With the Canadian dollar dropping, get ready for more film productions in town, said a location manager on the set of the latest movie shot in Squamish.
It’s not Richard Greenhalgh’s first time in the community. He’s canned television and movie productions in Squamish many times before.
“I want to move up here,” he said.
Last Friday the Pender Street Pictures location manager was on Cleveland Avenue for three days filming an independent Canada production. The movie, Lover’s Leap, will be sold to an American network.
A crew of approximately 50 attended the shoots. The actors are up-and-comers, Greenhalgh said. Production unions aim to draw employees from Squamish and neighbouring communities, he added. Out-of-town workers stayed at the Chieftain Hotel and August Jack Motor Inn.
“When the crew is up here, it’s 40 to 50 people who are displaced from their home and go out into the community to get what they need,” Greenhalgh said.
While the independent production has a relatively small crew, big productions can come with a head count of 150 people, he noted. In June, trucks and buses filled the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park’s bottom parking lot as the Paramount feature Star Trek 3 was shot in the boulders. With the dollar down, Squamish residents can expect to hear more clapperboards in town, Greenhalgh said. “I think there will be a lot more movies to come here in the future.”
Squamish’s ma and pa shop feel is another reason productions come here. The community isn’t a cookie cutter of big cities, Greenhalgh said. There’s also the added tax saving incentive. Squamish sits outside of Vancouver’s studio zone, which allows producers to shave six per cent off their labour costs.
This summer, Squamish has been home to 76 days of filming, compared with 60 last summer, said District of Squamish filming and event manager Vanessa Carrington. She warns residents should not take too much stock in the figures. Squamish’s record-breaking filming year in 2012 was mainly due to a single production: Twilight.
“When you get a big one, it certainly changes the numbers,” she said, noting it doesn’t provide insight into how many different productions rolled through town.
Currently, plenty of productions are knocking on Squamish’s door, Carrington notes. The number of crews limits growth, she added. The American drama series The Returned was scheduled to come back to Squamish to film a second season this summer, but previous filming crew bookings led to a delay, Carrington said, noting hopefully the TV series will be shot this fall. Another production, Dashing Through the Snow, was forced to pool resources from other sets in order to get rolling, she added.
“Potentially if there were more resources, there would be more filming,” she said. “I think that is holding us back.”
The devalued Canadian dollar is just one component of the movie boom hitting B.C., said Creative BC’s interim CEO Robert Wong. The 2015 provincial budget introduced additional post-production tax incentives for filming, which boosted the industry, he said. B.C. now boasts more than a million square feet of dedicated stage space and crews to outfit more than 40 productions.
“I won’t call it a lack of resources, rather the demand is so high,” Wong said about the industry’s current situation.
Statistics based on tax credit certification indicated more than $2 million worth of production activity took place in B.C. during the fiscal year ending in March 2015, Wong noted. Stakeholders are working to keep up with the boosted demand. It will take time for the new initiatives to come online, said Wong.
