Alberta Wants Bigger Piece of Hollywood North

Shawn Ohler writes about the Alberta film industry in an article for the Edmonton Journal:

The [Alberta Film Development] fund reimburses moviemakers for 20 per cent of their Alberta expenses, up to $1.5 million. Though Economic Development Minister Clint Dunford wasn't made available for comment this week, a department spokeswoman suggested he wants to increase the fund to make Alberta more competitive with other Canadian provinces.

"I expect he does," said Janice Schroeder. "We share the goal of growing the industry."

That will come as good news to Tom Berry, the Montreal producer who starts shooting his $2-million Decoys: Rebirth sequel today at the University of Alberta and other Edmonton locations, including the Film Alberta Studio on Allard Way.

Berry has two things on his mind this week. One, amazingly, is whether he'll have to make snow, in February, to properly set his tale of beautiful co-eds who morph into aliens and prey on horny men at a frosty northeastern college called Strathorne University. The other is whether he can make Decoys' economic model work well enough to perhaps bring another two to four low-budget flicks a year to Edmonton.

"Absent the snow -- who would have thought? -- Edmonton's looking really good for us," said Berry, 53, who was an undergrad at the University of Alberta in the early '70s. (He jokes that characters who seduce gorgeous women only to wake up beside hideous monsters were based on personal experience here.)

"It's a slightly more expensive place to shoot than, say, the outskirts of Toronto, because the economy's so hot here and the labour's a little higher. But the infrastructure in Edmonton -- the hotels, the locations, the distance between locations -- that works better. And we've found the community, from the guilds to Alberta Film, very receptive and easy to deal with."

Patti Tucker, the Edmonton Film Commissioner also comments on the effect Brokeback Mountain has had on film production in the province and funding in general. Be sure to read the informative article at this link.

Update: One visitor to The Internet Movie Database says that the film is shooting at North Edmonton Public School. This is an additional location to the University of Alberta.

More on Decoys: Rebirth at the following links: 1 and 2. Info on the first film can be found at the official Sci Fi.com website.