The story of an international co-pro: Barbara Shrier offers a perspective
Industry Centre > Blogs > Articles > The story of an international co-pro: Barbara Shrier offers a perspective
Posted by Cheryl Binning
on Monday, January 25, 2010.
Categories: Film, Production, Articles
You’ve just read the best script ever – you know this is the film that you have to make.
Only it’s set in another country and the main character isn’t Canadian.
So how can you get this script to the screen and access domestic funding sources with so little CanCon in the movie?
Treaty co-production
An international treaty co-production can be a great method to complete financing on feature films – especially movies that creatively span beyond Canadian borders.
Official co-production agreements enable Canadian producers and their foreign partners to pool their creative, artistic, technical and financial resources to co-produce films and television programs.
The main attraction of a treaty co-production is that it allows a filmmaker to use talent, locations and money outside their own country yet their film is still considered completely Canadian and can access all domestic funding sources.
At the same time the film also has national status in the partnering country and can access all the benefits available in that market.
The Canadian government has signed fifty-five co-production agreements with countries around the world, which are administered by Telefilm on the government’s behalf.
These treaties outline what rules must be followed, including the minimum percentage of financing that must be raised in each country.
In 2008, there were 77 treaty co-productions made between Canada and other countries – with budgets totaling over $386 million. Of that, the Canadian share of financing was $178 million, with the remaining $208 million coming from foreign sources.
So it’s clear that Canadian treaty co-productions bring in a lot of international money.
The ability to pull together financing from around the world is a big part of the attraction of treaty co-production. But just as appealing is the creative freedom that co-productions offer, since you can shoot in far-off locales and hire non-Canadian actors and crew without being penalized for a lack of CanCon.
This all sounds great, right? Why not turn every movie into a treaty co-pro if it’s that easy?
But before you jump off the deep end into your first international co-pro, you need to know that while these deals do offer amazing advantages, they are also quite complex and time consuming.
Quebec producer Barbara Shrier tells us about her experience
Quebec producer and NSI associate faculty member Barbara Shrier recently waded into international waters with the film Un Ange a La Mer (Angel at Sea).
The 2009 feature is a Canada-Belgian co-production, written and directed by Belgium filmmaker Frederic Dumont.
Set in a Moroccan seaside community, it’s the story of a manic-depressive lawyer (played by actor Olivier Gourmet) who tells his youngest son, the 12-year-old Louis (Martin Nissen), a horrible secret: that he plans to commit suicide.
Shrier has over 20 years experience in the production industry, and she is the first to admit that international co-production can be tricky.
First of all, she believes that while the money available in other countries is attractive, the creative should be the driving force when making the decision to partner internationally.
"I feel co-production is most successful when it comes from the story," says Shrier.
"There really needs to be a reason in the script or an important character who comes from another place."
If you need more money so you start compromising the story in order to access cash in say Australia or Britain, ultimately the movie suffers.
Sometimes co-productions are created for financial reasons and then a character suddenly has to become a different nationality, for example, and it’s not natural," explains Shrier. "It just never flies. It feels fake. It isn’t an organic part of the film."
That being said, Shrier notes that there are cases where a co-pro becomes necessary for financial reasons. And that can work so long as the creative doesn’t suffer.
For example, Shrier first read the script for Angel at Sea at a forum in Belgium, where she was asked to offer feedback on a number of scripts.
She really liked Angel at Sea as a story and connected with the Belgium filmmaking team. But at that point she had no thoughts of getting involved as an international partner in the film simply because there were no Canadian elements in the script.
Shrier kept in touch with the team developing Angel at Sea and offered script notes as a friend. Then they came to her with a problem: the $2.2 million project, structured as a France-Belgium co-production, was in trouble because of a 20% budget shortage. They just couldn’t raise that final pot of money in either country.
Around the same time, Quebec funding agency SODEC indicated to Shrier that they would support the film if Shrier became involved as a minority co-producer.
The Canada- Belgium co-production treaty allows for a Canadian partner to take a minimum ownership of 20% in a film and shooting doesn’t have to take place in Canada.
Shrier would have to raise 20% of the budget in Canada, spend 20% of the budget in the country and 20% of the creative positions would have to be fulfilled by Canadians.
Since she really loved the script and the filmmaker and wanted to see Angel at Sea get made, Shrier agreed to become a minority co-producer. The deal was structured as a Belgium (60%)/France (20%)/Canada (20%) treaty co-production.
Shrier fulfilled the Canadian component by raising 20% of the budget with funding from Telefilm and SODEC, Canadian and Quebec tax credits, and a distribution advance from Alliance.
All the post-production would take place in Montreal, fulfilling the spending requirement.
Then came the creative stipulations: two characters in the movie had to be Canadians, without it seeming forced. The father in the film works at an international food aid organization in Morocco, so they decided it wouldn’t be out of place for one of the dad’s colleagues with a pivotal role in the story to be an ex-pat Canadian. Several other workers at the organization also became Canadians.
According to the rules, 20% (2) of eight creative crew positions on the film must be Canadian to qualify for treaty status, so they hired a Canadian production designer and editor.
Even with three producers raising money in three parts of the world, financing the project wasn’t a walk in the park.
"There’s no harmony in the application dates [of funding programs in different countries]," explains Shrier. "So you get one pot of money, but then you can’t submit to a fund in another country until four months later."
As well, for a minority co-production, Shrier was told that Telefilm could not release its funding until she proved to them that the full 80% of foreign money in the budget was confirmed.
This proved difficult because in many European territories, it’s common for filmmakers to start shooting before financing is complete. Often money comes in stages throughout production and even after completion. So in order to get the Canadian cash, Shrier needed her foreign co-producers to work according to a business model that was unfamiliar to them.
Cultural differences between the way Canadian and Europeans do business also came into play when it came to paperwork and accounting.
For example, Telefilm has very rigorous standards of financial reporting and require detailed proof of financing from foreign partners, cost reports, and other paperwork.
Shrier notes that producers in other countries often have looser rules and don’t need to submit very much paper work to access their funding.
"That opens the door to a lot of very wishy-washy accounting and less than diligent reporting," she explains. "The fact is they’re not detail oriented the way we are. They have such a different way of book keeping."
But Shrier needed to supply detailed reports to Telefilm to fulfill the treaty requirements. So she spent a lot of time nagging her co-producing partners for paperwork.
"The bottom line is that no one is more anal than Telefilm and the Canadian treaty rules," says Shrier. "I was driving everyone crazy with all the things I needed from them. As a result I ended up creating a global cost report for all the partners because nobody else needed one except me. Canada was the only country that required it. Canada was the only one that required a lot of things."
As any filmmaker knows, as a project heads towards production and into shooting, variables are always changing – from cast and crew, to shooting days, changes in the script, and financing. The changes might be small, but every slight variance can make a difference in a treaty co-pro.
Shrier says you have to constantly check and recheck all the numbers to ensure that a minor change doesn’t put your treaty status in jeopardy.
There are so many regulations that producers have to be very careful that they don’t accidentally go against the rules. For example, if a script change means the loss of a small role, that could put the number of Canadian actors below the minimum requirement. A minor budget change could reduce the Canadian stake in a film by half a percentage point – but that’s enough to violate the treaty.
It’s sort of like a house of cards. One wrong move and the whole financing structure falls apart.
"You have to constantly check your numbers to make sure you aren’t falling short," Shrier explains. "Making it more complex is the fact that there may be differences between the requirements of Telefilm and your provincial funder."
And mistakes do happen.
The team shot one week in France to fulfill the French treaty requirements. After the shoot, the French partner realized he screwed up and didn’t read the rules properly, and as a result Angel at Sea lost its official France co-production status – and funding that went with it.
Luckily the shortfall wasn’t too big and Shrier went back to Telefilm and SODEC and they increased their funding. The film was restructured as a Belgium-Canada treaty co-pro, with Shrier’s stake in the film moved up to 29.41%.
This meant she had to increase the number of Canadian creative positions on the film, so a Canadian music composer was hired.
Adding to the complexity, the majority of the shoot (outside the week in France) took place in a non-co-producing country: Morocco. The treaty allows this, so long as it is a location shoot that is essential to the script.
The only downside is that the expenses incurred in Morocco couldn’t be claimed for Canadian or provincial tax credit purposes. Plus the treaty places restrictions on what positions you can hire locally in a third party country, so all the key production crew had to be hired in Belgium and flown to Morocco. That was expensive.
"You can’t hire heads of departments in a non-producing country but you can hire small speaking roles and drivers," explains Shrier. However, since it was a low budget shoot they did get waivers to hire a local makeup artist and key grip to save money.
Another headache – Shrier’s Belgium co-producer fell ill during production and was replaced by another partner in his company.
"The new producer had no emotional connection to the film," says Shier. "He was more the business guy, so he didn’t really care. And so he did the strict minimum on every level."
As a result, even though Shrier had only a minority stake in the film, she found herself in Morocco all summer supervising the shoot and essentially becoming the lead producer on the film.
"Otherwise it would have fallen apart," says Shrier.
Once the shoot was over, Shrier headed back to Montreal for post-production, assuming back on her home turf with a local post team she knew and trusted, it would be smooth sailing.
Not quite.
The Belgium director came to work with the Montreal team on the edit and post, but there was some conflict.
"The foreign director was used to working in an entirely different way," explains Shrier. "In Europe the producer isn’t as hands on. The director calls all the shots and does everything on his own. As a result he ended up not having confidence in the people I put in place."
So Shrier had to play interference.
The moral of the co-production story
"It can become a very weary and exhausting and financially draining proposition," says Shrier of treaty co-production.
Still, looking back on the experience of making Angel at Sea, Shrier says she has no regrets.
She did what needed to be done to get this passion project to the big screen.
"I’m happy I made the film and I’m proud of it," she says. “Co-production is wonderful, and at the same time it’s a nightmare."
And Shrier’s story isn’t meant to scare producers off co-production – but it proves that you have to be very careful before diving in to foreign waters and you have to be prepared.
In fact Shrier says she would definitely do another international co-pro – although at this point in her career she would want to be the majority co-producer with at least 51% ownership in the film.
"I’m not sure a minority co-production is in the stars for me, it’s just too much work for so little," says Shrier. "I would have to be in control."
The bottom line is international co-production offers many benefits if the script requires foreign characters or setting; and if the money available overseas is substantial enough that it outweighs the drawbacks, which include a lot of paperwork, effort, compromise, and often working with partners who come from a very different filmmaking cultures.
Treaty co-pros make a lot of sense only if it enhances the creative of your project and it brings more money to the table so you can make a better film.
So before you dive into your first international co-production, you need to take a deep breath – and make that a really deep breath because you’re in for a heck of a swim. But getting to the other side will make it worthwhile.
Things to think about before signing on to an international co-production
- Does this project make sense as an international co-production?
- Is shooting in a foreign locale intrinsic to the storyline? If not, are the financial opportunities in turning this project into an international co-pro so significant that it is worth making compromises to the script?
- Can you make this script international without jeopardizing the story?
- Read detailed information on international treaty co-productions and specific rules for the country you are interested in partnering with.
- Do a lot of research on filmmaking in the country where your potential partner is located. "You don’t want surprises," says Shrier. "Or as few as possible. For example, if you know that in Italy the job of the producer is different in certain ways, you can deal with this ahead of time and not during production when everyone is tried and overworked."
- Get to know your co-producing partners before you sign the deal. "That’s why they invented Skype," says Shrier. "You can spend hours looking the other person in the eye as if you were having coffee with them. Learn as much as you can about your partner and ensure you both communicate well and trust each other."
- Take the time to talk about your way of working. Your philosophy as a producer. What’s important to you.
- Discuss with your potential partner all the requirements Telefilm will need you to fulfill so they understand the rigorous reporting involved on your end. Learn what they will need you to do to fulfill their requirements.
- Hire a lawyer with significant international co-production experience to draft a detailed agreement that lays out the working relationship between you and your partners. The agreement should be incredibly detailed and cover every possible point of production and release of the film.
- "You have to talk about everything in that contract right down to how you split the prize money if the film wins something at a festival," explains Shrier, noting the agreement she had drawn up for Angel at Sea was 30 pages long. "Everything, including who has the final word on the cut – it all has to be discussed."
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Views expressed here are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI).
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The views expressed here are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Screen Institute - Canada (NSI).