Green screen. AI. All manner of other realistic post-production effects. Do they mean the disappearance of human appearance and actual physical realities on the big screen? What price fiction? Storied heads to Toronto – aka Hollywood North – for some analog location hunting.
The Canada-U.S. relationship has always been a little lopsided. Inundated with American news and culture, Canadians know everything about their southern neighbor. Conversely, Americans are often at quite a remove from what’s going on in the Great White North.
The relationship, however, regularly receives something of a rebalancing act – albeit one that’s rarely noticed – in the hands of one of America’s largest industries: film. When Americans go see their own movies, hardly anyone notices that many of their nation’s most famous landmarks in film they’re watching were actually shot in Canada. And the city most responsible for that stand-in role is Toronto. Beyond its own claim to film fame via the celebrated Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Canada’s busiest city is often busy finding time to dress itself up as an American locale for movies and TV shows.
Not quite as old or as red-brick as Harvard, the University of Toronto’s leafy campus nevertheless made a convincing stand-in for the Boston institution in the 1997 Academy Award-winning ©Miramax film Good Will Hunting, starring Matt Damon and Robin Williams. (Alamy)
If you thought Boston’s Harvard and MIT campuses played their part in Good Will Hunting, cogitate again. All the campus and dorm scenes were captured at the University of Toronto. What about those historic buildings and streets in the windy city of Chicago? Also Toronto. Ditto My Big Fat Greek Wedding – miles away from Illinois. If Hairspray and the Best Picture Oscar-winning The Shape of Water looked like Baltimore, thanks again Toronto. Such big productions led to the moniker Hollywood North, acknowledging Canada’s crucial role within America’s Dream Factory. The Toronto Star recently dubbed the Ontario capital Blockbuster City.
The historic Elgin Theatre on the Toronto’s Yonge Street in its gilded Edwardian-era finery. (Shutterstock)
Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer in the The Shape of Water (©Fox Searchlight Pictures 2017). The transformation from glamorous performance venue to hidden high-security government laboratory was a remarkable makeunder for the Elgin Theatre. (Alamy)
Why is Canada – and specifically Toronto – so popular as a filmmaking destination? The obvious answer is the exchange rate. With the Canadian dollar hovering at about 73 cents on the US dollar, studios, networks and streaming platforms can shave millions from the budget of a single project simply by shooting in Canada.
We have the infrastructure – over 2.6 million square feet of sound stages. About 35,000 Torontonians work on film and TV shoots. It's a huge boon to the economy.
But the reasons extend beyond finance. “Toronto has worked very hard to be film-friendly,” says Magali Simard, who served as a programmer at TIFF, worked for the City of Toronto’s Film Commission, where her job was to draw international films to shoot there, and is now Director of Industry and Community Relations at Cinespace Studios. “Toronto is a wonderful city to shoot in. We have the infrastructure – over 2.6 million square feet of sound stages. About 35,000 Torontonians work on film and TV shoots, and that’s not even mentioning the ancillary jobs. It’s a huge boon to the economy.” Simard’s job also involves appealing to the local population and politicians, pointing out the benefits of using tax credits to keep people coming to Toronto to shoot.
While tax credits provided at provincial government level certainly incentivize foreign film shoots to choose Canada, conditions apply. They must hire a set percentage of local talent, explains Simmard. “The reputation we’ve built is one we’ve nurtured for many years. We now have what’s referred to as deep crew – a legion of well-trained people ready to work. We can accommodate several big-budget productions shooting simultaneously, with no problem providing the labor needed for each. People’s experiences are so good here that they want to come back — Guillermo del Toro is our dream repeat customer. As well as The Shape of Water in 2017, he shot Nightmare Alley here in 2020 and is now shooting Frankenstein.”
Renée Zellweger brings all that jazz as Roxie Hart in Chicago, the 2002 Buena Vista film adaptation of the stage musical. | Toronto’s Casa Loma, built in the Gothic Revival style and completed in 1914, featured as a set location and continues the theme today. (Alamy)
So how does this film industry version of cross-border shopping go down back home in Hollywood? Not that well. In the mid-late 1990s, with Canadian subsidies reaching peak figures of allure, the phenomenon of American shoots fleeing north was referred to as runaway productions. In 1999, the Screen Actors Guild went as far as taking out an unambiguous full-page ad in Variety: “Canada is Killing the Television and Feature Film Business in the United States.”
A report the following year funded by the Directors Guild of America described a determined strategic campaign to lure American production across the border. It went on to estimate the impact of runaway productions as over 50,000 lost American jobs and an annual deficit of US$10 billion. Not all of which was blamed on their polite northerly neighbors.
Canada's turn as a giant drag act has led to some artistic inspiration: at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Canadian pavilion was transformed into a massive green screen for an exhibition titled "Impostor Cities"
The anxiety ran so high that, in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a public announcement regarding a personal pay cut he’d taken for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines so that the film was made in LA, not in Vancouver as producers had originally intended. (This issue has resolved itself in the intervening 20 years – if the recent sight of the former governor of California on his motorbike in Toronto while filming the second season of Fubar, is an indicator.)
But nothing beats the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale in demonstrating the sheer scale of Canada’s filmic ability to cloak itself in the mantle of locations elsewhere. In Venice, the Canadian pavilion was transformed into a massive green screen for an exhibition titled Impostor Cities, which featured clips from over 3,000 films and TV shows that were shot in Canada but represented somewhere else.
AI will undoubtedly reshape the film industry, but the irreplaceable atmosphere of real-life sets will continue to draw productions to street-level locations with the talent to host them. (Shutterstock)
While Toronto is indeed excellent at playing other places, some industry onlookers are suggesting huge advances in AI and green screen technology will make the need for location shooting a non-issue. Magali Simard disagrees: “I think AI is transforming the film industry. AI and virtual production walls are being used in sci-fi a lot, but that’s a very specific genre. For actors and productions in general, shooting on an actual street or in front of real buildings will always be crucial.”
Equally significant is the fact that Toronto now appears much more confident playing itself. It now has its own iteration of the iconic franchise, Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent. And the critically acclaimed TV series Sensitive Skin (starring Kim Cattrall and Don McKellar) seductively portrays the city’s vibrant lifestyle offering of galleries, theaters, restaurants and high design – managing, in true Canadian self-deprecating fashion, to retain a sense of humor and poke fun at itself.
Much like the Toronto International Film Festival, the city as a cinematic location continues to evolve its global reputation: a critical favorite, a crowdpleaser, always ready for its next close-up.
Main image: Daniel Novykov/Unsplash
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