BC Business
Digital special effects | BCBusinessVancouver was invited to one of the world’s most prestigious digital effects conferences, establishing it with digital media centres like London and Los Angeles.
Digital effects are the new star in Vancouver's creative sector. But before we shower too much love on digital special effects, we might want to look at what's happened to some of the other creative industries here. It looks like the creative industry has found a new star. By that, I mean Vancouver’s rising new “star” on the global stage – its digital media sector – which was touted by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson in a recent Vancouver Sun story.
It looks like the creative industry has found a new star.
By that, I mean Vancouver’s rising new “star” on the global stage – its digital media sector – which was touted by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson in a recent Vancouver Sun story.
Gregor was agog (sorry, I couldn’t resist) over Vancouver being invited to one of the world’s most prestigious digital effects conferences, which, he said, establishes us with digital media centres like London and Los Angeles, as a global leader in the industry.
That may be so, but the mayor’s enthusiasm aside, we’ve seen this picture before. Weren’t we once the third-largest film centre in the world? And then weren’t we the third-largest (or was it second?) gaming centre in the world?
Those creative industries – which I support wholeheartedly – are now mere shadows of themselves, shrunken by wars with other cities that courted the creative industries with bigger subsidies and friendlier business climates.
For example, there was another story on the same day about how the movie Wolverine, which was to be shot in Vancouver, is moving instead to Australia, which gave the movie maker a $13-million cash incentive to do so. So we lose $80 million and 2,000 jobs.
This is a familiar story. Toronto is now a bigger film and television centre than Vancouver because Ontario essentially out-subsidized us. Montreal took over from Vancouver as the biggest gaming centre in Canada because Quebec threw barrels of money at Ubisoft to set up shop there.
Certainly, we have great creative talent in Vancouver. Certainly, we have the infrastructure and the training to support these creative industries. But we don’t have the money to continue supporting the huge companies that hire that creative talent. So they’re going elsewhere, where somebody else is more willing to pony up big dough to create a glamorous industry.
As the Wolverine line producer Joe Caracciolo told media in Australia: “More and more, there is pressure on the costs of pictures and the numbers were not adding up (in Canada).” I seem to remember similar quotes when production companies fled Hollywood.
I don’t know if our digital-effects sector gets subsidies to be here in Vancouver, but I will warn them nevertheless: Don’t get too comfortable. And don’t think the magic will continue forever.
Somebody’s always behind you and coming up fast.