I want to thank you for inviting me. I'm the director and founder of the Screen Industries Research and Training Centre, or SIRT for short. SIRT is a technology access centre, designated as such by the federal government. We're funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario government, Sheridan College, as well as industry partners.
We're nationally and internationally recognized for the work we do serving Canada's screen industries, which for us includes film, television, gaming, and interactive media. The work includes applied research, consulting, access to equipment expertise, and specialized training. We've existed since 2009 at Pinewood Toronto studios, and we're an extension of Sheridan's renowned programs in animation and other areas of the screen industries. Our work, though, is dedicated to relationships with companies and industry associations. We work with them to drive innovation within the sector, with the goal of establishing a competitive advantage for them internationally. The screen industries for us are part of the knowledge economy, operating within a global marketplace. The ability to innovate is critical to these industries in order to have continued company and job growth that will benefit the country and their individual regions.
In my case, I'm going to focus my attention on the area that I know most well—innovation and how it relates to paragraph (c) in your list of areas that you wanted us to address, and that's support for the industry.
Innovation at the company level is critical, which I'll address, but so too is ensuring that the workforce that makes up the feature film industry is adequately prepared to both develop and apply innovative solutions. In crews and personnel I include camera crews, art department personnel, and editorial and other technical and management crew who help directors and writers realize their creative vision.
Key aspects of this sector need to be recognized if innovation is to be adequately supported. The industry is primarily composed of small and medium-sized enterprises. These are enterprises that in any particular production may have 10 or 15 or 20 touching or processing a unique product, which is a series or a feature film, on the way from concept through to production and delivery. The fact that you have that many companies and they're all SMEs, and the fact that it's also a project-based industry and a project-based manufacturing process, creates special challenges for the innovation within that sector, as does the fact that a lot of the employees are freelance or contract. This means that you have key technical staff who would be involved in innovation who are hired at the beginning of a project, are staggered in terms of when they leave a project, and who then go on to other projects.
These aspects of the feature film production process, in terms of the impact on the workforce and the impact on companies in terms of their ability to innovate, are challenges, but there are developments happening now that are actually helping the industry deal with that. This is the fact that there is a convergence of the different sectors within the screen industries. What you have is a totally digital process that's happening from beginning to end of the production process.
As a result of that, in Ontario we've been developing something called SirtNet. This initiative has been developed with leading companies as well as industry associations, including feature film companies. We've been developing a broadband network that will allow people in different companies to interact from beginning to end, from shooting on a sound stage through to post-production, visual effects, and delivery. This process ties together companies that are SMEs, allowing the creation of a studio within a province, basically, where you can move production or post-production activities to different regions, different areas, of the province. You can build and have those very small companies that are just starting out interacting immediately with larger companies. You can regenerate the industry through that process.
The development of SirtNet that is currently going on is with the involvement, as I said, of companies across the different sectors. I have to emphasize that what we have here is a screen industry sector that involves feature film, television, interactive media, and gaming. I'll get into the connection among them, but what it means is that in order to develop that sector as a whole, it's critical that the feature film sector also be developed. There's a cross-fertilization, which I will get to, that is critical to the development of the sector.
The key thing in terms of the cross-fertilization is that you have people who are working in feature films, but as I mentioned earlier, they move at the end of a production to other productions. They also move to other sectors. You have people who are working for film and television projects who are moving from there and working with gaming companies, with interactive media companies, so that cross-fertilization of both the technical and the creative process is taking place. It is especially important now, because you also have a technical convergence that's happening.
What we're doing at Pinewood with SIRT is working with gaming companies, with feature film companies, with television companies, and we are all using the same technologies. They may not realize that, but to be able to work together with them and to have that cross-fertilization is really important, especially because it's the larger budget productions that offer the feature films that are starting to use these innovative technologies. So there's a trickle-down effect that takes place. You actually have an innovation process that is happening within the sector that is partly caused by the fact that you have a developed feature film industry. That's one of the strengths that Ontario has, and Canada has.
I'd like to finally get to the fact that our unique global competitive advantage in Canada is based upon that cross-sectoral development that's taken place. For example, you have companies like Side Effects Software and Alias in Toronto, now owned by Autodesk, who develop software for the feature film industry. That software is now used throughout other sectors of the screen industries, but it was developed for the feature film industry.
You have companies like Christie Digital in Kitchener—Waterloo. They developed as a projection company. They are the leading company in the world in terms of digital projection, but their technologies are also used in other sectors. They're a leading company in terms of screen industries, throughout the sectors within the screen industries.
You also have schools that are developing graduates. Sheridan, for example, had three of its graduates nominated for one particular category at the Oscars this year. Three of the five were for feature film animation, and I think that's really important to understand: feature film animation. This idea that feature film is separate in some way from other parts of the sector, I think, has to be rejected and it needs to be realized that we have a strength: we have the integration of those different elements of one sector.
I think the important thing to do is to recognize that there are SMEs that are involved in this. It's project-based. It's difficult in terms of the workforce, because the technical, creative, and management staff are staff that are freelancing contract in a lot of cases. It's a unique sector that has to be nurtured in special ways in terms of the support for innovation.
Thank you.