Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, they grab their friends. It's actually very exciting what's happening now. I think for young producers and film makers and young talent—even for us going through the system for the first time—there are a lot of walls, there are a lot of barriers to entry. In the new digital

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, it's a great film.

Canadian Heritage committee  They don't care who produces the film. They don't care about me. What they care about is the story of the film and the filmmakers. To access them, the manager of those filmmakers is the producer. So a distributor.... It's very difficult for them to find those people. If the pro

Canadian Heritage committee  At this hearing, I am so excited to know that there are more distributors in Quebec than in English Canada, to my understanding from this meeting today. We need to break down the barriers between us.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes.

Canadian Heritage committee  I look at the system right now, and it's interesting. We fell through the cracks, which is basically..... If you're a young, talented producer with a micro-budget, which is very tiny and means that you can't afford to hire any stars, you can get Telefilm funding. That's great. It

Canadian Heritage committee  I think the system has to change. Right now we have funds that are given to distributors to market films. We've just heard that we have very few distributors in English Canada. We really have one, and they're world market distributors. A film like Corner Gas, which is a big Canad

Canadian Heritage committee  That's right. We were able to convince Telefilm to provide the producer with funds they would naturally have given in marketing support to a distributor and bolster our capacity to market online. That was very helpful because, with not a whole lot of money, a producer online can

Canadian Heritage committee  I didn't get money, but I reached them.

Canadian Heritage committee  Well, I think what's interesting is that we judge feature films to a large degree on their box office success, and it's a long tale. A film doesn't just exist for three months in the theatre. It goes to VOD, and then it goes to pay TV, then it goes to TV, and then it's on DVD, an

Canadian Heritage committee  Is that clear?

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I did.

Canadian Heritage committee  No, I raced through that. I can probably be a little more thoughtful now. I think everything has changed. I think that what is exciting about the new world is the capacity for storytellers to reach a global audience at home. But at the same time, what's happening is that our fu

Canadian Heritage committee  Hello everyone. My name is Virginia Thompson. I'm an independent producer. I'm well known for my television career and my first feature film, which I produced, distributed, and marketed. It was Corner Gas: The Movie. It went really well. I want to get to the questions you asked