Local film shoots produced about $15 million in revenue for Hamilton in 2005

Courtesy Doug Foley, The Hamilton Spectator
(Jan 21, 2006)

Hamilton was home to 91 productions in 2005 ranging from big-budget Hollywood films to TV commercials involving cows at Main and James streets. Film liaison officer Jacqueline McNeilly estimated the productions spent as much as $15.6 million in the city for expenses ranging from food to car rentals to local salaries to hotel accommodations to set decorations.

McNeilly said film work in 2004 involved only 48 productions in comparison.

She cited the Hollywood films Silent Hill and Four Brothers as the biggest productions to shoot in Hamilton last year.

Silent Hill, based on a video game and starring Sean Bean and Radha Mitchell, is scheduled for release in April.

Four Brothers with Mark Wahlberg, which filmed for a week in the Wentworth Street North area last February, was a healthy box-office hit and has been released to the home video market. (note: I spent a day at this location, playing a forensics officer)

Dundas and Hamilton's north end played host to Robin Williams and Christopher Walken and their new movie, The Best Man(Man of the Year), last December and fantasy comedy The Return of Zoom, with Tim Allen and Courtney Cox, filmed in various locations in September 2005 and will be released in August.

Other productions that were in Hamilton for lengthy periods included It's a Boy Girl Thing, the first film from Elton John's production company and produced by his partner David Furnish; Caw, a made-for-pay-TV film starring Rod Taylor; an untitled TV series about events leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Above and Beyond, a TV movie about the Second World War.

Some more production's that were in Hamilton, and I had the opportunity to be part of include, Shades of Black, and Regenesis

Some of the reason's for Hamilton's success as a location had to do with the 30% provincial tax breaks on film production. Plus an extra 10% for productions working outside the Greater Toronto Area. Location managers like Hamilton because it is that it's easy to shoot here, they can get in and out quickly. Businesses are very accommodating and the scenery and locations are incredibly diverse. Toronto has torn down or renovated a lot of its old buildings, so a lot of that landscape is gone but we still have it, places like Liuna Station,The Old Mill and our many beautiful Gothic churches.

Toronto is still the hub of filmmaking in Canada, about 95 per cent of the people who work in Hamilton on film shoots are from Toronto, but a growing talent pool and a awareness will put "The Hammer" on the radar.

Later,
Kenaz