Indie filmmakers face financial hurdles as licensing costs threaten to erase cultural narratives in Canada
By Luis Ramirez-Liberato
In 1977, Donna Summer released “I Feel Love” as part of her fifth studio album, I Remember Yesterday. This track went on to inspire and influence many artists in the burgeoning new wave music scene. Radio stations, like Canada’s influential CFNY-FM, popularized the genre and helped Summer’s track reach artists such as Jim Kerr of Simple Minds, which would, in turn, impact the development of the band’s sound into something more akin to the global new wave movement sweeping through the world.
Today, “I Feel Love” feels like a highlight reel for many of the unique audio elements found across the new wave bands and tracks it would go on to inspire. From its repetitive synthesizer loops, a four-on-the-floor bass drum and an off-beat hi-hat, Summer pushed the dance scene away from the disco and soul of yesteryear and into the new age of techno.
Canadian filmmaker and documentarian Matt Schichter began his work in 2024 for a documentary covering the long history of the CFNY radio station in his film, CFNY: The Spirit of Radio. In an attempt to document the impact of “I Feel Love” on new wave and CFNY-FM, he encountered a paywall of over $1 million to acquire the license to use the song in his film. The indie filmmaker had to forgo the scene due to the astronomical cost of the license.
“I had a great sequence in the film where we had a scene of Jim Kerr from Simple Minds, talking about hearing [‘I Feel Love’] for the first time, looking at his bandmate Charlie and saying, ‘What is that sound? We need that. That’s how we move from punk rock to this new sound that we want to make,” said Schichter in an interview.
Across Canada, indie and conventional documentary filmmakers are facing budgetary issues hindering the progress of their films. The Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) has worked to collect the testimonies of broad and regional issues affecting filmmakers through community consultations in its report, What We Heard. According to the report, the rise in production costs due to inflationary factors and a lull in budget increases and funding opportunities led to shrinking crews, with DOC members taking on more roles without additional compensation. In cases like Schichter’s, these budgetary constraints are issues that extend beyond the individual film and highlight a much larger issue: the erasure of Canadian history.
Large oligopolies in the music industry own vast swathes of the Canadian music market, leaving less than 20 per cent of the market for independent music producers, according to a brief from The Cultural Capital Project (CCP). According to the CCP, “the ‘Big Three’ labels have a long history of cooperating as a copyright cartel and acquiring any smaller label that achieves a certain scale.” The referenced “Big Three” include the subsidiaries Universal Music Canada, Sony Music Entertainment Canada and Warner Music Canada.
“Anyone who wants to make a doc as an indie filmmaker has a hard barrier to cross without some money behind you,” said Schichter.
With copyright holders having the final say in negotiating the cost of licensed media, high costs can accumulate when documentary projects are required to clear a series of licenses, as in the case of director Tim Kowalski’s Nash the Slash Rises Again!. The film’s executive producer, Colin Brunton, explained how a single photo he wished to use would require them to pay Playboy $300 simply because their bunny logo is featured in the photograph. These costs mean that filmmakers have to sacrifice restoring footage or better equipment.
Nash the Slash was a Toronto-based artist who was also prominent in the new wave genre. He was known for his early incorporation of drum machines into his music, a taboo tool in music production at the time and collaborations with artist Gary Numan. While his music influenced those he met, Nash the Slash was far from mainstream. According to then-owner Gary Topp, this was reflected in his Phantom-of-the-Opera-Esque lifestyle, where he lived out of the projection booth at The Original 99 Cent Roxy theatre. His shows, which aired on TVO’s Nightmusic Concert in the late 1970s, were macabre in aesthetic and spooky in their performance, with Nash the Slash wielding a skull-shaped mandolin surrounded by fog and an array of lights.
The many fees associated with producing a film targeted at a niche audience, such as those interested in the life of Nash the Slash, demonstrate why artists might be discouraged from pursuing projects with relatively low returns compared to their production costs.
“We got lucky because we had money behind [CFNY: The Spirit of Radio], but if we didn’t, I don’t think it could get made. Even if we had a $100,000 budget, I don’t think we could make this movie,” said Schichter. “Of course, every documentary clearance is heavy. And so, like any logo or if you want footage from the BBC, CBC, CTV, or whatever, you have to pay for it.”
Maya Bastian, executive director of the DOC, detailed many of the financial barriers documentary filmmakers face in their film projects, such as the legal process behind attaining licensing rights.
“News footage is extremely expensive. Archival alone is very expensive. You need an archival producer and a lawyer for something like that. You need someone familiar with copyright law who can then go through everything you’ve used bit by bit and make sure that you’re not going to come under any legal ramifications,” said Bastian.
“Usually, when you’re creating something, you go back and forth with the lawyer because there will be successive cuts, and each time you change even a fraction of a minute or a second of the use of footage, then you have to go back to the lawyer, so it does add up and it’s quite difficult,” Bastian added.
“It just takes forever. I mean, we’re talking months to figure out that one clip.”
While an archival producer was within the budget for Schichter’s documentary, he continued to do some of the work himself to cut down on costs and production time.
Issues in production time hit indie documentaries and their crew especially hard. Kowalski described acquiring the licensing rights to archival media as a “Kafkaesque bureaucracy” due to the arduousness of tracking down who holds these licenses.
In one such example, Schichter attempted to track down the owner of an interview featuring Jim Carrey at the 1984 U-Know Awards where he spoke about getting a start to his career through CFNY. Having aired on Much Music, Schichter turned to CTV only to find out they did not own the footage. He then turned his pursuit towards Moses Znaimer, former head of Citytv, but again, this lead lacked results. Thus, Schichter led his search towards finding who shot the footage, only to discover he had passed away. And his daughter? She wished not to speak with Schichter and his son was unresponsive. Finally, Schichter managed to get in contact with another daughter, who allowed him to clear the footage.
“It just takes forever. I mean, we’re talking months to figure out that one clip,” said Schichter.
Kowalski said it’s essential for indie filmmakers to acquire errors and omissions insurance for the film in case they missed anything, encountered a bad actor or contact who claimed to own a certain license.
Brunton and Kowalski encountered a similar scenario where they found out they had sourced photographs from the wrong photographer. Brunton, who had worked on larger budget projects like Schitt’s Creek, explained how these sorts of issues exhaust priceless time when working with a small crew of people.
After sourcing the right photographer, Brunton waited three weeks before the person was able to locate and send the original negatives to him. These photographs required Brunton to arrange a meeting with the photographer to acquire the negatives, take them for scanning, wait three days for the process to finish, pick up the negatives, return them to the photographer and have him sign a release.
“All this for four seconds in the movie. Yeah, that’s four seconds of the movie,” said Brunton.
For Bastian, they see the issue with licensing surrounding documentary filmmaking as a byproduct of big market capitalism, where license owners aim to profit maximally from their properties.
“Even if, for example, [your film is a] CBC production, you still have to pay for CBC news footage. You wouldn’t then get that for free because you’re doing a CBC production, right? I think they’re just exploiting their right to capitalize on what they own, and that’s how the market works,” said Bastian.
At its worst, the market creates barriers that can halt the distribution of projects altogether. During the COVID lockdown, Schichter made the decision to produce Write Record Tour, a documentary that compiles a series of interviews with musicians he had recorded while working in radio. The film was to follow the production life of a selection of songs, from their conception to recording and live performance. He explained that the production process went rather smoothly at times, with people offering to clear the rights for free, but ultimately, the lump sum cost of the clearances accumulated by the film held it back from airing. Despite receiving an offer, Schichter said that it fell below the licensing costs of the film.
“[It] just had a bunch of clearances and no budget — a very, very indie documentary that just couldn’t get over the line because of rights issues and all that kind of stuff,” said Schichter.
