'Room to grow' Thunder Bay's filmmaking industry: CEDC

Despite a thriving local, independent community, the City of Thunder Bay has struggled to attract filmmakers from outside of the city, due to its distance from larger filmmaking hubs like Toronto.

But the Community Economic Development Commission is hoping to change that.

"Our feeling is that we certainly have potential to grow," said Paul Pepe, manager of Tourism Thunder Bay, which falls under the CEDC. "It's just looking at what is that sweet spot in the industry that Thunder Bay could take advantage of, given that North Bay and Sudbury have such well-developed infrastructure for film hosting, and their proximity to Toronto in terms of moving equipment and gear and trailers and everything very efficiently."

There are certainly challenges when it comes to building a film industry in Thunder Bay, however, with the aforementioned-distance from major Canadianfilm hubs like Toronto being a major one.

"You have to remember, Sudbury is only four hours away from Toronto," said Jessica Graham, a part-timeinstructor at the Confederation College film school. "That's a huge advantage."

Superior Morning5:49Jessica Graham/Eric Weller: Filmmaking In Thunder Bay

When people think of northern Ontario film production the cities of Sudbury and North Bay immediately spring to mind. Why not Thunder Bay?Hear more about some of the challenges the city faces when it comes to filmmaking.

Thunder Bay doesn't have, for example, any equipment rental houses, meaning filmmakers would need to transport gear from Toronto or other larger centres, Graham said.

And without a film industry in the city, there's no incentive for supports like film equipment rental companies to open up in Thunder Bay.

"Other than our epic, beautiful nature, and key locations that could be filmed in, like Fort William Historical Park and that type of thing, there's nothing really pulling people up here," Graham said. "There's no incentive to come this far north unless there's a specific story reason."

Eric Weller, coordinator of the college's film school, said while the program is always willing to help as much as possible, there are some caveats there, too.

"Most of the time, for any serious big project, they would have to bring everything with them," he said. "And when you're two days' drive from Toronto, that's a four-day round trip, paying full price for equipment rental."

Added Graham: "The other thing is we're outfitted to do short films."

"Things like transport trucks full of lighting equipment, and generators that are the size of cube vans, we just don't have the infrastructure."

But there are some advantages to filming in a place like Thunder Bay, as well, Weller said.

"All of the advantages Thunder Bay has as a film location have to do with the geography, and all the wonderful things we have to offer in such a short distance," he said. "If you live in Toronto, just to drive from one place to another can take you all day."

"Thunder Bay, you're 10 minutes away from the lake, you're 10 minutes away from the mountains, you're 10 minutes away from gorgeous forests as far as the eye can see," he said. "We've got Ouimet Canyon, we've got Kakabeka Falls. We have so much to offer sort of geographically here."

"Simpson Street can look like old-time Chicago if you're careful the way you shoot it. There's lots and lots of places that you can shoot here that you can get to very, very easily. That's the main thing that we have to offer."

"But it's far away."

Thunder Bay does, of course, see some film-related activity each year, mostly from local filmmakers; a recent example is the feature-length documentary A Sobering Story, directed by Ryan La Via, which was released earlier this year.

And despite the challenges, Pepe said the city does get a handful of inquiries from out-of-town filmmakers each year about filming in the city.

"We've seen some smaller productions, and there's some others that are on the books that are coming up here that we can't release information on due to confidentiality," he said. "But certainly there is interest, and there's growing interest."

That interest has prompted discussions within the CEDC offices about taking a more-formal approach to building up a film industry in the city, Pepe said.

"There are discussions that we have been having in terms of looking at it as we develop the next strategic plan in the coming year," Pepe said. "This is a segment that we want to look a bit closer at."

"We want to look at what the potential is, and where toalign resources," he said. "Over the last number of years, we moved film over to tourism, because in a lot of cases, the film shoots have a tourism value."

"But film extends beyond tourism. The economic impacts and the support it gives to cultural industries in the community are certainly beyond tourism, as well."

Pepe said many of the external supports a film industry would need say, for example, accommodations for crew members and talent, or catering are already in place.

And while places like Toronto or Vancouver are major Canadian film hubs, there are other options there, too.

"We're also looking at Winnipeg, we're looking at Minneapolis, we're looking at other hubs, whether Canadian and even U.S. hubs, that are a bit closer to Thunder Bay," he said. "Is there alignment to work with those film hubs as well?"

And there's also the fact that not all film-related work is on-set. An example of that is Blueprints, the new audio post-production facility owned by Jean-Paul De Roover, which has done work on locally-made films.

"The pipeline that we have for Internet is strong as any other city," De Roover said. "We have the ability to now have that kind of data transfer, that kind of data speed, without any issues."

"The one thing that was kind of a holdover from the pandemic was that everyone realized that they could do this work remotely, that they didn't have to go to the studio down the street," he said. "They're just sending the files over and then probably not going to go and attend the session anyway, so what's the difference?"

Major economic driver

"That's where ourselves, North Bay, Sudbury, we all started to realize that, 'hey, the work is going to start coming out now,' and so it's a matter of just encouraging folks to spend their dollars up here."

Emily Trottier, business development officer with Sudbury's economic development division, said thecity's film industry is a major economic driver.

"Sudbury has tracked just over 200 film and television productions since 2012," she said. "That's projects of all shapes sizes, and over an annual average it's about $20 million per year in direct spend."

"If you're considering the spin-off and indirect spend, certainly much more than that peryear that's going into our local economy."

Sudbury does have a dedicated film office, and is also home to the offices of Cultural Industries Ontario North, or CION, which is a pan-northern organization that officers a number of services, such as film crew training.

The industry's development, Trottier said, has also seen more film professionals decide to call Sudbury home.

"There might be people who work part time in the film industry and part time in another role, and the more and more they can have experiences working on a film set, the more they can make that their full-time job," she said. "It's supporting the local and grassroots, but not only the grassroots, as well as attracting the productions."

"Sometimes the director might be keen to go to a region on the basis of the locations, the film-friendliness of the community, the ease of filming," Trotier said. "Other times it might be due to the financial incentives, and how it is cost-affordable to make productions in northern Ontario, especially with the NOHFC(Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation) and other incentives."

Year-round focus

Sudbury like Thunder Bay also offers a great deal of flexibility when it comes to locations, Trottier said.

"We can play the prairies, we can play large urban centres, cabin in the woods," she said. "Obviously there's some that are more challenging for us to play, like period pieces and such."

"But I think we need to have something on a year-round basis," Trottier said. "That's really what's keyfor us, is that we don't have a great big boom with filming that happens in the summer and then nothing that takes place during the winter months. Having that stability on a year-round basis is a big priority for us."

"Catering our outreach and our incentives to accommodate that whole seasonality of our northern region, I think is very important, as well as infrastructure and studio space that's key to attracting some of the larger-budget productions."

"So that's definitely at the forefront for us here in Sudbury."