Trips & Outreach ·
Prime Time Ottawa and the Kelowna Production Pitch
CMPA Prime Time in Ottawa put Kelowna into a national producer room, and it forced the KFS pitch to become more disciplined about what was production service, what was development, and what needed follow-up.
The deck put Kelowna into the room.
James brought a KFS pitch deck to CMPA Prime Time in Ottawa with a clear regional argument: Kelowna had locations, crew potential, equipment access, production-service support and a practical connection to the larger British Columbia ecosystem. The pitch was not that the Okanagan replaces Vancouver. It was that the Okanagan can work when the plan is built correctly.
The timing mattered. After the 2023 strikes, a lot of producers were cautious, budget-aware and still trying to understand where the next round of projects would actually land. Prime Time gave KFS a way to talk about Kelowna as a lower-friction production option while the market was still reorganizing.
The follow-up split into services and development.
The Vortex Media follow-up with Nataline Rodrigues and Rebecca Gismondi turned into a more concrete script and project conversation. Rab Bradlea at ALIBI Music became a music-supervision contact. Eggplant Picture & Sound stayed open as a possible future post-production or audio relationship. Laura Notarianni at Untitled Entertainment also became part of the wider development follow-up path.
Those threads were not all the same kind of lead, and that was the discovery. Some conversations belonged to KFS as a production and service-production company. Others belonged more clearly to James Alton as a writer, director and producer with specific scripts or projects to discuss.
Ottawa changed the follow-up system.
Prime Time made it obvious that a trip only turns into follow-up work if the materials are easy to send afterward. The deck, project list, script notes and contact records all needed to be cleaner, because people were willing to talk but not willing to reconstruct the pitch from memory.
That is why this trip sits under KFS as outreach rather than just travel. It helped turn a regional studio story into a more professional business-development rhythm: meet, qualify, send the right material, and keep the relationship warm without blurring every project into the same ask.
Working on something similar?
Have a production question this article helped sharpen?
Send the brief, schedule, location reference or delivery requirement. KFS can help test the practical side before the day gets expensive.
Send the Brief