‘Fantastic partnership’: Startup intends to fill gap in London film industry

A London startup business will help build the film industry in London and region by providing crews to work on movie shoots.

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Broad Films, established by two London film industry professionals, will hire and help train production staff who make movie sets work.

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Film crews ready to work in the city will draw filmmakers, meaning more film and television shows will come to London, said Kelly Peckham, co-founder of Broad Films with Michelle Shipley, a Fanshawe College professor teaching film management.

“We will create an industry here in the city. We will train up one good crew and when we get one film under our belt, we hope it will lead to multiple films making London more attractive,” Peckham said.

Film production in Ontario is centered in Toronto with Hamilton and Ottawa also tapping into the sector, but production companies are looking for new locations and that works in London’s favour, she said.

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“We will bring film crews in from Toronto and Hamilton and pair them with recent grads or existing workers, shadowing other professionals,” Peckham said.

“We see a need. It is a chicken and an egg problem in London; we don’t have enough crews to attract more of the industry here,” and London needs film work to grow the number of workers here, she said.

Broad Films will bridge that gap by establishing and training crews. There usually is about 70 staff on one crew including camera operators, assistant directors, grips and gaffers, production assistants, props and art department workers, set decorators and even bookkeepers, Peckham said.

Now, filmmakers bring in their own staff, putting them up in hotels and paying a per diem, and that can be costly.

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The Ontario government is offering tax incentives totaling 45 per cent of labor costs for film work outside of the GTA.

Broad Films won a recent TechAlliance competition, giving it $40,000 to start the business. It was part of the agency’s London innovation challenge meant to spur growth in the creative industries, said Serge Muhirwa, an advisor for TechAlliance working with startups.

“We want to see a space where creative industries grow by bringing the film industry to London. Broad Films will bring that here, they will create and produce in the city,” he said.

That means we may retain industry talent trained at Fanshawe College, Western University and the Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology in London.

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“It is very exciting. They have an eye for innovation and they have experience,” Muhirwa said.

The business will work closely with Film Londonthe city-funded agency that helped attract a dozen film shoots to London in 2023.

A business that can offer film crews ready to work on set is badly needed and will fill a gap in the sector, said Andrew Dodd, Film London manager.

“I foresee a fantastic partnership here that will grow the base,” he said.

“Broad Films will be hired by a parent company to produce content here in London and they can hire film crews, local talent.”

Among the dozen projects shot here, the London International Airport was used on four different films, including Blackberry and Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie. Labatt Park starred in the baseball film You Gotta Believe.

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“It will give us more reasons to sell London,” Dodd said.

Peckham has worked as a film director and producer for more than 30 years, including working for the Daily Planet, the Discovery Channel’s science and technology show.

Along with teaching film production at Fanshawe, Shipley has worked in film production as well.

“Our goals are to build a fair and equitable film production company and to forge an excellent working relationship within the London business community and abroad,” Shipley said.

Broad Films is targeting the holiday romance film sector as one it could draw here. The budget for those films is anywhere from $1 million to $3 million, and production companies make a lot of them every year.

“It is a Harlequin romance on screen, and one of the biggest growth sectors in the industry now. They are looking for content,” Peckham said.

TechAlliance also named JoyDrop, a video game development company, as a $40,000 winner in its recent innovation challenge.

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