The Farther Regions of Canada

I'm trying to track down this notion that co-productions are exempt from the CanCon requirement that the story be set in Canada. My intern's careful reading of the Performance Guidelines reveals:

3.2.TV.1.1 Official Treaty Co-Productions

With respect to the eligibility of official treaty co-productions to access the CMF, these Essential Requirements shall be
interpreted so as to treat the treaty co-production partner as “Canadian.”

Accordingly, the terms “Canadian” and “Canadians” in Essential Requirements 1 and 3, and the term “Canada” in
Essential Requirement 4 will be deemed to include the co-production country. The 10/10 points referenced in Essential
Requirement 2 must be attained by citizens of Canada or the co-producing country.

Now I have to find out how, exactly, Irish co-productions like The Tudors or The Borgias can be set in England or Italy and still count.

Ex-Pat?

I'm an American writer just beginning my foray into writing as a career. Even though I grew up a stone's throw away from Los Angeles I can't see L.A. being my gateway to the industry. I spent my first three years as an undergraduate in New England, enjoyed six months in Ireland, about to head up to UBC in Vancouver for a semester, and finishing up an undergraduate degree in creative writing at UCR . Not only do I tend to live a better life away from California, but most of my writing tends to thematically wrap around questions of cultural identity with a distinctly Anglo tint (the only spec script I've written was an episode of Skins).

While all of my classes, books, and blogs detail Hollywood with steely accuracy, what if we don't want to go that route? What if I'm an American planning to live and work and write abroad? Are there any good resources detailing the non-american systems?

The key issue here is nationality. You can't work on Canadian shows if you're not a Canadian citizen or a Canadian permanent resident. (Permanent resident = Green Card.) I don't know about the British system, but I imagine you would need to be a British or EU citizen, or a Commonwealth citizen residing permanently in Britain. Likewise, I imagine, Oz.

So working in another country's system requires planning, effort and time. It probably takes 12-18 months to get a visa to be a Canadian permanent resident, after which you can come here and work. (You don't have to be here while you're waiting for the visa.)

There are a few automatic shortcuts. I understand that if you can prove Irish grandparents, you can get an Irish/EU passport. If you're Jewish, you can get an Israeli passport, though that's not as useful. And I have heard that if you can prove that your parents or grandparents left Spain during the Spanish Civil War, or if you can prove your Jewish ancestors were expelled from Spain in 1492 -- you can get a Spanish passport. Who knows if that's true -- ask your Spanish consulate.

The Canadian and British systems have their own flaws. The Canadian English film market is currently dreadful, and Canadian TV is under constant threat from the Conservative government. Canadian producers are only just beginning to appreciate the role of the showrunner in TV. The US market is the only market that doesn't depend on government handouts and regulations. All sorts of Canadians and Brits would love to move to LA, if they could only figure out how.

Also, there are plenty of people making indie movies and co-productions in LA. My first salaried job in showbiz was working for an Israeli producer who made elaborate co-productions. The movie I came in on, EMINENT DOMAIN, was an Israeli-French-Canadian co-pro shot in Poland and partly financed by a Welsh bank. It's a big town, LA. Not everyone's working on the next Michael Bay picture.

You can, of course, write anywhere and have LA agents, though it will be a serious drag on your career.

You can also try to break into the New York showbiz community. The drawback there is that there isn't that much work and the competition is ridiculous, because every other New York prep school kid is trying to avoid going out to the Coast, you're up against them and their connections, and they're living in their parents' classic six on Central Park West, and vacationing in the Hamptons where they might bump into Spielberg.

Without knowing what your specific questions are, it's hard to point you to resources. This blog has a lot of info on Canada, and there are probably Brit writing blogs with a similar slant. What do you want to know?