It can be disconcerting for a long-time Angeleno to visit Vancouver, as I did earlier this month to moderate two on-stage conversations for Web Summit Vancouver, including a talk with executives of three leading companies in the region’s booming “creative technology” sector, which includes visual effects and animation.
The town’s local talent will showcase itself once again with this week’s release of Backrooms, an A24 horror film directed by Kane Parsons, built around his nearly two-dozen hit YouTube videos based on the long-running “no-clipping” Internet meme.
The 19-year-old YouTube wunderkind uprooted from his Petaluma, Calif., hometown to live for months in Vancouver, where an elaborate and sprawling 30,000-sq.-ft. set was constructed to bring to life Parsons’ grim vision of a man (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) lost in endless fluorescent corridors like a character in a glitchy game, and the therapist (Renate Reinsve) who ventures in to rescue him.
Parsons’ move north mirrors that of many Hollywood craftspeople since the days of The X-Files in the 1990s, the first major Hollywood TV show filmed largely in southwestern Canada rather than southwestern California. That work continues, to the distress of many in the foundering Los Angeles industry cluster.
The initial Hollywood foothold in this verdant international city less than 2.5 hours’ flight from Los Angeles also has broadened, to include the more than 100 VFX and animation companies in the region. That, said my panelists, was because of a focused, coordinated effort to build an industry, including, notably, significant government involvement. (Watch the whole panel, beginning at 1:22:30)
“It took time to get here,” said Sony ImageWorks President Michelle Grady. “Twenty years ago, VFX and animation was here, but it was pretty nascent. A hub requires a few things that are essential: Great talent, and companies, and government partnership. It got here by really industry and government largely working together to build the talent pool, build the competitive environment.”
As Grady spoke, she noted that the next season of HBO’s Emmy-winning game adaptation The Last of Us was filming outside the convention center, one of many projects going on in the city.
It’s useful to contrast that with Los Angeles, and California. Yes, the state more than doubled tax incentives for local production to $750 million beginning last summer. That’s helped lure big-name shows such as the Baywatch remake, as filming continues across the “Thirty-Mile Zone.”
But total shoot days continue an inexorable decline, while producers and directors bemoan high production costs and seemingly endless government paperwork and obstacles that make filming prohibitively expensive and difficult.
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Burbank-based Disney Animation has 400 employees finishing up November original animated release Hexed and working on the Frozen 3 sequel. Thanks to cloud technologies, animators there can work closely with teams in Disney Animation’s traditional Burbank home, said Nick Cannon, the company’s SVP of production and technology.
The company has benefited from the strong base of animation and tech talent in Vancouver now, Cannon said, something that’s needed careful tending by both the industry and local government.
“It’s really about nurturing the community of talent,” Cannon said. “We can get help with immigration, certainly financial support as well. What’s really remarkable about the hub created here are the aligned goals shared between the studios operating here, the local government, the federal government. We can make things happen when we need to. We can move at the speed of production.”
Blue Ant Studios, best known for its work on the Oscar-winning animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, benefits from the growing talent base created by all the region’s many VFX and animation companies, said Jennifer McCarron, Blue Ant Studios’ president of kids, family and YA programming.
“Blue Ant being a smaller studio, we’ve really benefitted from the talent coming into this town,” McCarron said. “Talent begets talent. We all work together to elevate. The tide very much rises together. It’s a special ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, as thousands of Los Angeles film workers brush up their real-estate or therapy licenses, or ponder a move out of state, production woes have been only one of many issues in Mayor Karen Bass’ heavily contested re-election campaign. The industry’s issues have come up in debates and on the campaign trail, certainly, but perhaps not so much as challenger (and ex-reality TV villain) Spencer Pratt’s lacerating AI videos about Bass’ role in last year’s devastating Pacific Palisades fires.
Despite “the death spiral” facing Hollywood’s industry cluster, I can’t remember any Los Angeles entertainment gathering featuring a similar phalanx of government and quasi-governmental support, officials and programs as at Web Summit Vancouver. It’s just not a thing.
While there, I talked with executives at Canada Media Fund (which funds Canadian productions, especially by indigenous creators), panel sponsor DigiBC, Pacific Economic Development Canada (which targets government investment and support in western Canadian business) and federal programs that invest in startups at various development levels, among much else.
Separately, UK Consul General Thomas Codrington hosted an event at his home (overlooking English Bay, naturally) connecting his majesty’s business and government assets with BC companies, including those in entertainment.
After my panel, members joked they’d failed to invoke one crucial buzzword to activate even more government enthusiasm: “Net job creation.” But they and officials at every government level did beat the drum for their region, its workforce and the depth of talent there. That’s not happening 1,100 miles south.
The Canadians have some advantages here, including a more cohesive polity able to overcome conservative/liberal differences and agree on basics such as creating more jobs, and building better education and retraining systems to deal with AI’s dislocations. Hard to imagine, by contrast, a Tennessee or North Dakota pol supporting further federal help for those Los Angeles schmoes, no matter how often Donald Trump murmurs about protecting U.S. jobs. It’s a political non-starter.
Even improving the situation locally can be complicated. Los Angeles County has more than 10 million residents, 60 percent of whom live outside Los Angeles, in 87 other cities or unincorporated areas. Coordination at the local level is challenging, especially when the post-fire rebuild, stubborn homelessness problems and other issues occupy so much bandwidth and money.
So it’s no shock that studios based in Los Angeles haven’t put all their eggs in this particular chaotic basket, for all the wonders of its weather and deep base of filmmaking talent. That’s especially the case in an era when virtual production, new AI-fueled production technologies and techniques, and the rise of back-bedroom wizards such as Parsons have displaced the city as the center of all things cinema.
Sony ImageWorks, for instance, is the animation shop that created K-Pop Demon Hunters, one of Netflix’s most-watched shows ever and winner of this year’s Oscars for best animated feature and song. That project was driven from Vancouver,m and ImageWorks is busy creating a sequel.
Grady said the company has between 700 and 1,400 employees in the city at any time, depending on the project, and works seamlessly through cloud-based technologies with Sony operations in Montreal and the Sony lot in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City, where Amazon, Apple, and HBO also have production facilities.
McCarron noted the industry, and Blue Ant, work closely with advisory boards at local educational institutions, even offering scholarships at the high school level.
“Being an artist is scary for some people,” particularly parents, she said. “We used to tell people, the lifespan of an animator can make more money than an NHL player.”
Cannon was upbeat about the future of film production, post production and animation amid all the tech and other changes facing the industry.
“Talent and community are what got us where we are today and will sustain us going forward, whatever changes coming,” he said. “If you can bring the best people together, and create a community within organizations and across organizations, it really gives a rich environment” to navigate the future.
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