A global model for the film industry, with Prem Gill

Greater Vancouver Board of Trade President and CEO, Bridgitte Anderson, is joined by Creative BC CEO, Prem Gill, to discuss why 'Hollywood North' is a model for the global film industry, and the lessons other sectors can learn from their success.

What is GVPOD - Greater Vancouver's Business Podcast?

GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.

0:00:05.3 BRIDGITTE: Welcome to another episode of GVPOD, Greater Vancouver’s Business Podcast, where we unpack the challenges and opportunities facing our region. I'm your host, Bridgitte Anderson, President and CEO of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. Well, Vancouver has certainly earned the nickname Hollywood North, the film industry in B.C. employs about 65,000 people and contributes more than $3 billion a year to the provincial economy, the industry has been incredibly resilient over the course of the pandemic and its ability to innovate and adapt to challenges has been an amazing B.C. success story. Joining me to talk about how the industry intends to build on that success is the CEO of Creative BC Prem Gill. Prem, thanks so much for joining me today. So maybe let's take a step back first and you could talk about Creative BC and its role it plays in the film industry in B.C. because that is just one piece of the pie that you are involved in.

0:01:06.1 PREM: Yeah, no, thank you for the opportunity to talk a little bit about what we do. So, we are an organization, we’re actually a non-profit, but we receive funding and a mandate from the province to support the economic development of B.C.'s creative industries. So what does that mean? We support everything from film and television, which includes visual effects and animation, books, magazines, music and digital interactive media, and what we do in support of that is programs that support just that, the economic development, which is everything from managing the tax incentive programs to running film commission services, and a variety of grant programs that support business activity, business development activity. On the film side, the development of content and IP from here in British Columbia and a variety of things like that, as well as supporting a lot of export activity. Which I'm excited to say is starting to happen again in person.

0:02:01.3 BRIDGITTE: Well, speaking of in person, you can't go anywhere in Vancouver where you don't see something being shot for film or for television, and I know it has been very competitive to try and get those productions here in Vancouver, so why is it that they are interested in shooting here rather than another jurisdiction across Canada or in the US.

0:02:24.1 PREM: Yeah, well, I can say, I talk to my colleagues across the country a fair bit, and I can say that the major centres are all pretty active and busy, similar to the Metro Vancouver area, and one of our... The secret sauce here in B.C. and the Metro Vancouver area we are, it's a mature industry now it’s a 40-year-old industry, and a lot of people, up to 60,000 people work in the sector either directly or indirect, I mean everybody knows someone who works in film or a company, your dry cleaner does dry planning for the film industry, there's a lot of links across the whole economy here, but I think part of it is that we have over those years built the infrastructure, we have almost three million square feet of studio space, more coming online, we have... We always like to say that British Columbia as the world looks, I'm sure everybody knows that Vancouver doesn’t often play Vancouver but has played many cities, but also the Okanagan has been all kinds of locations in the world or Vancouver Island. So I think that is to our advantage as well, and honestly, the talent that's built here over the years, those 40 to 60,000 people that now work and thrive in this industry is at all levels and all kinds of roles where we now are a centre that has an expertise, a talent expertise, that makes this a really viable place to come, and also we have really competitive tax incentive programs that are really key to the film and television industry globally and our proximity in the a same time zone as Los Angeles all of these kinds of things, they all add up to a really perfect place for this province to be in in terms of continuing to be a big part of the, I think the success of many great productions that come both from Hollywood but also Canadian productions.

0:04:14.0 BRIDGITTE: A real recipe for success, and I think there's lessons to be learned for other businesses and other industries and sectors around the tax incentive, because there was a time... I remember not that long ago that the tax incentive was in jeopardy, and so if that had been lost, that really would have been one of our competitive edges to be able to attract business. So, is this something that you had to work really hard to be able to keep in place?

0:04:44.0 PREM: I think the industry in collaboration with government in different departments and areas within government, both federally and provincially, I think people really understand the value of these programs and the impact, and this is the global model for the film industry, the film and television industry, most successful jurisdictions maybe outside of Hollywood, but even they have incentive programs have really been part of growing the sector, and for us here in B.C., our incentives are directly linked to British Columbians in jobs, so it's very clear that way in other jurisdictions, there's things called ‘All spends’ and a variety of things... And I'm not saying those are right or wrong, but I think it's a very strategic incentive we have here, and I think the industry continually works with government and with us in terms of everybody understanding the impacts of what these programs have, and again, you can’t just have that one thing, it is literally all these things happening in tandem that are part of the success of our jurisdiction.

0:05:50.1 BRIDGITTE: Your industry was really impacted by the pandemic, you literally bring people together in person and very close quarters, and there's not really a lot of ways around that so you did recover fairly quickly, you brought people back to work and productions got up and running, I mean, how much of an effort was that and what were the factors that had to go into play to make that happen?

0:06:13.5 PREM: It was a massive effort by many people in many organizations, and literally... What was the date? I keep... I'm like, I don't know. Was it March 10 was it March 13th, whatever that day was in 2020 where everybody walked away, and there were sets that people... 'cause we didn't know, we didn't have the knowledge and the science that we all know now, we weren't vaccinated all of these things, so people literally walked away from set, there was no wind down or clean up, people went back to wherever they lived, just hoping for the best and thinking they'd be back in a couple of weeks. And of course, we all know what happened. Now, in some ways, the wind down was the easy part because we just went home, it was getting people back to work safely, that took a lot of time, so it was with Creative BC with WorkSafe with all of the producers, the Canadian Producers Association, the independent the studio facilities people, the major studios from Hollywood and the labour organizations, all coming together to talk about... Nobody had ever developed pandemic protocols before, and we all went through in our various industries and working in different jurisdictions of ministries of health and their guide, so it really changed how Productions can be very... community-oriented, and meal times are really like a real bonding thing, well, that became completely different, sets became more closed where some of them worked in zones where if you didn't work in that zone, they couldn't risk like a lead actor getting infected with covid because then the whole production would go down, or the director or a key personnel, so I think a lot of those precautions still continue because when you're shooting a film you have so many days and that's what you budget for, and if you start going over those days, things change, there is also, there was insurance relief provided by the federal government for Canadian producers because insurance started to cost for... Because if you did have a shut down, how are you gonna cover those costs, so it is... I think it's like this is all still a work in progress, I think across the industry because obviously we all know we're all living with covid we’re not in a kind of post-covid world we’re continually managing our own personal risk and also business risk. So I think what was amazing was that everybody came together, but it wasn't like just the light switched overnight, some productions went back in June 2020 it was really almost at the end of 2020, early 2021, when we saw the levels of production where they had been prior to March 2020, because it just took time and things took longer and people were coming up from Los Angeles, they had to quarantine, remember that? We all forgot. It was really impressive, the thing about this sector, it was already, especially in television, so safety conscious, so there's already a lot of that that is built into physical production that putting in covid protocols was complex, but not in some sense out of the ordinary, not like a library or a restaurant that suddenly had to put in social distancing measures.

0:09:44.0 BRIDGITTE: Your industry really led the way in being able to create safe work spaces and get people back to work, and many of us who have been at home over and we'll guess on and off over the pandemic, really thank your industry because you gave us a lot of content to watch as we were sitting at home. You look at the horizon and you know it's a pretty stressful time for the business community, we know that there is a likely recession, certainly inflation at a 40 year high... You talked about costs and cost just seem to keep increasing, and you mentioned meals well food prices have gone up and gasoline prices are a very big all-time highs, and so those are some of the costs that go into production. How do you navigate this? And especially thinking that there was some recent labour strife and partly over wages and costs, and that now we've got a bit of a tentative agreement, so what are you seeing on the horizon when you look at what are pretty significant storm cloud brewing.

0:10:37.0 PREM: We're not like a production company or a major studio having to make a lot of decisions around budgeting and things like that, I mean, I think it's the same as everybody thinking, I contacted my own mortgage broker the last few days. I think we're all as individuals and organizations, there's a lot of re-evaluation going on, and I don't think it would be that it wouldn't happen in this sector as well in terms of... Maybe it will make Canada more popular from foreign service producers because of the exchange rates. Maybe those costs have an impact, I think that the labour unions just went through their bargaining, and they've come to an agreement, and hopefully those are, I think are in the process of being ratified, but I think it's... We've also, just in terms of especially like fuel costs and food and some of the things we referred to, this industry is also really led in sustainable practices, and one of the things that we talked a lot about, just going back to the covid stuff was that we had gone from having disposable things for meals on set to suddenly having to have individually packages and utensils and water bottles were back, , all of those things, but we all know the biggest impact on climate change is carbon and that carbon footprint and it's also been an industry that's been looking at having more green vehicles, the City of Vancouver has really led, globally I think, in this industry in having electrical hookups available in major sites, so you don't have to bring in a diesel generator, the Vancouver Art Gallery is a big example of that site that I talk about with my colleagues internationally, as the kind of leadership that we as a jurisdiction have shown, and I think those will help in some of this as people start to look at like, Okay, where do we already have things in place that can help manage those rising costs and prices, maybe you will see a cost increase in movie ticket sales and our cable subscriptions but I think it's a pretty solid and stable industry where it takes the production, everybody, anybody, can watch a film or TV show and you kind of know what the high level of production costs or not, but it's really gonna be about...
It always comes back to people as well, and do people don't wanna work in the sector? Why are they showing up? And all of those things.

0:13:31.2 BRIDGITTE: Well, and so many businesses across all industries and sectors are dealing with labour shortages, I think there's always gonna be a great stable of people who wanna be in front of the camera, God bless them, but the people behind the camera... And a lot of technical skills that are involved in that, do you see that there's some gaps in that pipeline, and then how do you manage that? Do you work with post-secondary institutions to make sure that the skills of the future for the film industry are being taught to those students?

0:14:04.3 PREM: Yeah, well, even prior to the pandemic, prior to the heat dome, prior to inflation rates going up, we had done a labour market study in 2017-18 Looking at the labour market means at the Film and Television sector, and we call that the below the line workforce so that is every job that's basically not the producer, director, writer, actor, so it is the set decorators, the carpenters, the electricians, the camera operators, all those jobs, and at that point, based on the levels of what we were seeing, even to maintain what we'd already had in those 18, 19 years was that we would need to increase our labour force over the next three to ten years, anywhere from 3% - 5%, and that was before the pandemic, so we kind of were already preparing for attrition. There was going to be retirement, there's gonna be people moving to other industries, and also knowing that the volume was increasing as well as the studio space expanded, how do we make the sector... Make more people aware of the sector, we also learned that there wasn’t strong EDI representation within the sector, so what did that mean? Like what a great opportunity where you have a sector that doesn't totally look like your population, but is also needing more people.

0:15:25.9 BRIDGITTE: And that's where some of those great hiring opportunities are, in those under-represented groups.

0:15:28.4 PREM: Exactly, exactly. So we launched a website a few months ago called Creative Pathways, that was built... Thank you to support from the BC Government, Warner Media, all of the labor unions the producer associations, they're all involved and helping us get this thing built and launched, both through being on advisory committees and financially, and basically, we believe it's Canada’s first localized and comprehensive online hub for career seekers in the sector, and it is... It kinda demystifies the industry, it's also a very... Networked industry is one of those industries where I just had lunch with somebody today who said that her daughter-in-law, through a friend of a friend of a friend, ended up as a production assistant on a fairly large, big, major feature film, and had never worked in the industry before, so it's kind of how do we break down those networks and how do we actually find and help people place them in opportunity, so the Creative Pathways website is both demystifying, but also helping employers through services through this platform we built in trying to source people from those equity deserving communities as well, that have previously not been so fully represented in the sector, so there's a lot of work that needs to be done and it's more competitive because like you said, there's a lot of options for job seekers these days and what makes this working in the sector more special than something else, so I think there's...a part of it is more education at all levels, going from that basically, I think from elementary school to showing people that they too can work on Spider-Man to the universities, but also to people who have skills in other areas that don't maybe wanna be a hair stylist in a salon anymore... And want to work in the film industry. There's also a lot of that back and forth or industries, there's also a lot of drivers, so if you've been working... I don't know, up north…

0:17:45.9 BRIDGITTE: There's a lot of skills that apply to the film industry that maybe you don't think of right away, that's very true.

Thinking about great opportunity for the film industry, and it sounds like a really super initiative that you've just talked about, Creative Pathways. What are the things that are keeping you up at night right now?

0:17:58.3 PREM: Well, I think it's still around... I think we all as a broader community in the world, and I think there's a lot of work that we still need to in terms of actions and committed, tangible and accountable things around what we like to call it, JEDI, justice, equity, diversity and inclusion work. That has to happen across all levels of all industries, and what that means in a meaningful way to actually see systemic change starting to happen, and I still think we have a long runway to that, but I think I've never been more optimistic about it in that sense. And I think the ongoing... Just the safety of people working in the industry from the pandemic perspective where people really... Right now, I was just at a conference last week and people don't seem to remember there’s a pandemic, and yes, there was a lot of people that came out of that event with covid, so I think it's still around the safety, but honestly, I think that we have such a strong community here in the film and television sector that really collaborates, both with us with government, with each other, that there's not a lot of reasons to lose sleep, I guess, is what I'm trying to say in on this stuff right now.

0:19:28.9 BRIDGITTE: It's a good way to end the conversation with optimism. There has been so much success in the industry with some pretty significant headwinds over the last couple of years, so... One final question, what are you looking most forward to for the rest of 2022?

0:19:48.3 PREM: I have to say it has been seeing people again in person and I am... There's more of that coming up, especially over the summer period, we're fortunate that we get to support a lot of events, especially in the music sector, the music industry is back, there's gonna be festivals and community events across the province, and even those film festivals that are having more in person screenings. That has really been... I didn't really realize it till I first went back to my first event that this has worked so well, the Zoom life, and this morning I had a meeting with somebody in London. That's exactly what it's perfect for, but those connections in person and coming together and in the creative industry that’s so much about collaboration, that I think is what I'm really valuing and understand how much we took so much for granted before all this.

0:20:41.9 BRIDGITTE: Isn't that the truth? Well, I would say See you on the red carpet or something like that, but the odds of me being on a red carpet not so high but. I hope to see you in person soon. Thanks so much for giving us a few minutes of your time today.