Films could move to B.C. due to California COVID surge

Some local film commissions rolled out the welcome mat to Hollywood, and so far, it’s paid off.

Los Angeles County is at the epicenter of the raging California COVID outbreak, with transmission rates topping 20 per cent.

Initially the film and television industry was exempt from the coronavirus restrictions, but refined to sound stages. In early January major production companies announced a halt to all filming for an unspecified period.

The shutdown has left tremendous uncertainty amongst talent and investors.

The Okanagan Film Commission (OFC), Columbia-Shuswap Film Commission (CSFC) and the Thompson-Nicola Film Commission (TNFC) joined forces to spend $10,000 to take out full page advertising in a leading Hollywood trade publication.

“Hollywood’s response was we can’t travel. We need to work inside the sound stages in Hollywood,” Jon Summerland, OFC Commissioner said. “We were saying there is a lot more fresh air out here, instead of breathing from a Hepa filter inside a box.”

It appears to be working, as Summerland has a stack of scripts for movies, series and other productions on his desk.

“The calls are no longer going through the BCFC (British Columbia Film Commission), because of what we have going on the big shows are calling directly and a number of series are calling,” Summerland said. “We are now known because of the work on MOW’s (movies of the week), and our crews are getting more and more training.”

Getting American talent into Canada has been difficult with the 14-day quarantine period, although lesser known talent haven’t minded the wait to get a shot.

“Bringing in the big guys is harder, but that is now changing because everyone is getting hungry and they are realizing it’s getting more and more difficult to do in the states,” Summerland said.

An early move to work on health and safety protocols for sets is paying off on the production end.

“We were the first ones to have health and safety officers on set. B.C. Health and Safety B.C. were on set with us everyday, learning with us on how the protocols would work,” Summerland added. “We were only a month in before we were back on set filming as a quarantined block in one of our resorts.”

The local crews were all staying together in quarantine, which allowed productions to meet protocol.