By Eric Ortiz (@EricOrtizG)
Luke Azevedo, the Film Commissioner of Calgary, didn’t hesitate when I asked him: What would he say to someone to convince them to shoot a genre film or series in the Canadian province of Alberta? “Watch The Last of Us series that was just produced here. I think that gives you a pretty good idea.”
While Alberta has a rich history in film and television production, for Azevedo in the last five years “this sector and this area has grown substantially in its diversity and capacity.”
The Last of Us, the HBO series based on the video game of the same name, represented a particular challenge for the province. “It was beyond incentives, you had to have the infrastructure, the capacity, the crew base, and the city really buy in,” said Azevedo and added that “180 different locations over 13 months were necessary for this project. So the capacity not just in the major cities, but in the small towns around us, the regions, the rural areas, everybody had to come together. We created an environment here where we worked with the production company on a daily basis. Rose Lam, who’s the executive producer on this project, said that they couldn’t have done this in any other city, based on the amount that was necessary.”
Another production that all genre aficionados know perfectly and that was also shot in Alberta is the Hulu movie Prey (2022), part of the franchise that originated from John McTiernan’s classic Predator (1987). Azevedo highlighted the way they worked together with the indigenous people of the region: “They had an indigenous producer who engaged with the local Elders and Knowledge Keepers here in the region to ensure that there was a capacity to meet the demand of what the needs were. Well over 90% of the folks in front of the camera were indigenous actors and many of them from our region. As many people as were possible from the indigenous community were behind the camera. We’re trying to ensure that our underrepresented, equity-deserving indigenous communities all have a passway into the film and television industry, and that there is training and capacity being created for that to happen.”
For Azevedo, both The Last of Us and Prey are good examples to show the great variety of locations that the province offers: “We have everything, from the prairies, the foothills, the badlands, to the mountains, all within a three hour radius. And two major cities, one that represents 1.6 million people and one that’s over a million people, that are capable of being stand-ins for many things, as The Last of Us showed. Prey showed you some of the areas around the major cities that have been utilized for sci-fi and specialty environments.”
At the same time, dealing with productions of this level made it apparent to Azevedo that they could “compete on the largest-sized projects in the world and make it successful. The production companies were paying the amount of attention necessary to ensure the outcomes were positive in every aspect of the production. When all of those things are taken into consideration, your outcomes are The Last of Us being one of the biggest shows on television with a massive audience, and Prey being the biggest release at that point of a feature film by Hulu.”
In an article published by the Calgary Herald in 2019, the city of Calgary was named as a hotspot for low-budget horror movies, a type of production that also continues to be important to the Calgary Film Commission and the Calgary Economic Development. In Azevedo’s words, “we want to ensure that the independent projects, which are being done by folks like Michael Peterson – a producer/director in this area – and the smaller productions are getting the same attention as the larger ones are. We want to ensure that there are local storytellers and content creators and that they have the ability to get their stories out to the world. What’s important to us is the actuality of what happens to those members of our production community when they have those opportunities.”
Calgary is, in fact, considered by Moviemaker Magazine as the eighth best city to live and work as a member of the creative industries. According to Azevedo, there are several factors that have allowed them to have this type of recognition: “We created an environment here where people feel like they have the opportunity to grow and develop their careers and to tell the stories that are most interesting to them. We have great festivals (among them the Calgary Underground Film Festival). The support that comes out of the Film Commission and the city is part of it. The infrastructure that’s available and the growth of that, and also the growth and capacity of all of the major and specialty equipment organizations that are now part of our ecosystem. We have a good balance here between lifestyle and creation of content. We create environments where people can have their family, be able to pay their mortgage, and work in a film and television industry, or the digital media and entertainment sector, that allows them to be creative and to really bring forward the quality of the content that we’re seeing coming out of our region.”
For more information, visit Calgary Economic Development’s site.