British Columbia is celebrated as Canada's principal centre of audiovisual production, and its billion-dollar industry trails behind only California and New York. Prior to the mid-1970s, however, the region had little in the way of film production that could properly be called an industry. This is the story of British Columbia's rapid rise from relative obscurity in the film world to its current status as "Hollywood North". Mike Gasher positions the industry as a model for commercial film production in the 21st century - one strongly shaped by a perception of cinema as a medium, not of culture, but of regional industrial development. Addressing the specific economic and geographic factors that contribute to the province's success, such as the low Canadian dollar and BC's proximity to Los Angeles, Gasher also considers the broader implications of the increasingly widespread trend towards location service production on national cinema and cultural production.