Good evening. Thank you for inviting me.
The Film and Sound Commission is a branch of the Department of Economic Development of the Yukon government. We cover three general areas in our mandate: we support musicians and the development of the music industry in the Yukon; we support filmmakers who are taking on a managerial and ownership role in a film product--directors, producers, and writers; and we also market the Yukon as a film location for production servicing, and, directly relevant to that, we develop the crew base in the Yukon.
As I'm sure everybody is aware, the state of the film and sound industries has changed quite rapidly in recent years. Particularly with the Internet, distribution channels are changing very fast. Local Yukon filmmakers and musicians are struggling to keep up and struggling to work in the new world. At the Film and Sound Commission, we are also struggling to make sure our programs remain relevant.
Being in the north, distance is always considered an issue. As you can imagine, if you're down in Vancouver and you're a musician, you have a lot of opportunities to gig; you have a lot of opportunities for training and development of your career. Not so much in the Yukon. It's very expensive to travel anywhere and to get any kind of training. Similarly, it is a challenge for filmmakers to get training up here in the Yukon.
Accessibility of the Yukon for national and international filmmakers is sometimes perceived as a barrier. We like to think we're very close to Vancouver. We also like to think we're not that far from Los Angeles, but until you've been here, you don't really know how close we are. You might think we're a little bit remote. We don't have a film studio in the Yukon. We have some music studios so musicians can record up here. It's an ongoing challenge to maintain a large and robust crew base, and that is to do with employment continuity in part, particularly in the film industry. There are peaks and valleys. Productions come and go, and it's hard to keep a crew working all the time to keep it in the industry.
Some of the solutions we work with on an ongoing basis are funding programs within the Film and Sound Commission. We have two that are focused on music. One is the sound recording program, and that provides financial support to Yukon musicians to cut a CD so they can use it as a saleable product and also as a marketing piece. We have four funds for our filmmakers. Three of those are focused on Yukon filmmakers and take them right from the beginning of their careers up to and including production of a feature film or a dramatic series. We also have a fourth film funding program, and that is our location incentive. We provide a rebate for people who come into the Yukon and use Yukon labour on their film productions here. We put resources toward training and marketing and also developing our filmmakers.
We work very closely with industry organizations. We have MusicYukon, the Yukon Film Society, and the Northern Film and Video Industry Association, and we try to keep in touch with what they're looking for and what their membership needs to develop their careers and make sure our programs meet that.
I'd like to share some examples of things we have worked on in the past to help develop the industries overall. We have worked with the federal government in collaboration with some of the programs. We attend the Banff World Television Festival on an annual basis. We have a jury process where we take six Yukon filmmakers. We have a mentorship component and a workshop component leading up to that, to help them have an appropriate product to pitch to broadcasters while they're at Banff. We also support them while we're at Banff.
Last year we supported the Yukon Film Society and the Northern Film and Video Industry Association in the mise en scène and crew workshop series. That was a parallel series of workshops for producers, writers, and directors, who are above the line, or managerial people with the financial and creative control over the production, and parallel to that stream, we had workshops for people who were interested in being crew members on a film set. At the end we adjudicated three short dramas into the program, and the crew came and worked on them and the writers, directors, and producers actually produced the film. So at the end we had a bunch of crew people with a credit to their names and experience and some training, and we also had three sets of writer-director-producers, who actually had a calling card they could use for marketing. It was a great experience.
Showcase Yukon 2009 was aimed at our music industry. We brought a number of buyers from around North America and I believe one from Europe. They had an opportunity to see Yukoners perform and they gave them some critiques. A number of the Yukoners had opportunities to perform at various festivals and venues around North America because of that experience.
We're currently working on something called Film Fantastic, which is a concept development workshop. It is aimed at our writers and producers, and it is to help them understand story structure, development of concepts, and how to pitch those concepts to the people with the money who will be able to back their project. That was supported by the Community Development Trust.
I should just go back to the mise en scène and the workshop series. That was supported by the TIP program, the targeted investment program, through INAC.
Coming up, we're just getting under way with what we're calling a webisode series, which will end up being 13 one-minute commercials for filming in the Yukon, but it's primarily a training opportunity for Yukon filmmakers. That was very strongly supported by the community adjustment fund. We will call for concepts from Yukoners for the 13 episodes. They will each feature a different area of the Yukon and a different season of the Yukon as a film location, and there will be a dramatic thread linking the 13 together. So there will be a variety of things we'll be able to do to place them after we're finished.
Looking to the future, MusicYukon, which is our music industry association, is interested in putting in a bid for 2011 for the Western Canadian Music Awards, and it would be the first time that event came north of 60. We think that may in fact be an opportunity to collaborate with you as well.
Thank you.