With Omicron ongoing, Nova Scotia's film industry plans for booming 2022 season

When a major television production ended plans to shoot in Nova Scotia last year, the province's film industry braced for the impact, which came with a surprising twist.

"That was probably a good thing," said Laura Mackenzie, the executive director of Screen Nova Scotia.

"We were over capacity at that time, which means that we would have had a challenging time finding infrastructure:space, equipment, car rentals, accommodations, and of course, human bodies to do the work."

Mackenzie said last year was one of the busiest on record for the province's film industry, which saw around 60 productions take place and an estimated 2,000 people employed. She expects this year to be just as good and said the industry is looking for more workers.

As the province sees high case numbers and record death counts from the COVID-19 pandemic with the Omicron wave ongoing, the province's film industry is quietly planning for another banner year.

Months like February involve pre-production work. Filming doesn't usually startbeforelate March.

Mackenzie said the province's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the reasons the industry is thriving.

She said the industry has worked uninterrupted since there was a shutdown of around six weeks when the pandemic first hit the province in March 2020.

Having a reputation as aplace to operate reliably without shutdowns made it an attractive place to film, said Mackenzie. International media exposure over the Atlantic bubble also helped.

"All of that played an incredible role in spreading this message internationally that we were open for business and that we were safe," she said.

Mackenzie said the industry practices strict COVID-19 protocol and takes many steps to minimize risk, including frequent testing, wearing masks and working in designated cohorts wearing specific clothing.

"Some of the examples that I heard is that cohorts would have different colours and you weren't allowed to be around other coloured cohorts," she said.

Mackenzie said filmmakers are even creatively shooting scenes to maximize the distance betweenactors.

But it's not just COVID-19 that is helping the province's film industry.

Streaming help fuel demand for content

"I think what we're seeing now in Nova Scotia is that the pandemic has sort of put us back on the map in a way that we're now seeing some of the spoils of the streamer wars, streamers spending and constantly churning out content," said Marc Tetreault, an independent television and film producer based in Halifax.

The current position of Nova Scotia's film industry is a far cry from when the former Liberal government slasheda film tax credit in 2015, badly damaging the film business.

Mackenzie said many people left the province and the industry still hasn't fully rebuilt its infrastructure.

"Sowhat we're doing despite the capacity reduction is pretty incredible," she said.

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