Despite a thriving local, independent film 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.CBC NewsConfederation College film students with one of the program's cameras.
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. "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."
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 want to look at what the potential is, and where to align 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."
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. "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."