PREFACE

The Canadian Independent Film Caucus is pleased to present Paul Caulfield's report, Under Construction: A Survey of Canada's Information Highway. To our knowledge, it is the first report of its kind in Canada presented for the educational benefit of the filmmaker/producer -- a concrete and lucid survey of what is happening right now, today, on the "information highway". We have assumed that most readers are the uninitiated. To that end, Caulfield has presented his findings in a highly accessible way, with many phrases and names appearing in boldface (like a Web page site), and he's added an indispensable glossary and basic resource list. As you will discover, the "highway" or "Infobahn" is, at this point, a misnomer. Rather, it's a patchwork set of electronic, computer driven, virtual schemes, networks and network trials -- all testing the limits of technology and efficiency. Caulfield presents his findings without judgement, and always with an eye to what might be in store for the filmmaker.

This report came about from a related set of factors. For some years now, filmmakers and producers have become increasingly piqued by and concerned about the velocity of information highway hype -- especially since many of us observed that the commissions, reports, advisory councils and network trials being set up in Canada, along with the dollars flowing to such processes, were following an ominously familiar pattern of exclusion. To put it bluntly, development has been overwhelmingly on the hardware or engineering side, with only an elite few in the film production sector, or the content side, being consulted. It is worth reminding readers that these are the large, publicly-traded companies who have recently become broadcasters themselves. They may be well capitalized, but they no longer strictly represent the interests of independent producers.

If there's one message nestled in Caulfield's report it is that the talent to produce a broad spectrum of Canadian programming -- independent filmmakers -- is being ignored at precisely the moment when many perspectives, skills and points of view must be cobbled together to contribute to new information and entertainment infrastructures, and to innovative and more efficient ways of actually doing production itself. Otherwise, we may end up where we were nearly fifty years ago when television was introduced in Canada: with a highly developed distribution system, happily carrying (primarily) American content.

We "content providers" (as the techies would put it) are important now, even if the big carriers, hardware engineers and public policy architects don't quite know it or "get it" yet. Put another way, the buzzword of "access" should not only mean access for consumers, but access to technologies for creators to produce content specifically for the information highway. As this report makes clear, that is not yet happening. There are no funding programs available for producers to undertake production research and development in interactive programming, not even for CD-ROM production, let alone broadband network experiments. If we really want Canadian content in our schools and in our homes then content providers must be brought into the development plan.

Perhaps there's another, even more important message here, and it is that filmmakers and producers are going to have to summon up their ingenuity and drive to both educate themselves and network (in both the new and old senses of the term) as vigorously as possible to develop a coherent production strategy for the Infobahn, and to work for its acceptance by private sector carriers, software developers and government. We must work hard to gain access to ensure that audiences, students, educators and consumers will indeed have something else to do on the Infobahn than play Sega games, shop, or watch 200 channels of video-on-demand Hollywood.
We hope by providing this report the Canadian Independent Film Caucus has made a modest contribution in that direction.

(Ms.) Barri Cohen
Co-Chair, Canadian Independent Film Caucus

Geoff Bowie
Chair, CIFC Information Highway Committee

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