CREDIT: ANGELA MCINNES
A new partnership could help those working in the film industry to stay in London following graduation.

Fanshawe College’s broadcasting – television and film production program has recently partnered up with the Stratagem Group, a collective of companies, which is looking to help attract more screen-based programming to the City of London.

A growing number of television, film and stream-based productions, both foreign and domestic, are taking place all throughout the country. This increase in production has also led to an increase in demand for locations that can service the artistic and practical visions of content creators, as well as personnel that can assist those aims.

During the season where second- year film students are presented with the option of creating a capstone project or undertaking an internship, seven students earned the opportunity to be on the front lines of an initiative looking to encourage and support screen industry productions in the Forest City.


“We’ve been talking with the Stratagem Group for quite a while now about their interest in the London area. They’ve been working with other colleges for a while and so very quickly we started talking about how Fanshawe could work in association with them and what they’re doing,” said Romy Goulem, professor of theatre arts – performance, advanced filmmaking and broadcast television. “They did a pilot project last year with one college, and now we are a part of year two of their long term commitment to try and find screen industry potential in outlying areas.”

Participants in the project are looking to build an asset database of locations, personnel and other pertinent information that will help educate foreign filmmakers of the area and the services and supports therein, while subsequently providing opportunities to establish post-graduation connections for themselves.

“I’m really hoping to make a lot of connections, create networks and just get to know people in the city of London who are in this industry and hopefully start a career from that,” said Timothy Richards, a second-year student in the film and television program.

The objective that these film students will be undertaking is a carryover from last year’s initial launch by Stratagem, at the time employing only one other Ontario college to help in the endeavour. This year, the project not only includes the efforts of faculty and student body members of Fanshawe’s film and television program, but also 21 other Ontario colleges, all looking to help build similar databases within their regions.

“There’s two parts to what the aim of this project is, said Goulem. “The first part is something that won’t be able to be completed by the students who are doing it and that’s to create a database about as many aspects of our community that can relate to the production of screen industry work. So in the seven weeks that our students have to do this, our goal is to get a solid foundation for this database that can then be taken on by future people to move it forward.”

Participants are given the chance to widen their local employment potential in their field.

“The second part is for each of these students to become much more aware of what potential there is in our area for employment, because these are all students who want to stay and work here, which is the goal of all of this. We are trying to make it so that people who are interested in the screen industry as a career, don’t have to move to major centres to pursue it,” said Goulem.

It is an expectation of most students that employment in the film and television industry requires a move to larger metropolitan areas, as they have traditionally been the locations that these productions take place.

“Going into this program I had the mindset that by the end I would have to leave London for Toronto or some other big city to find work. Now with what we’re doing with this internship, I think that I might be able to come back home to London in the future to work more permanently in my field,” said Julissa Bonilla, a second-year student in the film and television program.