The film and television industry in Northern Ontario is thriving, with sights set on Timmins as a place for growth.
But in order for the city to be the filmmaking hub it has the potential to be, there needs to be a trained workforce. Cultural Industries Ontario North (CION) is facilitating a film crew training course that will give people the tools they need in order to land a career in the industry.
The training will take place over three weekends in November and will provide participants with basic knowledge about some of the ins and outs of working on a film set. It will introduce them to various areas such as production assistants, craft services, art departments, lighting and sound, as well as industry lingo, and proper etiquette for working on set. Industry experts and working professionals will be among the instructors, some of whom represent some of the largest unions in film and television.
“I’m excited that they're coming here to do the training because for us, it's kind of like the chicken and the egg. When I'm talking to producers and directors, they say, ‘So tell me about your workforce,” and I say, ‘We don't really have one.’ And I don't want to train them because we don't really have the productions, and yet I can't get the productions if I don't have a trained workforce,” says Noella Rinaldo, director of community economic development at the Timmins Economic Development Corporation (TEDC).
“I always say we’re a mining town, so we have a lot of project managers. They know how to be project managers, they know how to be production assistants, and they know how everything works. There are lots of transferable skills so I knew we had the workforce, it was just that the productions wanted to be sure they had at least worked on a set before,” Rinaldo says.
CION has hosted similar courses in Northern Ontario before, but never in Timmins.
The demand for skilled workers is certainly there — Rinaldo says there were as many as six productions postponed last summer due to a lack of crew. Since then the strikes throughout the entertainment industry have slowed or stalled many projects, both in and out of Timmins, which is why she says it’s the perfect time to train new talent.
“It’s definitely slowed down, but that’s why this is a good time. People are getting their permits, they’re getting training, and we’re trying to take advantage of this slight downtime because we anticipate, like what happened after COVID, that it’ll skyrocket,” Rinaldo says.
One of the people taking the course is Brian Jones, a retired accountant, musician, and photographer.
He took one of CION’s previous virtual courses and has since worked as a location scout on several local productions. As a lifelong Timmins resident, he has been able to put his knowledge of the area and his photography skills to good use.
“I’ve learned that it’s more than photography. I need to be careful about permissions for property, I need to think about other things besides the location. Is there a good road to it? Is it near facilities for the crew? Things like that. Then I pitch it, I write a report, and through Noella it’ll go to the director or sometimes the producer. If it gets serious and if we’re lucky, they’ll come here and do the shoot,” Jones says.
“There’s more and more interest in Northern Ontario and especially Timmins. Sudbury and North Bay have been movie hubs for quite a while now and there’s a lot of movies shooting there. I’ve been down there checking things out and they have incredible facilities. They’re at the point where large studios are being built,” he says.
Jones has done a bit of everything, from being a driver to searching for props.
While he’s gained a lot of practical experience working on sets, he says his lack of formal training meant there were a lot of things he had to learn by trial and error.
“There’s a lot of protocols on a shoot that I had no idea about who does what. The film industry uses acronyms for everything and it took me ages to figure out what things were,” Jones says.
“I learned a lot of that through experience, sometimes the hard way. The course will definitely be covering a lot of that stuff so that people can go in knowledgeable,” he says.
Timmins is not new to the film industry — Two Lovers and a Bear was partially shot in Timmins and Porcupine in 2015. My Animal, a romantic horror film that was screened at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, was shot entirely in Timmins during the winter of 2022.
SEE: Feature film shot in Timmins makes local debut
My Animal in particular was instrumental in putting Timmins on the map as a potential filmmaking hub.
“We got a really good response, and people in the business know it was filmed in Timmins. When I go to Ottawa or I go to TIFF, they know My Animal was filmed in Timmins,” Rinaldo says.
“I am very thankful that we had My Animal and that we had the producer and the director that we had. They speak so highly of the town and are so well-respected in the business that that’s gone a long way,” she says.
After the success of the film, Rinaldo thinks the city is ready to build on that momentum.
“My Animal really is an example of where things could go. We could see more movies coming to Timmins and more growth for the local economy and jobs for people, which is kind of an exciting part of it. You’re able to bring in a business that spends locally, but also creates jobs that have a different type of reach than what we’re typically exposed to in the area,” says Devin Mahesh, director of industry development and production services at CION.
His role is helping television and filmmakers select locations and making sure they have the resources they need to make a project in Northern Ontario.
“Some of the community involvement and some of the educational programs that we’re rolling out with our organization are kind of building up a new place where films can be made. I think that relies heavily on the ability of a local workforce to be there and to be able to provide some expert knowledge and skills when there are people looking to make a movie somewhere,” Mahesh says.
“Timmins is a place that we really are excited about working in. There’s an interesting group of people who want to have more of a creative economy starting to be built. These are going to be jobs for creative people, work that’s a little bit different from something like mining or some of the other industries,” he says.
In addition to creating jobs, a film shoot impacts so many areas of the local economy, some of them unexpected. Hotels, restaurants, community halls, car rental companies, home improvement stores, fabric stores, and even dry cleaners were all bolstered by the production of My Animal.
But that benefit goes both ways, and the scenery is not the only thing that makes Northern Ontario attractive to filmmakers. Ontario Creates, which aims to support economic development through the creative industries, offers tax credits for projects made in the province.
The Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC) also provides funding to productions made in the north — and a lot of it. Mahesh says the NOHFC has given almost $400 million to nearly 300 productions over the past 20 years.
Utilizing local talent and services also means more funding, making the presence of a local workforce all the more attractive to potential film projects. Rinaldo hopes that someday Timmins will have the facilities for all stages of production to happen locally, from writing the screenplay, to filming, to editing, and everything in between.
“We exist as a gem within the province of Ontario, where we have independent Canadian film and television being made in the north pretty regularly. I think it’s important for us to maintain that status as a destination for Canadian independent filmmakers so that we are a place that is consistently being sought for the resources and the skills. To maintain that credibility as an artistic region is important,” Mahesh says.
“Also, to have our local voices amplified. For someone to grow up in Timmins, think of ideas, get inspired right there, write their film, direct their film, produce their film, and to have that go out to a worldwide audience without them having to leave. For all that creative energy to be magnified within the confines of Northern Ontario is really where we want to be,” he says.
“We have talented people, we have intelligent people, and we have a whole slew of things going for us that really make this a great place to live, work, and create.”
