cOE EMBEDDEDNESS IN FILM INDUSTRY.pdf

Geoforum 31 (2000) 391±407

www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

The view from out West: embeddedness, inter-personal relations and

the development of an indigenous ®lm industry in Vancouver

Neil M. Coe 1

Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link, Kent Ridge, 117570, Singapore

Abstract

This paper considers the development of a particular cultural industry, the indigenous ®lm and television production sector, in

a speci®c locality, Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada). VancouverÕs ®lm and television industry exhibits a high level of de-

pendency on the location shooting of US funded productions, a relatively mobile form of foreign investment capital. As such, the

development of locally developed and funded projects is crucial to the long-term sustainability of the industry. The key facilitators

of growth in the indigenous sector are a small group of independent producers that are attempting to develop their own projects

within a whole series of constraints apparently operating at the local, national and international levels. At the international level,

they are situated within a North American cultural industry where the funding, production, distribution and exhibition of projects

is dominated by US multinationals. At the national level, both government funding schemes and broadcaster purchasing patterns

favour the larger production companies of central Canada. At the local level, producers have to compete with the demands of US

productions for crew, locations and equipment. I frame my analysis within notions of the embeddedness or embodiment of social

and economic relations, and suggest that the material realities of processes operating at the three inter-linked scales, are eectively

embodied in a small group of individual producers and their inter-personal networks. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights

reserved.

Keywords: Flim and television production; Cultural industries; Embeddedness; Canada; Socio-spatial networks

1. Context

number of commentators now talk about the notion of a

Ôcultural economyÕ or a Ôcultural mode of productionÕ

(see for example, Zukin, 1995; du Gay, 1997; Scott,

1997).

Such terms can be seen to have several levels of

meaning. They recognise the growing aesthetisation of

many goods and services as they are ascribed with

meanings and associations (Molotch, 1996). They re¯ect

the growing interest in the role of organisational cul-

tures in the contemporary economy (Saxenian, 1994;

Salaman, 1997; Schoenberger, 1997). Perhaps most ob-

viously, though, they connote how the production of

culture itself has become of huge importance, with en-

tertainment conglomerates such as Sony, Time Warner

and Disney emerging as some of the most powerful

economic actors globally. The study of cultural indus-

tries is most concerned with this latter facet of the cul-

tural economy, and it is to this growing body of work

(see for example, Shapiro et al., 1992; Lash and Urry,

1994; Scott, 1996; Pratt, 1997) that this paper seeks to

contribute, through a case study of a particular cultural

sector, namely the indigenous ®lm industry, in a speci®c

The Ôcultural turnÕ in geography has provoked a

growing concern with the dialectical relations between

cultural and economic systems (Crang, 1997). There is

increasing recognition that the two spheres are not au-

tonomous and independent, and equally, that there is no

deterministic relationship between the two. Instead,

culture and economy are mutually constitutive, with

ÔeconomicÕ processes such as production, consumption

and regulation being perhaps best seen as part of a cir-

cuit of culture that also includes the ÔculturalÕ arenas of

identity and representation (du Gay et al., 1997). Such a

balanced approach avoids the dangers of suggesting that

economic logics have become subordinated to culture

(Sayer, 1997), or that culture is completely dominated

by the economic domain (Harvey, 1990). A growing

Current address: School of Geography, University of Manchester,

Mans®eld Cooper Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.

E-mail address: geoneilc@nus.edu.sg (N.M. Coe).

PII: S 0 0 1 6 - 7 1 8 5 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 005-1

392

N.M. Coe / Geoforum 31 (2000) 391±407

place, the city of Vancouver in western Canada. 2 My

aim in this paper is to integrate this cultural industry

case study with conceptual concerns surrounding the

embeddedness and indeed, embodiment, of processes

operating ÔacrossÕ a variety of geographic scales.

VancouverÕs ®lm industry 3 has expanded phenome-

nally over the last 20 years, with some CDN$631m of

spending being recorded in 1997 (BCFC, 1998). The

sector now provides an estimated 8500 full-time jobs,

and part-time work for a further 17 000 employees in

British Columbia. The central dynamic of growth has

been the attractiveness of the city for the location

shooting of Hollywood-®nanced ®lm and television

productions, which have consistently accounted for over

80% of revenues since the industry started to emerge in

the late 1970s. Since the post-war break-up of the Hol-

lywood studio system, US producers have increasingly

turned to locations outside of southern California, and

indeed the USA, as a means of controlling production

costs (Christopherson and Storper, 1986; Storper and

Christopherson, 1987). Through a cumulative combi-

nation of economic, institutional, infrastructural and

locational attributes (see Table 1 for details), Vancouver

has grown to be the largest centre for Hollywood loca-

tion shooting in Canada, and overall, one of the top

four ®lm and television production centres in North

America. 4

While this investment is seen as desirable by most

local interest groups due to the well-paid, skilled, tech-

nology-based, ÔcleanÕ jobs that it provides, the level of

dependency on foreign ®nancing is disturbing because of

the potential mobility of this form of capital (Aksoy and

Robins, 1992). Due to the short-term project nature of

®lm production systems (Enright, 1995), Hollywood

companies are able to move rapidly between dierent

production locations, depending on a number of factors

such as exchange rate ¯uctuations, labour costs and

stability, and the availability of tax incentives (Gasher,

1995; Coe, 2000). The ¯uctuating fortunes of production

centres such as New York and Toronto illustrate the

vulnerability of places dependent on location shooting.

Hence, there is a growing awareness in the Vancouver

®lm community that the development of a viable in-

digenous sector is crucial to providing a long-term basis

for employment in the industry.

In these terms, the Vancouver ®lm industry as a

whole can be seen as a contemporary example of the

traditional Canadian ÔstaplesÕ economy, structurally

weakened and potentially vulnerable due to its depen-

dence on foreign capital and expertise (Watkins, 1963;

Drache and Gertler, 1991; Barnes, 1996). Such long-

debated concerns with dependency extend beyond the

economic realm in the case of the ®lm industry, with

many Canadian commentators expressing disquiet

about the cultural dependency that accompanies high

levels of US involvement in the Canadian ®lm and

television sector (Berton, 1975; Knelman, 1987; Pend-

akur, 1990; Magder 1993). There is, then, a double ar-

gument for encouraging the growth of an indigenous

®lm industry in British Columbia: ®rstly, to mitigate

against shifting patterns of US investment, and sec-

ondly, to contribute to the broader project of developing

ÔCanadianÕ ®lms and programmes for consumption both

at home and abroad.

While isolated, critically acclaimed ®lms have been

developed and produced in Vancouver, such as Mina

ShumÕs Double Happiness and Lynn StopkewichÕs Kis-

sed, in general the Ôhome grownÕ industry is small scale

and under-capitalised in terms of both ®lm and televi-

sion, with project budgets being miniscule in compari-

son to typical US shows (see Table 2). Although the BC

provincial government introduced a tax incentive for

local productions in April 1998 to support the CDN$4m

it invests annually through its agency BC Film, and the

Vancouver labour unions are generally supportive of

such projects, the main eorts to alter the orientation of

the industry are emanating from certain leading pro-

duction companies, and in many cases, individual pro-

ducers. Producers play a crucial co-ordinating role in the

®lm industry, negotiating contracts for, and bringing

together, the diverse coalition of directors, actors, crews,

contractors and subcontractors that is necessary for an

individual production.

My objective in this paper is to consider how certain

producers in the Vancouver industry operate within

(and in many ways are constrained by) processes ap-

parently operating at dierent scales, namely interna-

tionally, nationally and locally, in their eorts to make

Canadian-themed and funded projects to oset the de-

pendency on mobile US-funded location shooting. At

the international level, producers are operating in a

North American, and more speci®cally Canadian, ®lm

and television market that is dominated by US-based

producers, distributors, exhibitors and broadcasters. At

the national level, producers must contend with broad-

caster purchasing and government incentive structures

that

There has been very little work on the geography of ®lm industry

hitherto: what work there has been has tended to focus on the spatial

agglomeration of the elements necessary for ®lm production (for

example, Christopherson and Storper, 1986; Storper and Christoph-

erson, 1987), rather than on longer distance networks between the all-

powerful ®nanciers (based in Hollywood) and producers in important

production centres (based, in this case, in Vancouver).

For the purposes of this paper, the term Ô®lmÕ industry will be used

to refer not just to feature ®lms, but any audio-visual production

produced for television (in all forms - network, pay-TV, cable), video

or theatrical release. The terms ÔVancouverÕ and ÔBritish ColumbiaÕ ®lm

industry will be used interchangeably: although some shooting does

occur outside the broadly de®ned Vancouver metropolitan area, the

city dominates production in the province to a huge extent.

have historically,

and continue

to favour large

Along with Los Angeles, the clear leader, New York, and Toronto.

N.M. Coe / Geoforum 31 (2000) 391±407

393

Table 1

VancouverÕs attractiveness for location shooting a

Details

Economic factors

CDN$-US$ exchange rate

The single most important factor. Gives US producers an immediate 30% saving on

costs incurred in Vancouver

Lower basic costs

Further savings are gained from the fact that certain inputs, notably labour, would

arguably still be cheaper in Vancouver if the dollars were at parity b

Federal Tax Credit for non-Canadian content

productions

Announced in November 1997, this amounts to a potential 11% tax rebate on labour

costs incurred in Canada. Estimated average saving on total budget of 5.5% of costs

Provincial Tax Credit

Unveiled in October 1997, primarily for indigenous producers, but foreign ®nanced

productions can bene®t from a 20% labour costs rebate if they meet strict Canadian

content requirements. All foreign productions are eligible for 12.5% labour rebate if

shot outside Vancouver, a further 3% if provide on-the-job training

Institutional factors

British Columbian Film Commission

Highly successful and widely respected Film Commission

Proactive ®lm unions

Unions have played a major role in shaping the Vancouver industry, in particular

through organising, training, expanding and regulating the workforce. More recently

have signed a series of master agreements with US producers providing long-term

labour stability

Key personalities

Industry has bene®ted from the input of a number of key highly successful ®gures,

including ®lm commissioners Greene and Neufeld, and US producer Cannell

Eective LA-Vancouver inter-personal networks

Dicult to quantify, but key ®gures in Vancouver have been very successful at forging

relationships with decision-makers and producers in Hollywood. Frequent contact and

shuttling of personnel between the two centres

Locational attributes

Close to Los Angeles

Only a two and a half-hour ¯ight

Same time zone

Allows easy co-ordination of activities between Vancouver and Los Angeles. A

surprisingly important consideration according to many ®gures in the industry

No language or cultural barriers

English-speaking, intimately linked (and similar) national cultures

Shared Ôwest coastÕ lifestyle

A quality of life attractive to many people, especially relatively mobile, creative

elements of the workforce

Climate

Generally mild. Lack of snow on ground in winter allows all year round ®lming.

Ambient light less intense than in California

Locations

Large range of ÔscenicÕ locations within a one or two hour drive from central

Vancouver: urban, suburban, rural, coastal, mountain, forest, semi-arid

Infrastructural

Studio space

Although studio space is often in short supply, the available amount of space has

continually increased in an eort to meet burgeoning demand

Support companies

A large network of support/service ®rms has developed to provide the wide range of

services necessary for ®lm production, for example, camera rental, grip and electrical

equipment, vehicle rental, catering, and post-production companies

Source: AuthorÕs research.

Savings are reduced slightly by some extra costs incurred in Vancouver, most importantly ¯ights and hotels for American actors/creative personnel.

Table 2

Breakdown of ®lm and television spending in BC in 1997 a

Genre

Canadian

(CDN$m)

No.

Foreign

(CDN$m)

No.

Total

(CDN$m)

No.

Features

14.24

107.91

122.15

TV movies/pilots

15.05

104.96

120.01

TV series/mini-series

141.81

211.66

353.47

Animation

19.43

Documentaries/broadcast singles

15.53

Totals

206.06

108

424.53

630.59

167

Source: BCFC (1998).

394

N.M. Coe / Geoforum 31 (2000) 391±407

production companies in central Canada, i.e. Ontario

and Quebec. At the local or provincial level, these pro-

ducers must compete with the insatiable (and in¯ation-

ary) needs of the Hollywood productions for crews,

equipment and studio space. The ability of producers

and production companies to succeed in this environ-

ment appears to depend heavily on the eectiveness of

their personal relationships with key decision makers.

1997). As Kelly (1997b) relates, these ÔconstructedÕ

scales can be used to metaphorically contain certain

events (e.g. an Ôinner cityÕ problem) or to defer expla-

nations of events from one scale to another (e.g.

changes at the local level put down to ÔglobalisationÕ).

Furthermore, there may be ways to develop strategies

of resistance using the politics of scale. For example,

using a case study of the US east coast longshore in-

dustry, Herod (1991, 1997a,b) has shown how unions

expanded negotiations with employers from the local to

the national scale.

Viewing scale in these terms has implications for

how we conceptualise social processes. Essentially, if

scale is viewed as relative and constructed, then events

do not occur exclusively at one particular scale, but

instead at all scales simultaneously. For example, Kelly

(1997a,b) recounts how global economic logics, often

portrayed as being impersonal and disembodied, are in

reality more embedded in local social relations than

many accounts recognise. This localisation, he suggests,

occurs simultaneously at multiple scales ranging from

the national to the individual. Swyngedouw (1997) uses

the terms Ônested scalesÕ in this regard, and describes

how this overlapping makes it impossible to give causal

priority to one scale over the others. Nested scales,

though, should not be seen in a hierarchical or deter-

ministic sense, whereby ÔlargerÕ spatial scales constrain

events at ÔsmallerÕ scales. Instead, in¯uences can run in

both directions, or to use the language of Smith, it is

possible to Ôjump scalesÕ in both directions (see also

Cox, 1998). Such an outlook starts to come to terms

with the salient theoretical issue identi®ed by Beaure-

gard (1995, p. 240), which is that ``actors simulta-

neously have interests at multiple spatial scales; that is,

their activities spread out over dierent geographical

®elds''.

My aim here is to use evidence pertaining to inter-

personal networks to illustrate the nestedness and si-

multaneity of dierent scales. Thus, I want to suggest

that Vancouver producers striving to develop projects

are simultaneously embedded, through their networks of

social relations, in processes operating across the local,

national and international scales. Each project co-ordi-

nated by the Vancouver producer is incontrovertibly

British Columbian, Canadian and North American at

the same time, or, to put it another way, the producers

embody the economic (and social, cultural and political)

realities of making ®lms in contemporary Canada. It is

worth noting that it is the producers themselves who

create the scales of analysis I will be using through their

networks of relationships, for as Beauregard (1995, p.

243) suggests ``actors create social scale and without

actors scale does not exist''.

Although in practice it is often extremely dicult to

untangle the relationships between social processes and

economic

2. Conceptual concerns: the embodiment of multi-scalar

economic processes

My analysis in this article is framed by two con-

ceptual debates, the ®rst surrounding the embedded-

ness and embodiment of economic processes in

networks of inter-personal relations, and the second

focusing on the social construction and ÔnestednessÕ of

scale. The concept of ÔembeddednessÕ, which has re-

ceived increasing attention from economic geographers

since a seminal paper by Granovetter 1985; (see also

Granovetter, 1992), is central to my argument. This

notion suggests that economic action, instead of rep-

resenting some kind of free-¯oating logic or rationality,

is embedded in networks and institutions that are so-

cially constructed and culturally de®ned, and therefore

is in¯uenced by aspects such as mutuality, trust and co-

operation (Smelser and Swedberg, 1994; Misztal, 1996).

In other words, economic action is inseparable from

the social relations through which it is enacted. Bour-

dieu (1984) uses the term ÔembodimentÕ to refer to

similar processes at the organisational level, but I wish

to argue in this article that economic processes are

embedded in key social actors and their networks (in

this case in certain producers), and in that sense rep-

resent embodiment at the level of the individual

(McDowell, 1997). By contrast, economic geography

research has thus far tended to focus on how organi-

sations and institutions are embedded in socio-spatial

networks (see for example, Cooke and Morgan, 1993;

Grabher, 1993; Harrison, 1994; Dicken et al., 1994;

Yeung,

1994;

although

see

Saxenian,

1990;

Yeung,

1997, for exceptions).

Such a standpoint can be integrated into debates

surrounding reworked notions of geographic ÔscaleÕ.It

is increasingly recognised that scales are not simply

rigid, pre-set categories, but instead are socially con-

structed and mobilised for political purposes. In a series

of works, Smith (1992a,b, 1993, 1996) has explored

notions surrounding the production and politics of

scale. He suggests that the scaling of everyday life op-

erates on numerous levels, such as the body, commu-

nity, urban, regional, national, supernational and

global. These scales, and the relations between them,

are not ®xed, but instead are ¯uid, contested and per-

petually

being

transgressed

(see

also

Swyngedouw,

activities

(Malecki,

1993),

tracing

through

N.M. Coe / Geoforum 31 (2000) 391±407

395

inter-personal networks 5 can assist in identifying the

threads that both link and create dierent ÔscalesÕ of

activity. As Murdoch (1995, p. 750) suggests, ``the

construction of networks, and the ability they give cer-

tain participants to Ôact at a distanceÕ, is what ties the

ÔlocalÕ to the ÔglobalÕ... we must trace continuities from

the ÔlocalÕ to the ÔglobalÕ, or, more strictly speaking, from

one locale to the next and to the next and so on''. In this

sense, it is the social networks within which the actors

are embedded that construct the dierent spatial scales

of interaction. This particular case study will illustrate

how Vancouver producers are active in networks not

only within the city, but also with other centres within

Canada (mainly Toronto and Montreal), and key

funding centres outside the country (largely Los Ange-

les, but also New York, London, Paris etc.) which rep-

resent the connected ÔlocalesÕ identi®ed by Murdoch. As

Cornish (1997) suggests, distance is not necessarily a

barrier to eective inter-personal networks, which are a

social rather than spatial phenomena, rather it is the

presence or absence of social capital in the relations

(Coleman, 1988) that is important. 6

However, as Amin and Hausner (1997, p. 10) point

out, it is not enough to merely recognise the presence of

networks, it is also important to distinguish between

their types and qualities. They suggest at least four im-

portant aspects of networks that should be considered:

behavioural rationality, contextuality, the strength of

ties, and power relations. The ®rst aspect alludes to the

fact that the rationale behind the creation of the net-

work will determine its scope and arrangement (see also

Orillard, 1997). Powell and Smith-Doerr (1994) identify

three main arenas in which informal social networks are

especially important: employment and recruitment, the

diusion of ideas and policies, and the mobilisation of

resources. The latter is extremely important in the ®lm

industry, where ®nanciers and distributors control the

balance of power (Aksoy and Robins, 1992), and the

success of producers in Vancouver appears to depend

heavily on their ability to generate funding from their

networks. Formal contracts for ®lm productions then

emerge on a project-by-project basis from the informal

web of relations, for as Cornish (1997, p. 453) suggests,

``an informal relationship of some sort, with a speci®c

duration and strength, underlies every formal transac-

tion and agreement'' (see also Freeman, 1991).

The second aspect highlighted by Amin and Hausner

describes how networks are a re¯ection of their broader

social, cultural, institutional, geographical and histori-

cal contexts (see also Powell, 1990; Powell and Smith-

Doerr, 1994). As Amin and Hausner (p. 11) suggest,

``each network form is the product of forces that have

matured in the course of time and of relationships that

are peculiar to particular contextual circumstances''.

Thus this paper will show how the informal networks

formed by Vancouver producers are re¯ective of wider

economic and policy realities. The third aspect recog-

nises that networks vary in the strength of their ties of

association (Grabher, 1993). For example, Amin and

Hausner suggest that while a network characterised by

strong ties may be able to secure a unity of purpose and

rapid action, over time it may foster relations of de-

pendency and become unable to adapt. By contrast, a

network of loose alliances may be more dicult to

mobilise, but may oer a broader range of alternative

actions (see also Grabher and Stark, 1997 on this point).

This case study will highlight how Vancouver producers

are embedded in networks that have relatively strong

ties both locally and to Los Angeles, but weaker within

Canada. The ®nal aspect draws attention to the fact

that there are dierent forms of power relations inherent

within networks, which need not necessarily be highly

egalitarian and reciprocal (see also van Tulder and

Ruigrok, 1997). Dierent social actors have dierent

potential for action, within what Massey (1993) de-

scribes as the Ôpower-geometryÕ of (increasingly global-

ized) social relations. Thus I will emphasise how

Vancouver producers are variously constrained (and

enabled) by the power relations inherent in their inter-

personal networks.

The remainder of the paper will consider in turn the

three ÔscalesÕ or arenas of processes which in my opinion

the producers are inevitably both embedded in and

constitutive of; the international, the national and the

local. 7 The analysis presented here is drawn from a

wider research project investigating the nature and dy-

namics of the Vancouver ®lm industry, for which 36

unstructured interviews were undertaken with a variety

of agency ocials, union representatives, casting direc-

tors, studio managers, and local and US producers in

the second half of 1997. Where possible, I attempt to let

the individuals producers ÔspeakÕ for themselves through

the use of quotations, hopefully re¯ecting the multi-

vocal spirit of the so-called Ônew economic geographyÕ,

which sees economic landscapes as contested and open

to a variety of interpretations and meanings (Martin,

1994; Thrift and Olds, 1996).

Such analysis should not (necessarily) be con¯ated with a wholesale

shift to network modes of production, put forward by some as the new

dominant mode of industrial organisation (Cooke and Morgan, 1993).

Social capital can be seen as an intangible, informational asset that

can be accessed by all parties involved in its formation to their mutual

bene®t. While the term is often used to describe the attributes of

individual actors, the notion of social capital must not be divorced

from the relational networks that create it. See Sedaitis (1997).

As I have just argued that these three scales are simultaneous, the

splitting of the analysis into three sections is for the purpose of clarity.

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