Motherland: Fort Salem stars West Kelowna native Taylor Hickson, right.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK/Taylor Hickson

With film crews stuck in the Lower Mainland with no option to ship their equipment to the Interior, some are cancelling shoots altogether.

Thompson Nicola Regional District film commissioner Victoria Weller said the TV show Motherland: Fort Salem was supposed to film in the region in December but film crews have cancelled due to the highway closures.

Highways 99 and 3 are currently closed to non-essential traffic, meaning film crews are unable to travel to and from the Interior via road and have been unable to ship their equipment. The Coquihalla is not expected to open until early January.

Transportation Minister Rob Fleming said during a Dec. 9 press conference, he is encouraging a film company paying thousands of dollars to send equipment from Squamish to Kelowna to seek other avenues to keep their production going.

“We want that gentlemen’s company and his crew and his workers to be safe and everybody using a very distressed damaged highway to be safe,” he said.

A commercial production company filming in the Interior was also unable to get their equipment back to the Lower Mainland due to the highway closures, Weller said, so they just parked in Kamloops.

Typically, film companies make deals with equipment houses to ship wardrobes and film equipment from the Lower Mainland. There's also concern about the type of equipment that can be sent via air, she said.

“It’s impacted the Interior and so far, when COVID-19 hit, to my knowledge, we were an essential service which was great because we’re such a huge employer and there is such an investment in the film industry from other countries,” she said.

Now some companies are making arrangements to get their equipment from Alberta, Weller said.

It’s not as simple as delaying the shots. With film, “you can’t just delay it. Once it’s on the track, what do you do? You move it somewhere else,” she said.

One company that was supposed to come to the Interior to film went to Vancouver Island instead, she said.

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