British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast has emerged as a prime location for regional film and TV productions, leveraging BC’s provincial tax benefits and local talent—not to mention its picturesque coastal landscapes.

Such was the case for two independent productions set to release this fall: feature film Can I Get a Witness, premiering this year at TIFF, and new TV series Murder in a Small Town, based on the L.R. Wright novel of the same name, which will premiere in September on Global TV (and on Fox in the US).

“BC remains a leading production hub in North America, and certainly globally,” says Prem Gill, CEO at Creative BC, the organization responsible for sustaining and growing the province’s creative industries. “We have a really strong reputation. We have an industry that’s been here for 45 years. I think part of why BC remains appealing is that there is the high quality of both the technical crews and the above-the-line crews, as well as the stability of tax incentive programs. And that we have film commission services that provide excellent support to the sector, across the board.”

In 2022, Creative BC reported 511 projects that injected $3.3 billion in production volume to the province. In 2023, there was a total production volume of $2.3 billion over 346 productions (reflecting the impact of the 2023 strikes of both the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA).

Of those productions, a handful were filmed on the Sunshine Coast—Can I Get a Witness and Murder in a Small Town, along with The Amazing Race Canada and Hallmark’s Blind Date Book Club.

“It was such a great decision [to shoot on the coast] for all kinds of artistic reasons,” says Ian Weir, screenwriter and producer of Murder in a Small Town, which was shot in Gibsons.

The coastal community is a quick and scenic 40 minutes by ferry from North Vancouver. It’s easily mislabelled as an island, though the peninsula is technically connected to the mainland. “I’m not sure how we would have recreated [the setting of the novel] had we chosen to shoot somewhere else,” says Weir. “In terms of homage to the novel, staying on the Sunshine Coast was necessary, but I think the coast itself is a star of the show.”

The 60-minute murder-mystery drama—which opens with a 90-minute series premiere—draws on local author Wright’s book, and stars Kristin Kreuk (Smallville, Burden of Truth) and Rossif Sutherland (Covert Affairs, ER). The show is a co-production between Vancouver-based Sepia Films and LA’s Future Shack Entertainment. It’s earned a spot in Fox’s fall primetime lineup, and marks the network’s first scripted international co-production.

The show highlights the town’s natural features—seaside landscapes, rocky bluffs, and landmark restaurant Molly’s Reach—just as The Beachcombers, the iconic Canadian series from the 1970s and ’80s, once did.

Says Weir, “Apart from the scenery, the huge advantage was simply the people of the Sunshine Coast. They were really extraordinarily welcoming. There’s also a really strong arts community on the Sunshine Coast, so as far as hiring actors and day players for smaller roles, there were people on the Sunshine Coast who were more than qualified.”

In fact, more than 400 people auditioned for background roles on the project.

According to Nick Orchard, executive producer on the show, wages for local cast and crew came to $1.1 million. The production also spent $1.25 million on accommodations (including hotels and private Airbnbs), nearly $1 million on site and location rentals, and $465,000 on restaurants, suppliers and other local businesses.

“So the total is close to $4 million that we were able to inject into the community,” Orchard says.

Like Murder in a Small Town, Ann Marie Fleming’s upcoming feature film, Can I Get a Witness was able to inject resources into the small coastal community of Powell River—about a two-and-a-half-hour drive (including a ferry ride) up the coast from Gibsons.

Anne Marie Flemming

Can I Get a Witness writer and director

Can I Get a Witness, starring Sandra Oh, envisions a utopian future wherein the human race has mitigated climate change and eradicated global poverty—as long as we don’t draw out individual human life for too long.

“In the film, we have true trans-species democracy—it’s a beautiful world, and we just have to turn back technology and everybody has to end their lives by 50,” says Fleming, who wrote and directed the film (her first feature in eight years). “And everybody who’s getting out of school has to do service. So if they have artistic inclinations, they can become documenters—to document end-of-life ceremonies.”

The setting for such an environmentally and community-minded future could be none other than picturesque Powell River, which plays a fictionalized version of itself in the film. The coastal fishing town still has its long-abandoned pulp mill, saw mill and fishing boats.

“There were a bunch of reasons why local engagement would really serve, not just the production, but the budget, because every person you hire locally, you don’t have to put up in a hotel, motel or Airbnb,” says Raymond Massey, a producer on the film.

The film team tapped their friends who run the town’s local film program to secure talent, even bringing back folks who had moved to Vancouver for the summer.

“We originally were going to shoot the film outside of the tourist season, and due to Sandra’s schedule and with the looming strike, it was pretty obvious we had to pull it up and shoot it smack in the middle of the hottest part of the tourist season in Powell River,” says Massey. “Powell River is not a big town. And we soaked up every single available hotel or motel bed.”

As for the effect on the community, the film’s impact was both big and small—in different ways. All background actors were local, bolstering the local economy, but as an added sustainability measure, the producers and the town were quite strict about limiting waste on set. No disposable water bottles were available on set, no throwaway paper or plastic plates and cutlery, and all excess food from craft services was donated back to the community.

“It was really part of the storytelling, too, which is about consuming less,” says Fleming.

“Before production started, I met with all of the heads of departments, and told them what we were doing with this story and how it was going to be a sustainable story—and we wanted to reflect that behind the scenes as well,” says Devon Ellis-Durity, associate producer and sustainability director on the film.

All told, the production was able to divert 108,000 items (cutlery and dishes) and over 50 kilograms of food from compost. They saved more than $23,000.

Additionally, the production—like Murder in a Small Town—was able to take advantage of the province’s distant location tax credit, on top of a basic tax credit and the regional tax credit.

According to Gill at Creative BC, “For productions where budgets are getting tighter, [stacking tax credits] makes a big impact because all of our tax credits are based on labour and percentage of labour.

So, the more you can claim back on that through the incentives, the more appealing it will be for you to shoot something [in the] regions outside of Metro Vancouver.”

Add to this coastal beauty, small-town charm, local talent—clearly, filming on the scenic Sunshine Coast is appealing for more reasons than one.

“For productions where budgets are getting tighter, [stacking tax credits] makes a big impact.”

Prem Gill, Creative BC