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It’s a known fact in the film and television industry: Québec and its metropolis Montreal 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.

Québec is also acclaimed for its technological innovations and superior CGI facilities. With its leadingdigital animation infrastructure, it has positioned itself as a world-wide resource for visual and special effects. Montreal also boasts the ultimate in sound stages, technology and equipment. In fact, Mel’s Cinema City, Canada’s largest film production facility, has been built from the ground up and is conveniently located within five minutes from downtown Montreal.


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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 Montreal as a base of operations; as a base of operations;
• Information on Producers, crew, studios and labs, CGI houses and key contacts with legal, finance and accounting firms, associations and unions;
• Coordination with all levels of government – federal, provincial, regional and municipal.


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

The QFTC team:

Hans Fraikin, Commissioner
hans@qftc.ca

Liam Kiernan, Projects Coordinator
productions@qftc.ca

Cyril Loreau, Location Manager
locations@qftc.ca

Christian Beauchesne, Industry Development Manager
christian@qftc.ca

Denis Rocheleau, Financial Officer
denis@qftc.ca

Lamia Maarouf, Photo Library Coordinator
lamia@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 Montreal 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, Aviator, The Mummy 3, Death Race, The Spiderwick Chronicles and 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. Furthermore, productions of any size or budget can now benefit from incentives reaching up to 44% in direct refundable tax credits (see details on pages 39 to 42).

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 major cities, Montreal’s conglomeration of sound-stages 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 Montreal. In an industry where “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 several large, purpose-built state-of-the-art facilities. Mel’s Cité du Cinéma Locations Michel Trudel.offers vast indoor spaces and high ceilings up to 50 feet under-the-pipes 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, most of which over half
are soundproof and purpose-built
• A 36,500 sq. ft. sound stage with 40 feet clear
• On-site 35 mm. and digital 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 facilities and equipment
• Full assortment of dollies and cranes
• Pre-existing sets, including an Oval office set
• An available Oval office set
• Motorized grids/suspended catwalk
• Indoor filming water tank at 53’ X 37’ X 12’ deep

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Crafting Art
During his last day on the set of The Terminal in the Montreal 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 digital 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 shots. Montreal is ranked 2nd among 24 North American cities for the size of its creative talent pool, transforming its strong digital animation infrastructure into a worldwide resource. Recent films like 300, The Fountain, Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Sea Monsters in IMAX, Marie–Antoinette, Fantastic Four, Silent Hill, Mr. Nobody, The Young Victoria, The Spirit, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc., were all produced in Québec, and 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: an 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 Montreal studios Locations Michel Trudel/Mel’s Cité du Cinéma. Recently, Martin Scorsese’s art Director Dante Ferretti called upon Quebec’s Réjean Brochu and his team to design and build all the caves and cliffs in the thriller Shutter Island. Mr. Ferretti recalled the collaboration with Réjean Brochu and his team during the filming of “The Aviator” and had no hesitation in commissioning this new project and having the sets shipped down to Boston from Montreal. The foregoing illustrates that our local talent is and remains among the best the industry has to offer.

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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 16th century 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 Montreal-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 Montreal outdoor snowy scenes of Minsk, Russia, during hot and sunny spring days.

Four regional film offices located in various key areas of Québec (the Laurentians Film and TV Commission, the Montreal Film and TV Commission, the Québec City Film Office and Promotion Saguenay) and half-dozen regional tourism offices 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 Montreal’s best-kept secrets is gaining recognition as more and more foreign productions come to the same conclusion: Montreal is one of the safest and most enjoyable cities in the world. Montreal 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.

Montreal 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 (see www.qftc.ca). In Montreal, one can play a round of golf or a round at Montreal casino, have dinner atop a hotel with a breathtaking view, and catch a top-rated Jazz show, 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)