Cracking Canadian co-pros with 'Baby Elephant School'. Indie insights free edition
Can the U.K.-Canada co-pro treaty help to fund your next factual project?
Factual co-productions used to be perceived as the rarefied pursuit of a handful of indie producers, but in today’s pressurised landscape, this funding model plays an essential role in programme-making. Yet getting these bi- or multi-national projects over the line can be complex at best… and excruciating at worst.
As Kirstie McClure, managing director of My Best Friend’s An Animal indie Big Wave Entertainment, tells us this week, they’re not for the faint-hearted. But if you can find the right partners, work closely with a tax credit expert and know exactly how your budget split is being allocated, the rewards can be material.
McClure recently partnered with Cantina Media - the Canadian production outfit backed by Solange Attwood and Julie Chang’s Serial Maven Studios - for Baby Elephant School, which goes inside a Sri Lankan elephant sanctuary that rehabilitates orphaned calves. The U.K.-Canada co-production is between Channel 4 and CBC, with France’s Arte on board as a pre-sale partner.
The show is a treaty co-production, meaning it takes advantage of the formal treaty between the U.K. and Canada, first set up in 1975. This official pact is not always leveraged for factual projects because certain criteria can push prices up and erode the overall value of a co-production.
But for projects such as Baby Elephant School, savvy producers have proven that the right factual production can take advantage of the treaty requirements, as long as they stay within some essential guardrails.
Read on to learn more about…
How to find the right Canadian co-production partner
Why working with a tax credit expert will save you down the line
When to apply for official treaty co-production status
Crafting different versions of a story for different countries
How to work the budget split according to treaty lines
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Finding the Right Match
McLure, former managing director of Pioneer Productions, first engaged with the co-production model when budgets tightened up during an industry crunch around the 2008 recession. Since then, she has set up several co-productions (Can Dogs Talk? recently aired on CBC), with Canada becoming a favoured market due to its appealing tax credits and rich production sector.
McLure encourages producers to, firstly, think carefully about their story, and whether it has a Canadian link or interest. If it does and lends itself to a treaty co-production (specific criteria is found on the BFI website), you can either reach out to a Canadian producer directly, or ask for support from U.K. producers’ trade org Pact or a co-production consultant who will have those connections. (Tip: Canada is a huge country, and there is an eight-hour time difference for the U.K. with West Coast-based companies, compared to five hours with the East Coast. Keep in mind that you’ll likely meet regularly on Zoom to discuss the project so time differences can make or break your schedule.)
In McLure’s case, she had a long-standing relationship with Canadian public broadcaster CBC and, once she secured her commission from Channel 4, she was able to pitch Baby Elephant School directly to CBC and reverse engineer the project, bringing Cantina on board as her Canadian production partner.
Finding the right partner with the same sensibilities is critical for a ‘harmonious’ co-production. In McLure’s case, she had a long history of working with Serial Maven’s Chang and Attwood at their previous home of Blue Ant Media, and with Cantina’s Betty Orr when she was still at Pioneer.
‘It’s a bit like a marriage; it’s quite an intimate relationship,’ says McLure, who encourages transparent communication about everything from budgets to timelines. ‘You need to date your Canadian partner a little bit. You need to make sure you’re going to get along when times are difficult, which they really are in productions with low budgets and high expectations.’
When a co-production is agreed, each respective side needs to apply for official co-production status with official funding bodies Telefilm Canada and the BFI. Here, assistance from an exceptional tax credit expert is worth their weight in gold.
‘It’s really important that all that is done early on, to be sure that you are actually going to qualify,’ says McLure. ‘You have to do a lot of work to get that qualification, in terms of business affairs, paperwork and budgeting. And it all needs to be filed through BFI and Telefilm quite early. You can’t spend too much until you’re convinced you’ve got co-production status.’
Takeaways: Think about your story and whether it has a Canadian angle or interest; find an appropriate production partner; keep the time difference with the U.K. in mind
Crafting the Story
Some stories will have obvious ties to a certain country, but sometimes the subject matter will be more universal. Wildlife series such as Baby Elephant School can fall into the latter, and attract a Canadian broadcast partner without a local connection. Even so, the project, which is now in production, took roughly three years to bring together due to complex permissions and access protocols in Sri Lanka.
‘It’s very hard to make wildlife,’ says McLure, who notes that once robust cable networks such as Discovery’s Animal Planet are no longer commissioning in the same way. ‘There are very few hours being commissioned in the wildlife community, and very few at tariffs that make it doable. We were chasing this access with our partners in Sri Lanka for a long time, and [because] commission rates are dropping, we thought the only way this will work is to turn it into a co-production with partners.”
Channel 4’s version is four parts with wildlife host Lizzy Daly attached, while the CBC’s popular The Nature of Things strand will get a one-hour film fronted by science presenter Anthony Morgan. France’s Arte, which has signed on to the project on a pre-sale basis, will take a three-hour series without a host.
‘Each of these are having their own versions,’ says McLure. ‘We have to make sure we have our shot list for each channel. There will be some shared material, because there are wonderful elephant characters who will be similar in each version, but then we take time [shooting with each host].’
Takeaways: Wildlife is time-consuming and lends itself to co-production because it’s so expensive to make; each country needs its own bespoke version of the show
Keep Your Spend on Track
Budgets tend to rise on Canadian co-productions because the treaty requires that certain roles are occupied by nationals. On Baby Elephant School, for example, there are both Canadian and U.K. directors, editors and executive producers.
‘You have to be quite careful, because it can get expensive when you’ve got two teams running,’ says McLure. ‘Look at the project and understand where the split of spend should be, and who should be in which office. Where should the editing be done? Where should the final post-production be done?’
The budget should ultimately follow the same ratio as the treaty co-production split. For example, a 60-40 U.K.-Canada split means that 60 percent of spend is in the U.K. and 40 percent is in Canada.
‘If you get that wrong, when you don’t comply at final audit, it will fail. You won’t get your money, and you end up in a real hole,’ warns McLure, who handles most of the business affairs for productions herself, alongside her reliable tax credit expert.
Funding the tax credit is also mission critical, particularly as Canada pays back the tax credits at the very end of production.
‘Cash flow becomes an issue you have to understand before you undertake a production,’ says McLure. ‘You may need to make a provision for funding the tax credits, which is an area not to be forgotten because you [may not] have the finance to go ahead and make the project.’
Money aside, bringing the right attitude and working with like-minded partners is paramount, says McLure. And that often means staying open to compromise.
‘Make sure you go into it in the real spirit of true co-production,’ she says. ‘You have to be aware that there will be leads on both sides, execs on both sides and probably a director on both sides. And you have to discuss the process with your partners to be sure everyone’s going to be comfortable with the way the production is set out.’
Takeaways: Budgets must follow treaty co-pro ratios; it’s essential to think about cash flowing your project because tax credits are paid at the very end