"Runaway productions", the American term for film and TV productions that have historically been developed, financed and produced in and around Los Angeles county, have over the past fifteen years undergone a slow process of migration to other production sites around the world. This research project brings together an accomplished group of international scholars that have largely studied the most recent wave of this phenomenon (1990-2002) - productions that have in large part migrated to Australia, New Zealand, and in the largest numbers to Canada. Our research collaborators are all internationally known scholars who have over the past two to three years published books and articles specifically on the political, cultural and economic impact of the globalization, migration, and relocation of American film and television programming. Much of this research has focused on the waning power — or desire — of the state, particularly federal or national governments, to exert control over the flow of global televisual and cinematic products. In other words, research on media globalization has sought to explain the particular tensions created by integrating cultural goods into bilateral and international trading agreements.
The first event in this research initiative will bring together many of these scholars of media globalization to share and further refine their research to encompass more locally situated issues, that is the impact that the process of media globalization, particular so-called "runaways', have had upon neighborhoods, cities, and regions. And while some attention will still be paid to shifts in international and national trade patterns (specifically with regards to new forms of global/local labour in the media industries), the main emphasis will focus on the political, economic, and cultural impact of newly relocated film and TV productions on specific new locations, with particular emphasis on Toronto, a key node in the global media entertainment industry.
The primary objective of this first workshop is to cultivate new research teams to investigate recent trends in media globalization and production relocations, specifically the horizontal integration of local media and cultural industries into broader economic development, tourism, and urban renewal strategies of localities and jurisdictions in Canada and around the world. The workshop is also structured so as to give participants ample time to share and debate their ongoing research in this area. In addition to this face-to-face time, the workshop will produce a high quality edited collection of our paper presentations with the goal of cultivating a trans-national perspective on local film and TV related production issues. A third objective of the workshop is to provide researchers from outside the greater Toronto area (from other parts of Canada and around the world) both access to Toronto industry and government representatives, policy makers, and artists and a first hand view of new film and TV infrastructure and research resources in the city — venues that we hope serve as future sites of research for some of the participants. In addition to visiting new lakefront studio space and a new digital post-production centre, the workshop will be held at the same time as the Toronto International Film Festival.
Lastly, the workshop also has a specific Canadian objective, not surprising since upwards of 90% of such "runaway productions" have moved to shot location sites in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and other Canadian locales. Our invitees from other English speaking countries have had much greater success in forming local, regional, and national research clusters and faculty collaborations. The few Canadian research contributions published in this area, while making substantial contributions to the field (Tinic, Elmer & Gasher), have suffered from a lack of collaboration through research teams, research support mechanisms, and active input from policy and industry players. By comparison, with less than 6% of all new productions from Hollywood, research clusters have successfully formed in both Australia and New Zealand. The workshop therefore seeks to cultivate a cluster of Canadian researchers along the lines of those developed by scholars researching the horizontal economic and cultural effects from The Lord of the Rings trilogy at the University of Waikato, New Zealand (Cubitt), in addition to researchers studying the production of new film studios and rural locations in Queensland, Australia (O'Regan, Moran, Goldsmith). The third cluster of international invitees consist of American based scholars who have published the most far reaching International analysis of the "globalization of Hollywood" conveniently based at universities in Southern California (Govil, Miller).
A workshop on the topic of locating migrating media is much needed at this juncture in time as the past two to three years have seen both a shift in the migration patterns of Hollywood productions (to eastern Europe and South America), and intensified efforts in the English speaking world to entice Hollywood productions. There are also a series of political and policy related trends that call for analysis and research. First, regional jurisdictions around the world have recently put in place tax incentive strategies mirrored on the highly successful example set by the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. Initiatives from Arnold Schwartzenneger's gubernatorial office in California, in addition to the overall post-9-11 environment in the United States, has greatly politicized the issue of so-called "runaway" TV and film productions. And lastly, government departments in many jurisdictions are increasingly formulating cross departmental initiatives, namely promotional campaigns and funding mechanisms that link their film and TV industries to other sectors of the economy, namely tourism, education, technology innovation, and cultural heritage.
In addition to sharing specific national and local case studies that discuss the social, political, and economic impact of new film and TV productions around the world, the research group, in a workshop format, will constitute new research teams around four topic areas:
