Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Five 20-foot con­tain­ers, sev­er­al ve­hi­cles ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice es­cort were seen rolling in­to Dins­ley Av­enue, Trinci­ty, ear­ly last week Wednes­day morn­ing draw­ing a lot of at­ten­tion from res­i­dents and passers­by. Fourth Street West, which was cor­doned off by po­lice, was the place to be for the fol­low­ing two days. Lights, grips, cam­eras were be­ing of­floaded from the con­tain­ers and lined the streets. Tents, trucks and cars filled the rest of spaces. In a very or­gan­ised and time­ly fash­ion, the street and the first three hous­es on it were trans­formed. The scene was set. "Qui­et, please!" was the voice of Avrel Fish­er, pro­duc­er of sev­er­al Life­time movies. The anx­ious on­look­ers were briefed about what was re­quired of them. Trinci­ty was about to make his­to­ry. Its first in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tion was about to be filmed in their back­yard. The movie Home Again, fea­tur­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly-ac­claimed Fresh Prince of Bel Air ac­tress Tatyana Ali.

Scene 143:

Res­i­dents, who took a ring side view, at­ten­tive­ly watched Ali in ac­tion. The voice rings out again: "Qui­et, please!" fol­lowed by the di­rec­tor Sudz Suther­land, "Ac­tion!" Ali, who played Mar­va in the movie, walked up to the gate of her friend, Fefe Dob­son, a Cana­di­an ac­tress. While try­ing to get in­side, Cana­di­an ac­tor Stephan James, act­ing as an­oth­er Ja­maican de­por­tee, ran up, plead­ing for them to let him in. Quick­ly run­ning af­ter him was Che Ro­driquez, one of 80 lo­cal ac­tors, played the an­gry Ja­maican taxi-dri­ver who came to jos­tle James for his taxi fare. Un­known­ing to all of them, Ja­maican na­tive Kadeem Wil­son, act­ing as Jim "The Don" Gilbert, dri­ven in a black Hilux SUV, turns round the cor­ner. In a stunt-like fash­ion, Gilbert jumps out of the mov­ing ve­hi­cle with a re­al gun in his hand and fire shots be­hind Ro­driquez. This is just a sam­ple of what the movie has to of­fer and what T&T had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of host­ing.

Mon­ey-mak­ing spin-offs

More than 80 lo­cal ac­tors, 50 crew mem­bers, 1,000 ex­tras-peo­ple act­ing as air­port pas­sen­gers check­ing in, pa­trons at a mall food court, food ven­dors-ex­pe­ri­enced the film­ing of a ma­jor pro­duc­tion. These 1,200 na­tion­als had the op­por­tu­ni­ty of act­ing and work­ing along­side award-win­ning Cana­di­an me­dia com­pa­ny, Hun­gry Eyes Film and Tele­vi­sion. Hun­gry Eyes, known for its com­pelling qual­i­ty pro­duc­tions in film tele­vi­sion and dig­i­tal me­dia, chose Trinci­ty as one of 30 lo­ca­tions in T&T. Ex­cit­ed, anx­ious res­i­dents flocked to the streets to get a close-up of Ali. Lo­cal ac­tor Che Ro­driquez and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty Ter­ry Lee Bovell were among those who worked along­side Ali, pro­duc­er Avrel Fish­er and Don Car­mody, Os­car-win­ning pro­duc­er of Silent Hill and Res­i­dent Evil. This ex­pe­ri­ence did not on­ly gave the lo­cal film in­dus­try a boost, but al­so gen­er­at­ed mil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue for busi­ness­es, cre­at­ed jobs and put T&T in the spot­light as a po­ten­tial lo­ca­tion for oth­er films. Jen­nifer Hol­ness and Sudz Suther­land, co-own­ers of Hun­gry Eyes and pro­duc­ers and writ­ers of the movie Home Again, said T&T was an ide­al lo­ca­tion to film their Cdn$4 mil­lion pro­duc­tion.

The hus­band and wife team said they were un­able to shoot the film in Ja­maica, even though the movie is set in Ja­maica. Suther­land ex­plained that the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment was not will­ing to co-op­er­ate on the project. Af­ter cou­ple months of scout­ing, T&T was cho­sen. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30 lo­ca­tions, in­clud­ing Val­sayn, Beetham, Mor­vant and Paramin, were used in T&T to film the dra­mat­ic fea­ture. Suther­land, who was im­pressed with T&T, ad­vised that the coun­try should fo­cus on mar­ket­ing its lo­ca­tions to in­ter­na­tion­al film­mak­ers as a lu­cra­tive means to boost the econ­o­my. "Think about larg­er Hol­ly­wood-type pro­duc­tions like Ma­trix, where Cdn$1 mil­lion is just their cater­ing bud­get. Peo­ple on­ly as­so­ciate T&T with Car­ni­val, but the coun­try has so much more to of­fer."

Co-pro­duc­er Car­mody is wait­ing to see the out­come of Home Again, as he re­alised that T&T has so many lo­ca­tions that could be used for so many dif­fer­ent types of movies to give a back­drop of Mex­i­co, the Unit­ed States and Eu­rope.

The Gov­ern­ment of T&T has said it was fo­cus­ing on the cre­ative in­dus­tries as one of the ar­eas to di­ver­si­fy away from oil and gas. Suther­land said the lo­cal film in­dus­try has great po­ten­tial. The 35 per cent pro­duc­tion re­bate giv­en to film­mak­ers when they film their pro­duc­tion in T&T is a great idea as it mo­ti­vates film pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies to shoot on lo­ca­tion in T&T. "The 35 per cent tax re­bate not on­ly helps in­de­pen­dent film­mak­ers com­plete their bud­get, but would al­so bring more busi­ness in­to the coun­try, as these films are not usu­al­ly shot in T&T. Our bud­get was short of Cdn$1.5 mil­lion." The re­bate, he said, is noth­ing com­pared to the in­creased rev­enue that in­ter­na­tion­al film­mak­ers would gen­er­ate for var­i­ous busi­ness­es.

"The spin-off is sev­en times the 35 per cent tax re­bate and what­ev­er is the in­vest­ment." The ex­pe­ri­ence, Suther­land said, brought rec­i­p­ro­cal ben­e­fits be­cause T&T had most of the re­sources to sup­port this scale of pro­duc­tion and a tal­ent­ed pool ef­fi­cient to han­dle about 50 to 60 parts in the movie. The lo­cal ac­tors, pro­duc­ers and di­rec­tors, he said, could use this in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence, train­ing and knowl­edge to fur­ther de­vel­op their craft. The movie, which is set in Ja­maica, is based on re­al-life ex­pe­ri­ences by Caribbean de­por­tees who are sent back home with lit­tle or no re­sources or sup­port. The pro­duc­ers ex­plained that a close friend who was de­port­ed to Ja­maica was killed four years lat­er. They want­ed to show the re­al­i­ty of per­sons be­ing de­port­ed from in­ter­na­tion­al coun­tries like Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Unit­ed King­dom. De­por­ta­tion, they said, usu­al­ly caus­es ma­jor dis­rup­tions in fam­i­ly life and de­por­tees of­ten times turn to a life of crime.

Lo­cal in­puts

Lisa Wick­ham, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Imag­ine Me­dia In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd, the lo­cal line pro­duc­er for Home Again, said the busi­ness­es which ben­e­fit­ed from this ex­pe­ri­ence was phe­nom­e­nal. She said the in­vest­ments made by Hun­gry Eyes in­to the lo­cal ser­vices are ap­prox­i­mate­ly Cdn $102 mil­lion. Wick­ham, whose me­dia ca­reer has spanned 30-plus years, said she, too, was chal­lenged in ex­pand­ing her knowl­edge base as a pro­duc­er and di­rec­tor. The lo­cal tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty, who co-host­ed the Rik­ki Tik­ki show in the 1980s, is al­so the pro­duc­er, di­rec­tor and host of the Caribbean En­ter­tain­ment TV Show E-Zone. Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, she said while some peo­ple think that the 35 per cent tax re­bate may be high, the spin-off to the in­vest­ments caused a mul­ti­pli­er ef­fect.

From es­tab­lished pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness­es to the small and medi­um en­tre­pre­neurs (SMEs), gov­ern­ment ser­vices like the Po­lice Ser­vice, to in­di­vid­u­als who just start­ed their busi­ness, were hired to pro­vide ser­vices.

These ser­vices ranged from air­lines, ho­tels, taxi ser­vices, cater­ing, car and house rentals, dri­vers, trucks, cam­era equip­ment, dress­mak­ers, hair­dressers, lo­cal ac­tors, pro­duc­ers, di­rec­tors, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion, pow­er sup­pli­ers and su­per­mar­kets. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 200 Cana­di­an cast mem­bers flew on Caribbean Air­lines Ltd, where 1,500 rooms have been re­served at the Hilton Trinidad ho­tel from De­cem­ber to the end of Feb­ru­ary, and more than 26 ve­hi­cles rent­ed. Wick­ham con­tends that much more could be gained from an ex­pe­ri­ence like this if com­pa­nies de­vel­op a greater un­der­stand­ing about the ser­vices a thriv­ing film in­dus­try needs.

Com­pet­ing with Car­ni­val

Wick­ham ex­plained that one of their biggest chal­lenge was com­pet­ing with Car­ni­val for some ser­vices. "We now re­alise how much mon­ey is made dur­ing this sea­son as some busi­ness­es chose to de­vote their ser­vices en­tire­ly to Car­ni­val. Mo­bile ser­vices was one such need. She said they were al­so chal­lenged in ac­quir­ing par­tic­u­lar ser­vices, in­clud­ing of­fice space rentals, fur­ni­ture rentals and make-up and dress­ing room trucks. Wick­ham fur­nished an en­tire of­fice and built the make-up and dress­ing room trucks from scratch. She nev­er thought she could have ac­com­plished such a task just weeks be­fore film­ing be­gan. "We are sit­ting on a gold mine, but com­pa­nies need to ex­pand and im­prove on their ser­vice de­liv­ery, which are slow­ing us down."

She ad­vised busi­ness­es to ori­ent them­selves to needs and the un­der­stand­ing of a film in­dus­try. She said some busi­ness­es have not cap­tured the full mean­ing of prod­uct val­ue place­ment, that is, strate­gi­cal­ly plac­ing a com­pa­ny's prod­uct-be it soft drink, beer or a con­tain­er line-in a movie scene. She said this ad­ver­tis­ing ap­proach is ne­go­ti­at­ed through a barter sys­tem in most cas­es. Some com­pa­nies ap­proached turned down the of­fer, not re­al­is­ing the long-term mar­ket­ing ben­e­fits and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure they were los­ing out on. Jen­nifer Hol­ness, co-own­er of Hun­gry Eyes, sus­pect­ed that some com­pa­nies were guilty of price goug­ing, and warned that such a prac­tice could be a turn-off to oth­er film com­pa­nies want­i­ng to come to T&T.