Film Biz: Get Your Big "Brake" In Local Productions

Want to rent your Ferrari for a cool $1000 to $1500 a day to a film shoot? If you have a Ferrari – a big if, of course – Paul Lavigne, self-described “agent to the cars” of Reel Cars in Vancouver, may be able to help.

It wasn’t a Ferrari that first brought Paul and I together. It was my 1975 Dodge Dart, which Paul successfully rented to numerous film and TV productions for me, usually for about $150 a day.

When I bought the Dodge, with 50,000 original miles on it, the plush seating and the body were immaculate, courtesy of the previous owner, a proverbial little old lady. It had a hand-knitted steering wheel cover in a tasteful green, which nicely complemented the forest green colour of the body and interior, and a snazzy white vinyl hardtop. The main downside to the Dodge was how it was air conditioned in the summer, which was by driving it at 60mph with all four windows down, irrespective of the speed limit.

Paul rented the Dart from me quite often for the on-camera use of film and TV projects, ranging from single days to a week at a time. My rental income from Reel Cars, together with the $25 a day car rental I was paid by production companies while plying my trade as a prop buyer, made me a tidy sum over the years. I suppose I shouldn’t complain too much about the good old Dodge, may it rest in peace in that great junk yard in the sky.

Some of us though, including me, are just made to complain. $1800 I paid for that car, and it only lasted me for 18 years. Robbed by Detroit, again.

Moving on...

Paul Lavigne started his professional life as a French Immersion teacher, reporting every morning to the same workplace and doing much the same thing every day. In 1995 a friend asked him to find a particular car model for a film shoot.

“I wondered why no one was providing this as a service to the film industry in Vancouver” he recounted, over coffee one recent morning . “I was convinced this was a good business idea, so I decided to change careers, and launched Reel Cars”.

Nowadays Lavigne is the first stop for film companies seeking “hero” vehicles, defined as vehicles that will feature prominently in a picture, say as the wheels of the lead actor. He submits photographs from his database of 10,000 privately owned cars and trucks (or boats, or planes, or segways) to the production company’s transport or picture car coordinator, and from these the production chooses the vehicle(s) it likes.

“Rental rates are negotiable, depending upon the rarity of the vehicle, the amount it is worth and other variables”, said Lavigne, explaning the hierarchy of his business . “We do, however, always try to work within the budget of the production.

After a production has chosen its hero vehicles, they will usually ask me to help with background vehicles as well Of course the rates for “BG” vehicles don’t compare with Ferrari rates by a long shot."

Still, car owners seem to enjoy their relationship with Reel Cars, says Lavigne: “Usually owners’ discussions about their cars involves payments, for insurance, repairs, fuel, whatever. Cars registered with me give back cash to their owners, and they seem to like that”, he added, with a laugh.

What kinds of cars does Reel Cars handle? “Think about anything you watch on TV, and consider the background vehicles you see on movies or on commercials. None of those vehicles is there just by accident. All of them have been written into the sequence and then sourced. I am looking for all kinds of cars, including commonplace ones. If you think about it, most filmed sequences use everyday cars as background. If a car can move, I am interested in registering it”, he explained.

As we wrapped our meeting, Lavigne recounted his morning's work, and his plans for the afternoon:

“First up I loaded a 1967 Vespa with a sidecar for use on a feature film here in town," he said. "Since then I have been busy sourcing large white vehicles for a TV commercial”. Large white vehicles? “So far this morning I have sourced a cement pumper truck, a sewage pumping truck belonging to the city of Vancouver, and an industrial kitchen on wheels, 50 feet long. And all of them are white!” he triumphantly added.

After lunch he needed to find 15 various European cars for another commercial. It’s all in a day’s work for Paul Lavigne of Reel Cars, and a far cry indeed from the 8:30 AM classroom bell!

Registration with with Reel Cars is easy. Vehicle descriptions can be entered and photographs uploaded on the Reel Cars website, at www.reelcars.net. If you have a really unusual vehicle you can call Paul Lavigne at (604) 222-8558 to discuss it with him.

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Around Town

Ashley Judd is coming back to Vancouver, this time to play in The Tooth Fairy, a big budget feature, as girlfriend to the character played by Wayne “the Rock” Johnson. Judd was in town last fall performing in another feature film, Helen.

The feature film Cats and Dogs begins lensing around town on September 8th, and is scheduled to complete filming December 19th. One of the movie’s locations will be a disused part of the Riverview mental hospital, one of Vancouver’s more sought after filming locales.

Scooby Doo: In The Beginning shot some scenes at Riverview last month. In September the facility has booked shoots for the TV series Supernatural, Cats and Dogs, and also for the TV pilot, Inseparable.

Tron 2 for Disney and Gulliver’s Travels for Fox, both features, are scouting locations and crunching the budget numbers for Vancouver. Neither project is yet confirmed for the city.

Out of Town

Word is the big budget feature film Farewell Atlantis: 2012, starring John Cusack, will begin shooting scenes in Kamloops and Ashcroft soon