Framework study: New media in Canada

The Women in Film and Television – Toronto commissioned an interesting study from EKOS Research Associates, Frame Work: Employment in Canadian Screen-Based Media – A National Profile. The Executive Summary is available in PDF format for download.
The Executive Summary looks at the Screen based industries from Film to New Media. It pays special attendtion to diversity issues and has a nice summary of where new media jobs are expected.

As technology advances, so does the need for a skilled workforce. Today, the screen-based media industries face the critical challenge of ensuring our workforce is trained to exploit new digital technologies on the one hand, and the increased need for creative/sophisticated business and financial skills on the other. (p. 14)


Here are the key findings for the new media industry:

õ Recent estimates indicate there are 1,775 new media firms in Canada.
õ The largest concentration of firms is in the GTA (37%) followed by Quebec (15.3%), British
Columbia (15.7%) and the Prairies (15.3%).
õ New media firms are small: three in five new media firms in Canada (59.8%) have fewer than
five paid employees and 30.1% have no employees at all. Only 9.8% of firms have 20 or more
employees.
õ New media firmsí revenues are more likely to come from providing new media services (59%)
than from producing original new media content (41%).
õ The most common primary activity for new media firms is, by far, website development
(identified by 36.4% of firms), followed by website component development (11.1%) and
television production (10.3%).
õ Freelance work is an important part of new media employment: contractors represent, on
average, 51.5% of the total combined workforce of paid employees and contractors in the
industry.
õ New media workers are most likely to have jobs as web developers, graphic designers,
production managers and production designers in new media firms. (p. 6)

There is an interesting list of where jobs are expect to be:

õ Technical skills including:
◊ Digital production;
◊ CGI applications;
◊ Three-dimensional graphics and special effects;
◊ Digital animation;
◊ Video/web editing; and
◊ Computer-aided design.
õ Working with new technologies including:
◊ Understanding high definition and digital technologies;
◊ Online distribution; and
◊ Interactive storytelling, interactive content creation and production of convergent media.
õ Versatility and entrepreneurism, including:
◊ Working in more than one function interchangeably;
◊ Ability to handle any area of the business as opposed to specializing; and
◊ Ability to handle editing and post-production in-house using new technologies. (p. 12-13)

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