A film expert in Kamloops says the region is in need of two-to-three thousand workers in the industry to meet production demand.

The CEO of Mastermind Studios Peter Cameron-Inglis says there aren’t enough people trained in the Interior and says the region has a hard time retaining people starting out.

“We have sent dozens of interns who have come through Mastermind Studios off to film school in the larger centres, only to find that once they’ve got the training, the industry sinks their hooks into them in those regions because they’ve been there for a year, or two, or three. And they don’t come back,” Cameron-Inglis says.

“We need training programs here, at a regional level, that are accelerated training programs for crew specific positions. Not just training people to become directors and cinematographers; training all the other base crew positions, so that we have more of a local crew base and so that we can attract more productions that are meaningful to our economy.”

Cameron-Inglis says a lack of facilities to film at in the Kamloops area also mean that film production dollars are often spent elsewhere.

(Photo: Twitter – Mastermind Studios)