination with all levels of government – provincial, federal, regional and municipal.


The Québec Film and Television Council (QFTC)
Hans Fraikin, Commissioner
204 Saint-Sacrement Street, Suite 500
Montréal (Québec) H2Y 1W8
T 514 499-7070
Toll-free: 1 866 320-3456 (Film)
info@qftc.ca
www.qftc.ca



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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 shooting location is the budget – and, more specifically, how much can be saved. Very often, it is those very savings that will determine whether a project gets green-lit or shelved – or whether important scenes will have to be dropped from the script to get the movie made. Québec’s generous financial incentives played a key role in Montréal welcoming numerous film shoots these past years, including record-breaking blockbusters and award winning movies such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Get Smart, 300, Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D, I’m Not There, The Mummy 3, Death Race and Roland Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow. To bring their large-scale projects 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. Consequently, productions of any size or budget can benefit from various credits that can reach up to 53.8% in direct refundable labour based tax credits (see details on pages 31-32).

Québec fact: Québec has always emphasized the importance of cutting costs and incidentally was the first place in the world to offer tax credits. Now, even if everyone's doing it, we still do it better!

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Québec Boasts Canada's Largest Studio Facility

Filmmakers have often observed that, as opposed to studio facilities in other Canadian cities, Montréal’s allow for minimum travel time from one set to another – and therefore maximum efficiency and expediency in shooting. In addition, these ultimate purpose-built sound stages are conveniently located within five minutes from
downtown Montréal. 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 three large, state-of-the-art facilities,
both owned by Mel’s Cité du Cinéma/Locations Michel Trudel. In addition to vast indoor spaces and high ceilings often reaching 50 feet, these Hollywood-scale “cities-within-a-city” feature so many additional on-site facilities as to redefine the word turnkey.

These facilities include:

• 39 multi-function stages, of which half are soundproof
• A 36,500 sq. ft. sound stage with 40 feet clear
• On-site camera rental and servicing
• Full production support
• Qualified technical staff 24/7
• All accessories on site
• Complete inventory of lighting and grip equipment
• Fully equipped production offices
• Wardrobe, hair and make-up areas
• Set construction
• Full assortment of dollies and cranes
• An available Oval office set
• Motorized grids/suspended catwalk
• 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 workforce comprising specialists in all areas and covering the entire spectrum of filmmaking, from financing to post-production and beyond.

A better-known fact is Québec’s position as a world leader in animation and visual effects. Today, virtually every movie employs digital effects in one form or another while certain blockbuster titles feature hundreds of incredibly complex digital scenes. Given that Québec’s film and television industry is booming and that it possesses
and cultivates a creative workforce - Montréal is ranked 2nd among 24 North American cities for the size of its creative talent pool – it’s not surprising that its strong digital animation infrastructure has now become a worldwide resource. In addition, recent films like 300, The Fountain, Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure, the miniseries Marie‑Antoinette, Fantastic Four, Silent Hill, Mr. Nobody, The Young Victoria, The Spirit, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc., which were all produced in Québec, have elevated visual effects to another level.

Physical special effects (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: a effects crew from local Cineffects
Productions had to recreate an entire artificial winter vista for outdoor scenes during the summer of 2008 for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (starring Brad Pitt). Same scenario for Intrigue Productions who easily created winter scenes during summertime shoots of Taking Lives (starring Angelina Jolie) and The Secret Window (starring Johnny Depp). Also, all of the winter scenes in the feature film The Day After Tomorrow were shot in Montréal studios Locations Michel Trudel/Mel’s Cité du Cinéma.

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Québec: Land of Plenty

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 geographical landscape consisting of mountains, fields, rivers and lakes that are so wide they can be mistaken for the sea? Ideal outdoor shooting locations.

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 are regularly impressed by Québec location scouts and their ability to come up with credible stand-ins for such hard-to-find locations as a New York winter street at the turn of the century, a 16thcentury Paris neighbourhood or a Maine seashore village buried under gold and red-coloured autumn leaves. A little bit of cosmetics is often all that is required to relocate such faraway places as Shanghai or St. Petersburg and all within the zone – allowing substantial savings on the overall budget and a welcome relief in terms of logistics. A good example is The Day After Tomorrow production, where Montréal-based indoor and outdoor sets allowed the production to shoot various scenes taking place almost simultaneously in New York, the Arctic, New Delhi, Scotland and Tokyo. And just recently the The Curious Case of Benjamin Button shot in Old Montréal outdoor
snowy scenes of Moscow in hot sunny spring days.

Three regional film offices located in various key areas of Québec (the Laurentians Film and TV Commission, the Montréal Film and TV Commission and the Québec City Film and TV Commission) go to great lengths to ensure accessibility, expediency and efficiency for foreign shoots seeking their various locations. Québec film commissions take pride in their work and ensure your success on location, something producers are quick to recognize and point out when discussing their positive experiences about filming in Québec. Furthermore, the Québec Film and Television Council, a one-stop easy-to-use service for all foreign producers provides free, highly valued, tailored support throughout this process.

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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 unfamiliar 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 recognition as more and more foreign productions come to the same conclusion: Montréal is one of the safest and most enjoyable cities in the world. Montréal essentially combines the best of European charm 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.

Montréal is also renowned for its fine restaurants, featuring everything from Asian to Ethiopian, cultural events, shop-till-you-drop districts as well as for its first-class hotels, most of which are QFTC members www.qftc.ca. 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 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 unexpected breaks.


Settind The Stage

Much like how a production must meet specific criteria in order to take a script from the page to the big screen, a prospective city or region must meet a production’s specific requirements in order to become a film set. Québec has gone to great lengths to ensure that it maintains its ranking among the most sought-after shooting destinations in the world. The creation of the Québec Film and Television Council (QFTC) by key industry players is a concrete example of the province’s willingness to provide cost-conscious filmmakers with a smooth, hassle-free shoot.

Montréal Area by the Numbers

Film & TV industry professionals:
20,000 in the Montréal Metropolitan Region

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
Local Hockey Team: The Montreal Canadiens!

Québec by The Numbers

Population: 7.5 million
Film & TV industry professionals: 35,000
Cultural communities: 70
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)