If there’s a famous movie character Victoria film commissioner Kathleen Gilbert can relate to, it would have to be Michael Corleone in The Godfather III.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” Al Pacino famously cried as the aging mob boss whose retirement plans were derailed.
After working for 18 years on dozens of film and TV productions, often as a locations manager, Gilbert found herself in a similar situation in the summer of 2010.
“I’d decided to retire from the film industry and that’s when they called me,” recalled Gilbert, who was vacationing in Washington, D.C., when her predecessor Jo Anne Walton resigned after just eight months in office.
After revitalizing what was then called the Greater Victoria Film Commission, Walton left much sooner than expected to accept an offer she couldn’t refuse in Vancouver.
Gilbert, who had applied twice before, recalled she took “a lot of long walks” on her mother’s beach in Sarnia, Ont., before deciding to accept the hiring committee’s offer.
She took over a job that was first held by Brian Small, founder of what was then called the Victoria-Vancouver Island Film Commission. Small operated the capital region’s first film office with $2,000 in seed money out of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce when he was its manager in the 1970s.
After facilitating movies including Harry in Your Pocket, Five Easy Pieces and Bird on a Wire, Small retired in 1994. His successors since the organization was reinvented a year later include Russ Cowan, Ali Ford, Tom Crowe, David Mills, Barry Dodd, Rod Hardy and Kate Peterson.
Five years after taking office, Gilbert has become the capital region’s longest-running film commissioner, drawing productions that will spend an estimated $20 million by year’s end compared to $7 million the year she started.
She has fulfilled a five-year commitment she made to implement a long-term plan for the not-for-profit organization that markets and promotes the region’s locations, skills and incentives to the global industry.
“I felt we needed at least that much time, as long as I did a decent job,” said Gilbert, who welcomed the transition from working 15-hour days in the production trenches to half that.
A film commissioner’s job goes far beyond the 9-to-5 routine, however, as she’s constantly dealing with deadline-driven producers, pulling favours and cutting red tape.
One of the job’s least attractive aspects is having to raise money for your own pay. Gilbert, shares the Vancouver Island South Film and Media Commission’s new headquarters at 514 Government St. with Brian Globus, its full-time office and locations co-ordinator, and Andrea Rodgers, her part-time administrative assistant. They work with an annual $160,000 operating budget which Gilbert hopes to increase by $30,000 next year.
The commission’s annual funding includes grants from the province ($40,000), the City of Victoria ($40,000), Saanich ($37,500), Oak Bay ($10,000), Esquimalt ($2,000), Langford ($2,000) and Sidney ($500).
Other funding sources include corporate sponsorships, revenue from $25 commission memberships and proceeds from the Oscar viewing bash, its major annual fundraiser.
While many local film commissions are government-operated, such isn’t the case here, where Gilbert often relies on the kindness of friends, businesses and community leaders.
Small, for instance, raised $2,000 from friends in the business community to purchase an iMac computer for the commission after learning they needed one.
“I know Kathleen because she was a locations person and she was very good at what she did then,” Small said. “I thought: ‘Oh, boy, we got the best we could get, and she has the energy for the job.’ She just needs recognition from the point of view that you’re always fighting for your financial existence, which takes a terrific amount of time away from the job you’re supposed to be doing.”
One common funding misconception is the belief that producers pay for a film commission’s services that they can get for free in competing jurisdictions.
Gilbert credits the commission’s board with giving her the freedom and support to get the job done while keeping her accountable.
“We have a lioness of a bookkeeper. I can’t even buy a stick of gum,” laughed Gilbert.
“We’re very fiscally responsible. I don’t know if I’d be sitting here today if we didn’t have a board that works so well together, and trusts me.”
She said she’s grateful to the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, which donated office space five years ago after the commission vacated its previous Provincial Capital Commission quarters on Belleville Street.
Gilbert’s greatest achievements so far include successfully lobbying to have the capital region added last year to areas where producers could get an additional six per cent distant-location tax credit. Local film and television production dropped sharply in 2008 when the capital region was inexplicably excluded from the list of eligible jurisdictions when the provincial government implemented the tax credit.
Revenues dropped to $7.3 million that year, most generated through the $14-million sci-fi mini-series Impact. It was less than half the direct spending seen during 2006, when 12 productions generated $18 million.
The industry bounced back big-time this year, with a sudden surge in production driven by the tax credit and the success of last year’s labour-intensive Gracepoint shoot.
A record-breaking 25 productions will have been filmed here by the end of 2015, including The Bridge 2 and Pupstars, both now filming, and The Gourmet Detective 3, which is tentatively slated to start shooting in late fall.
Other projects include The Gourmet Detective 2, The Last Resort, Playdate, The Boy, Just in Time for Christmas, For Wheelz, Perfect High, The Girl in the Photographs, Stranger in the House and Signed Sealed Delivered.
Facilitating production of Gracepoint, Fox network’s ambitious 10-part remake of the British mystery series Broadchurch, was one of Gilbert’s most challenging and economically beneficial experiences, she said.
“We were doing something for Gracepoint almost every day,” recalled Gilbert, whose team first showed locations to producers nearly eight months before filming began.
As exciting as it was hosting the cast and crew of the biggest project ever to film here, there were some significant challenges, including inclement weather.
“I don’t think I was quite the rock star on that one because of that,” Gilbert laughed.
Unit manager Paul Rayman said it’s thanks to the commissioner he describes as “a consummate pro who really knows her way around issues” that the Gracepoint producers chose to film here.
“She goes above and beyond, and she has such knowledge and understanding of locations. It was basically because of her dogged determination this happened.”
Another project Gilbert said was particularly exciting and rewarding was Disney’s The Descendants, director Kenny Ortega’s musical fantasy for Disney Channel filmed at the B.C. legislature and Hatley Castle last summer.
“I got to laugh with the Speaker of the House,” said Gilbert, recalling how Speaker Linda Reid was “the final decision-maker” regarding what could and couldn’t be done while shooting at the legislature.
The only thing she couldn’t make happen was allowing the filmmakers to open the wrought-iron gates in front of the legislature that are parted only for the Queen, she said.
During the five days sequences for Descendants were filmed here, more background performers were used than for any show other than X-Men, Gilbert said.
“It made a huge impact on the CRD,” she said, noting 560 hotel room nights were booked.
And when scenes for Godzilla were filmed here, production gobbled up most available rooms at the Westin Bear Mountain and the Sheraton Four Points.
The region’s “bread-and-butter” are TV movies with budgets between $1.5 million and $3 million, Gilbert said, noting that such productions each book an average of 1,000 room nights.
Apart from getting the distant-location tax credit for Victoria (“the highlight of my career so far”), Gilbert’s other chief objectives have been to rebuild the local crew base and get a film studio built here.
“I’m determined not to retire until that happens,” she said. “Then I’ll be happy.”
Describing Gilbert as “the magic film commissioner ... the nicest person on the planet, and a super hard worker passionate about everything she does,” board president Annie Wong-Harrison said she’s in no rush to see her go.
“I have handcuffs and a chain, if she even thinks of leaving,” laughs Wong-Harrison.
