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Star: Toronto "film-unfriendly"?
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Toronto `film-unfriendly'?
Bollywood director shooting a movie here says lack of incentives mean he may not return
Feb 10, 2007 04:30 AM
Prithi Yelaja
Staff Reporter
Bollywood actor Dharmendra sits pensively on a Toronto park bench as snowflakes, appearing on cue, float through the air.
"Cut," yells director Anil Sharma, grinning because he got the one thing he came all the way from India for: snow. "It was a perfect shot for me," he says.
In five days of shooting in the GTA, a stand-in for Manhattan, Sharma and his crew of 50 filmed on the waterfront, at a Raptors game, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and in various spots in Mississauga.
His $7 million Apne caters to the Bollywood appetite for "exotic" locales. Toronto is cheaper than New York, and it's easier to get Canadian visas.
But Sharma isn't sure he'd come here again.
"Quebec City, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Banff – such beautiful places God has given Canada. They're perfect film locations. But this country should be a little more film-friendly."
Sharma's disappointment – despite that overly broad generalization – suggests that while Hollywood is turning its back on Toronto, the city may also be missing out on opportunities in India, with the biggest movie industry on the planet.
The value of film and television production in Toronto dropped from $928 million in 2001 to $773 million in 2005. Another decline is expected when 2006 figures come in, and 2007 began with an actors' strike.
Significantly for Bollywood, countries such as Switzerland, Australia and Ireland lure productions with deep discounts on flights and hotels and other subsidies Canada doesn't offer. Like Toronto, they will help filmmakers seek out locations, but also go the extra step of negotiating for them, another perk Sharma says he didn't get here.
The paucity of the incentives puzzles him, because exposing huge Bollywood audiences to a location boosts tourism.
"About 50 Bollywood films have been shot in Switzerland. Now, in India, couples go to Switzerland on honeymoon or Australia on vacation because they have seen it on the movie screen."
Donna Zuchlinski, acting director of industry development at Ontario Media Development Corp. (OMDC), says the province's incentives to Bollywood films "are very similar to the marketing efforts we use for all production we're encouraging to shoot in Ontario."
That includes free help to scout locations from a database containing 130,000 images, a federal tax credit of 16 per cent and a provincial 18 per cent tax credit on the labour component. The city pegs the exchange rate for its services at a generous 78 cents U.S.
But other Canadian cities offer that and more: Ontario provides domestic productions with an extra 10 per cent tax credit for shooting in locations outside the GTA, and Ottawa offers similar incentives to shoot outside southern Ontario, according to Toronto film commissioner Karen Thorne-Stone: "It makes it tough for us to compete."
Additional discounts or subsidies aren't in the cards at the moment, though a Canada-India co-production treaty needed to bypass Canadian-content rules is in the works.
"I don't think we can just talk about, `If we give away flights, we'll get the show,'" says Zuchlinski.
Cameron Bailey, international programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, regularly previews movies in India and sees the potential.
"The Swiss figured out there was a great market for Indian films, so you see the Swiss Alps in a lot of Bollywood movies. The Indian film industry likes to shoot internationally, especially song sequences. One song sequence can start in Mumbai and go to Switzerland and then Niagara Falls. It's globetrotting in one scene.
"Toronto and Ontario could definitely be part of that, and there's a lot of room to grow."
Film officials in Canada do appear keen to crack the Bollywood market, which churns out more than 900 productions a year, compared with Hollywood's 500. Representatives from Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec have joined recent trade missions to Mumbai.
James Weyman, manager of industry initiatives for OMDC, was on Premier Dalton McGuinty's trip to India last month.
"Not only is India on our radar, we're on theirs," says Weyman, who discussed joint ventures with film executives in Mumbai.
"Bollywood is ... evolving into an international industry, whereas it was primarily (focused) on the domestic market in the past. It's not so much a question of how big is it now but how big will it be in the future, particularly as Bollywood producers seek to shoot in international locations."
Weyman believes "we're reaching out in an appropriate way to Bollywood. Ontario doesn't have mountains so we can't compete with Switzerland. Ontario doesn't have jungles so we can't compete with New Zealand" – though the CN Tower and Niagara Falls, Bollywood's No. 1 Canadian location, are iconic, he adds.
Of 196 foreign movies filmed in Ontario from 1995 to 2006, 14 were Bollywood productions; most of the rest were from Hollywood, according to the OMDC.
"We're right next to the U.S., so our bread and butter in terms of foreign productions is Hollywood. People are very geared to that. It would take a switch in mindset to say, `Oh yeah, there's also a big market in Indian films to be served, too,'" says Bailey.
And there's the bang-for-the-buck factor.
"Bollywood budgets aren't that large by international standards, and so I think we look at our activity in terms of marketing and outreach in relation to the overall return on our investment and energy," says Weyman, a view Zuchlinski shares.
"We're servicing a tremendously large volume of production here, so we have to devote our resources appropriately to the size of the industry and the size of the production," she says.
Sharma figures he spent $1 million in Toronto. If he hadn't needed snow in an urban landscape, he would have gone to Switzerland instead, he says, "where they welcome Bollywood with wide-open arms."
Link to article
Toronto `film-unfriendly'?
Bollywood director shooting a movie here says lack of incentives mean he may not return
Feb 10, 2007 04:30 AM
Prithi Yelaja
Staff Reporter
Bollywood actor Dharmendra sits pensively on a Toronto park bench as snowflakes, appearing on cue, float through the air.
"Cut," yells director Anil Sharma, grinning because he got the one thing he came all the way from India for: snow. "It was a perfect shot for me," he says.
In five days of shooting in the GTA, a stand-in for Manhattan, Sharma and his crew of 50 filmed on the waterfront, at a Raptors game, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, and in various spots in Mississauga.
His $7 million Apne caters to the Bollywood appetite for "exotic" locales. Toronto is cheaper than New York, and it's easier to get Canadian visas.
But Sharma isn't sure he'd come here again.
"Quebec City, Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Banff – such beautiful places God has given Canada. They're perfect film locations. But this country should be a little more film-friendly."
Sharma's disappointment – despite that overly broad generalization – suggests that while Hollywood is turning its back on Toronto, the city may also be missing out on opportunities in India, with the biggest movie industry on the planet.
The value of film and television production in Toronto dropped from $928 million in 2001 to $773 million in 2005. Another decline is expected when 2006 figures come in, and 2007 began with an actors' strike.
Significantly for Bollywood, countries such as Switzerland, Australia and Ireland lure productions with deep discounts on flights and hotels and other subsidies Canada doesn't offer. Like Toronto, they will help filmmakers seek out locations, but also go the extra step of negotiating for them, another perk Sharma says he didn't get here.
The paucity of the incentives puzzles him, because exposing huge Bollywood audiences to a location boosts tourism.
"About 50 Bollywood films have been shot in Switzerland. Now, in India, couples go to Switzerland on honeymoon or Australia on vacation because they have seen it on the movie screen."
Donna Zuchlinski, acting director of industry development at Ontario Media Development Corp. (OMDC), says the province's incentives to Bollywood films "are very similar to the marketing efforts we use for all production we're encouraging to shoot in Ontario."
That includes free help to scout locations from a database containing 130,000 images, a federal tax credit of 16 per cent and a provincial 18 per cent tax credit on the labour component. The city pegs the exchange rate for its services at a generous 78 cents U.S.
But other Canadian cities offer that and more: Ontario provides domestic productions with an extra 10 per cent tax credit for shooting in locations outside the GTA, and Ottawa offers similar incentives to shoot outside southern Ontario, according to Toronto film commissioner Karen Thorne-Stone: "It makes it tough for us to compete."
Additional discounts or subsidies aren't in the cards at the moment, though a Canada-India co-production treaty needed to bypass Canadian-content rules is in the works.
"I don't think we can just talk about, `If we give away flights, we'll get the show,'" says Zuchlinski.
Cameron Bailey, international programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, regularly previews movies in India and sees the potential.
"The Swiss figured out there was a great market for Indian films, so you see the Swiss Alps in a lot of Bollywood movies. The Indian film industry likes to shoot internationally, especially song sequences. One song sequence can start in Mumbai and go to Switzerland and then Niagara Falls. It's globetrotting in one scene.
"Toronto and Ontario could definitely be part of that, and there's a lot of room to grow."
Film officials in Canada do appear keen to crack the Bollywood market, which churns out more than 900 productions a year, compared with Hollywood's 500. Representatives from Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec have joined recent trade missions to Mumbai.
James Weyman, manager of industry initiatives for OMDC, was on Premier Dalton McGuinty's trip to India last month.
"Not only is India on our radar, we're on theirs," says Weyman, who discussed joint ventures with film executives in Mumbai.
"Bollywood is ... evolving into an international industry, whereas it was primarily (focused) on the domestic market in the past. It's not so much a question of how big is it now but how big will it be in the future, particularly as Bollywood producers seek to shoot in international locations."
Weyman believes "we're reaching out in an appropriate way to Bollywood. Ontario doesn't have mountains so we can't compete with Switzerland. Ontario doesn't have jungles so we can't compete with New Zealand" – though the CN Tower and Niagara Falls, Bollywood's No. 1 Canadian location, are iconic, he adds.
Of 196 foreign movies filmed in Ontario from 1995 to 2006, 14 were Bollywood productions; most of the rest were from Hollywood, according to the OMDC.
"We're right next to the U.S., so our bread and butter in terms of foreign productions is Hollywood. People are very geared to that. It would take a switch in mindset to say, `Oh yeah, there's also a big market in Indian films to be served, too,'" says Bailey.
And there's the bang-for-the-buck factor.
"Bollywood budgets aren't that large by international standards, and so I think we look at our activity in terms of marketing and outreach in relation to the overall return on our investment and energy," says Weyman, a view Zuchlinski shares.
"We're servicing a tremendously large volume of production here, so we have to devote our resources appropriately to the size of the industry and the size of the production," she says.
Sharma figures he spent $1 million in Toronto. If he hadn't needed snow in an urban landscape, he would have gone to Switzerland instead, he says, "where they welcome Bollywood with wide-open arms."
