Lights, camera, action: Medicine Hat positioned for screen success, growth

Outside the city, Skretting says there are some really specific landscapes to be found, and the towns have their own potential.

“I think it’s beautiful country, there’s lots of little picturesque towns. You see a lot of ’70s and ’80s dramas popping up now that need not modern construction to be featured,” he says. “In those towns and in those areas it’s kind of that’s one side of town but most of the town looks like you can kind of set it up to look like it still works in the ’70s or still works in the ’80s.”

He calls it picturesque in ways that the locals may not consider.

“Sometimes things are perfect for the film industry that you wouldn’t consider to be. Like there’s an empty building and it’s an eyesore but it’s like ‘oh no that is a unique architecture that really would be an asset for the film industry.'”

Jace Anderson, executive director of Tourism Medicine Hat, agrees.

He says Medicine Hat has the ability to present a lot of different faces.

“Our city is really visually unique in that we have a very strong historic sense and sector of early CPR architecture and a lot of different spaces all the way through,” Anderson says. “But we’re a large enough city that we have in our downtown a 10-plus storey apartment building and so if people are doing set shots for a storyline whether it’s a commercial or an episode of a TV show they have a lot of different palettes of background and environment that they can shoot in.”

“And then when you get outside the community into southeastern Alberta, one of the reasons why we’re excited about the community and the region from a tourism standpoint is all of the different strong environments that are presented and available. Whether it’s Cypress Hills, or Red Rock Coulee, whether it’s down into the Milk River or into the Badlands area a little bit further north of Medicine Hat. There’s so many different vistas and experiences that are available to see.”

Medicine Hat was the backdrop for a connectFirst Credit Union commercial that featured the Saamis Tepee, the train yard and other city shots.

Skretting says small projects like that can lead to bigger things as the city’s profile is raised in the industry.

The industry overall is thinking bigger, too. The provincial government recently removed its $10 million per project cap on the Film and Television Tax Credit, an attempt to draw larger-scale productions to Alberta.

Skretting says that’s already happening, with HBO choosing southern Alberta for filming of the series The Last of Us. It will film for the next year.

“That brings in a whole new calibre of projects that are actually even going to look because it makes economic sense for them to shoot here and those types of shows will develop the industry further which will spread out from being just southern Alberta based to province-wide.”

Skretting names Fraggle Rock and Guilty Party as movies that have shot in the province recently, and Alberta-shot series Skretting has worked on include Fargo and Wynonna Earp.

Skretting says the film industry is great for getting money moving in a community. A film crew in town for even a few days gives a boost to the economy through things like hotels and meals. And the longer the crew is in town, the bigger the boost.

Anderson says there’s also opportunity on the backend for tourism.

“It helps us present our community visually and quite often in a way that other people are paying attention and would be inclined to come and see it themselves first hand,” he says. “That’s an exciting opportunity that we might not have had in the past.”

Skretting, who says Invest Medicine Hat and Tourism Medicine Hat have been “super helpful” in working on policy and getting the word out, points to the impact Game of Thrones had on Northern Ireland.

He says there was a multi-hundred per cent increase in visitors and about 120,000 people visited per year specifically because of the show.

“When you get a big-budget show like that it can completely change the game in terms of getting in millions of dollars well after the fact. So there’s the initial spend to make the show, the initial of jobs to create the project but then once it comes out there’s a marketing tool.”

He adds the industry will have to grow but as the productions begin to spread across the province, “Medicine Hat will be at the top of the list.”

by Chris Brown

Lights, camera, action: Medicine Hat positioned for screen success, growth

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