If the stars align for Margaret Judge, it won’t be long before an Esquimalt warehouse becomes a long-term film and TV production hub.
The producer and former model has made an offer to lease 836 Viewfield Rd. from the Capital Regional District.
She got the ball rolling when she recently brought the 58,645-square-foot building to the attention of Air Bud Entertainment, which is leasing space during production of Pup Star 2.
“I was told they were looking for a place, and I was in the middle of negotiations and wanted to show them I was serious about this,” said Judge, CEO of Pretty Clever Entertainment.
“She’s really trying to bring more film business to town,” said Terry Hayes, Pup Star 2’s Victoria-based locations manager.
“There’s a three-to-five-year waiting list in Vancouver for studio space right now.”
Premium studio space in Vancouver is often reserved in advance by major productions “and the Canadian productions and smaller stuff have nowhere to go,” Hayes said.
Judge, who first moved here in 2000 to raise the three children she had with her ex-husband, former Stargate SG-1 star Christopher Judge, is moving back from Los Angeles.
She said she was motivated in part to have a base for two projects she plans to do here next year, and an equipment company. The projects are a sci-fi TV series and post-production for a documentary described as being to football what Hoop Dreams was to basketball.
Judge worked with the Irv Schecter Agency in Beverly Hills, securing contracts with Showtime and MGM, before partnering with Jersey Shore executive producer Scott Jeffress, who invited her to develop reality-TV concepts.
“When he called me at first, I hung up on him. I thought I was being prank-called,” she recalled with a laugh.
When she formed her new company, she partnered with Bill Pruitt, the Emmy-winning former Apprentice producer who recently warned that Donald Trump’s leaked lewd comments were “just the beginning” of what was out there.
Although the Viewfield Road space is not ideal for big Hollywood movies because of height issues, it could easily become a functional studio for smaller productions, said Hayes.
“The location is great, and there’s less of a problem with parking in Esquimalt,” added Judge, praising the township’s Mayor Barb Desjardins for being supportive.
“I’ve been facilitating the connecting of the dots,” said Desjardins, who is also the CRD board chairwoman.
Desjardins was a vocal critic of the board’s decision to purchase the building, part of a four-acre site that includes 808 Viewfield Rd., to become a potential sewage-sludge processing plant in March 2013.
Public outrage prompted the district to scrap the idea, and the board has since been trying to sell the warehouses that have been leased by Wilson Foods until September of 2015.
“Our industrial area is potentially a great resource for the film industry. It’s a good fit,” said Desjardins, whose community has hosted productions including Stonados, The Keeper and the horror movie The Boy.
It won’t be the first time attempts have been made to create a local short- or long-term production facility. Makeshift studios have included the former NOW furniture building where the sci-fi series Impact and Global TV’s reality series The Next Great Chef were shot; the old Mount Newton school site in Central Saanich used for Poker Night; and Cameron Avery’s Cruz Studios, which operated in a leased space at CFB Esquimalt’s Work Point Barracks.
A Victoria company, Partnered Films, is also seeking potential investors for a massive movie studio it hopes to build in the former Thrifty Foods warehouse in Central Saanich.
The Viewfield Road site is widely regarded as a viable solution given the current climate in the capital region, where production of TV movies and independent features is the bread and butter.
“The real value of this studio will be that it will allow us to attract production companies that want to film a slate of television movies here, keeping our crews working full-time where they live,” said Victoria film commissioner Kathleen Gilbert.
The British Columbia Council of Film Unions, which represents IATSE locals 891 and 669 and Teamsters local 555, has been discussing expansion into the region, a move that such projects would help accommodate, said Phil Klapwyk, IATSE 891 business representative.
“We support the creative economy wherever it is based,” he said. “It’s like Field of Dreams. If you build it they will come.”
Klapwyk said locals who work all over the province would rather work closer to their homes, and he envisions seeing senior members coming home to mentor millenials as the industry matures here.
