‘This is just the beginning’: Calgary cracks top 10 list for places to live and work as a movie maker

For the second year in a row, Calgary has landed itself on MovieMaker‘s list of Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker.

And, also for the second year straight, the city cracked the top 10, placing 10th out of 25 cities.

Over the last few years, Calgary has seen some big productions roll through town. Many will remember the hype when Ghostbusters: Afterlife was seen filming across Alberta and that same level of excitement has been felt with HBO’s The Last of Us seen taking over parts of the city.

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For those who come to the city to film, Calgary, and Alberta as a whole, are enticing places to travel to.

“I mean, we can’t be beaten in terms of the variety of vistas here,” explained Blair Young, the president of the performers’ union, ACTRA. “From big city urban centers, all the way to mountains and pretty much everything in between, and that’s very attractive to filmmakers.”

Young says many people coming to film movies get excited about what they could get up to when they aren’t working, which is what makes coming to Alberta a top choice.

“They’re saying it’s kind of like summer camp, you know, you get to come up here and shoot in the weekdays, and then you can go off and do some canoeing, maybe shoot an arrow, maybe go do some hiking on a mountain.

“They were trying to say that it was just as much fun as a summer camp to be in Alberta.”

After Alberta removed a cap that held larger productions to a maximum $10 million tax credit claim, the province hoped to attract more big productions. And that is just what has happened.

Young says the previous best year for Alberta was around $320 million in production, and with the removal of the cap, immediate benefits were seen.

“We topped half a billion last year. I imagine that if it continues the way it’s going that we will cross that $1-billion mark in production sometime in the future.”

He says there’s no way The Last of Us would have chosen Alberta had the government not removed the cap and the province would have missed out on not only lost revenue for businesses, but also the pure excitement of having a massive production film in your backyard.

“There are probably four or five productions that would have just, you know, gone to New Mexico or to Vancouver or somewhere else to shoot their stuff if we hadn’t lifted those caps.”

Young says having these film productions come to Calgary is obviously also big for surrounding businesses. He says hotels, restaurants, hardware stores, and everything in between benefits from their arrival.

“Sort of an unseen part of that whole money that’s being, you know, given back and tax credits after somebody shoots here, is that it’s keeping those workers here and it’s keeping them living and paying taxes and being part of the community here and not going elsewhere.”

Young says with so many productions coming to Calgary, the city and province are going to see continued growth for the years to come.

“This is just the beginning. For Alberta, and specifically, for Calgary.”