White Rock has often been used as a location for movies and television series in the five decades since legendary comic Buster Keaton shot scenes for the National Film Board short The Railrodder here in 1965.
Among many other credits, it played a California coastal town in the Christopher Lambert-Diane Lane thriller Knight Moves in 1992; and was a backdrop for Humbug, a circus-themed second season episode of the X-Files in 1995.
Jack Lemmon shot scenes for the drama The Long Way Home (1998) in the city; a hillside home was the principal location throughout production of the music/comedy series The Chris Isaak Show (2001-2004), and White Rock frequently doubled for Santa Barbara, Calif. – with White Rock Museum and Archives housing a leading character’s office – in the crime series Psych (2006-14).
But, as city recreation and culture director Eric Stepura pointed out to council in a corporate report last week, filming, to this date, has always been in response to requests from film-makers and location scouts.
“There is nobody on city staff marketing White Rock as a filming destination,” he told council at their Jan. 16 meeting.
That’s about to change, following council’s adoption of Stepura’s recommendation that it allot $10,000 from the 2017 economic development budget to retain a movie 0industry location manager to shoot a professional-quality photo and video package to draw production business to the city.
Council also endorsed his recommendation that it consider allotting $10,000 per year in the 2018-2022 financial plan to market White Rock to the film industry.
“We need to (have) a culture of support, that we’re going to be film-friendly, and start with ‘yes’,” Stepura told council during his presentation.
It’s not as if the city isn’t well-known to people in the industry, he pointed out, noting Creative BC figures from 2015 that show that some 100 White Rock residents are employed by the film industry, with an estimated annual payroll well over $3.5 million.
A professional promotional package would show the city “through a location manager’s eyes,” Stepura said, providing a range of potential location possibilities.
“It’s not just beautiful sunsets, this is (about) back alleys and people’s homes,” he said.
The report also suggested adding filming information to the city’s website and assigning a film-co-ordinator role to an existing staff member of the recreation and culture department.
Stepura said the recommendations came forward after study of “best practices” in other communities such as West Vancouver, that are seeing an explosion of film work.
In answer to Couns. David Chesney, Lynne Sinclair and Megan Knight, who questioned the $10,000 figure, Stepura said it was based on an industry standard for developing a promotional package geared directly to production companies and location managers, and wouldn’t constitute hiring another staff member.
Mayor Wayne Baldwin, in expressing support for the recommendations, said the kinds of locations and facilities the film industry would seek in White Rock might not be those that “average people” notice.
“They know what they’re looking for,” he said.
“One thing I’d urge is to come up with pricing of locations – if the individual retained could provide information on pricing, we’d find it very useful.”