Regarding outsourcing in the film industry.

This week's guest speaker brought a lot of interesting things to think about to the table, at least for me. I felt as though I could have had a conversation about many of the things she spoke of at far greater lengths than the class time allowed.

For instance, when it comes to a film being Canadian vs. being American, there are so many shades of gray that it nearly makes it impossible to have a right or wrong answer. I think one way to look at it is to remember that even big-budget, feature films are still works of art. These works of art are done by many people, who would be considered artists. Not to say that everyone that holds a boom mic is an artist, but definitely the director, the actors, the cinematographer, as well as others would be the artists of the project. Now, if the people making the film are all American but are filming in Canada, from the vantage point of the artists, I would say that it is still an American film. Look at it this way, if an American photographer travels the world taking photos everywhere he or she goes, does that make the photos non-American? After all, the American artist did all the work, he or she just traveled to other places to get the work done. On the other hand, if Canada is helping pay for the film, does that mean Canada should have the rights to call it a Canadian film? In some cases it may seem like they should, but as I said before, there is no definite right or wrong in these cases.

After all, the entire system of Hollywood was based on moving your production somewhere that was cheaper. Before the boom of movie-makers in Hollywood, that area was nothing but deserts. The whole reason people moved their film studios out there was because no one owned it yet, so who was going to charge them to use the land? No one!

Some would argue that moving an American film to Canada in order to save money makes it un-American, but since when has doing whatever you can to decrease costs, thus increase profits, been un-American? To me, saving money at all costs just screams, "AMERICAN!"