You oughta be in pictures

James Fraser with Technicolor Creative Services talks about the highly specialized techinical advances in colour during the Mayor's Office of Economic Development hosted a TV and film forum at Canadore College.

You oughta be in pictures … well if you're not suited for the movies perhaps your house or building would make a great alternative.

It's a billion dollar a year industry for Ontario and this past year North Bay enjoyed some of that success because Kids in The Hall shot the Death Comes to Town series in North Bay, Mattawa and Sturgeon Falls as well as two feature films Oliver Sherman and Dark Rising rolled tape as well, and that has city officials doing what they can to keep the industry's interest on the area.

This week the Mayor's Office of Economic Development hosted a TV and film forum at Canadore College that investigated various avenues that would help streamline the process for producers when setting up a shot. Topics included what location scouts are looking for in homes or buildings for a location shoot and post production.

Freelance location scout Malcolm McCulloch says the GTA is suffering from burn out from over use and that makes northern Ontario an attractive untapped market.

“Anything with a lot of beauty or a lot of grunge anything that really catches my eye in terms of what the script is calling for,” he explains in what he is looking for when he comes to the area scouting.

McCulloch says he has a couple of ideas when he reads the script but ultimately it is the director's choice so he has to be able to offer up a number of different options. He says a great location starts first with contact be it Mayor's Office of Economic Development or the Mobile Media Lab because they make it all possible.

“The other thing I would say is the overall geography of the location is also very important it has to be close to the other locations, it has to be beautiful in terms of what we are looking for but it's really important for it to be what we're looking for.”

“So exactly what the script needs and usually we will take three or four different locations and we'll judge them one into the next to decide which one is the best and that is how we will make our decision.”

He also notes that forums like that hosted by Mayor's Office of Economic Development is a good first start in getting things rolling.

I think North Bay, from what I've seen, has a lot to offer. I think everyone should be excited because there are a lot of great landmarks here that kind of put you on the map and if you could start kind of advertising certain locations a lot more I think you'd be surprised you'd find a lot more people might be hearing about North Bay in that capacity.”

James Fraser with Technicolor Creative Services says Canadore's new media centre will offer a great resource for production companies when they are looking at post production loose ends.

“I think capitalizing on that from a research of the industry standpoint is definitely important, and something that the community of North Bay could definitely take advantage of.”

“Beyond that I think it is keeping in touch with the producers and keeping in touch with the producers associations and the provincial Media Development Corporation. And knowing from those people what people are looking for, what are the questions producers are asking today … are they looking to move fast, are they looking to do things on their own are they shooting with new technologies so just keeping up to date with what the questions are being asked.”