Calgary’s Voice Pictures, launched by Wendy Hill-Tout in 1984 as a small independent focusing on documentary and performing arts productions, is gearing up for one of its busiest years after deciding to work more drama into its business plan.

In the works for CTV is the $3.8-million MOW Windermere, the story of Nancy Eaton’s relationship with a troubled man that ended in her murder. Mario Azzopardi is dircting. Coproduced with Bernard Zukerman of Toronto’s Indian Grove Productions and executive producer Michael Prupas, the film will shoot in Calgary in the fall and receives funding from the EIP, LFP, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit and the CFRN fund. Through CTV’s Writer’s First Program, playwright William Scoular takes his first stab at screenwriting, adapting the script from A Question of Guilt: The Murder of Nancy Eaton, a book he coauthored with Vivian Green.

The Great Goose Caper is a $7-million family feature Voice is coproducing with Montreal producer Colin Neale (Margaret’s Museum, The Boys of St. Vincent) and Studio 8 in the U.K., with filming planned for late summer in Calgary. Written by Charles Dennis and directed by Nicholas Kendall, it tells the story of a young boy who befriends a talking goose and then must try to save it from becoming dinner at the hands of its owner, the villainous school principal.

The film is distributed by Alliance Atlantis in Canada and Domain Cinema in the U.S. and has funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Movie Central, The Movie Network and Super Ecran. Hill-Tout says they are also negotiating international distribution with BV International and expect an additional $1.8 million in funding from private investors.

Finally, the company has just completed the controversial Canada/U.K. coproduction The Investigation, an MOW for CTV directed by Anne Wheeler. Coproduced with Prupas of Montreal’s Muse Entertainment, Zukerman and Studio 8, the film was shot in Calgary from Sept. 6 to Oct. 15, 2001 and is scheduled to air in the fall. With a budget of $4.4 million, The Investigation received funding from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Telefilm Canada, the LFP, Cogeco Program Development Fund and the CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund.

Penned by Bruce Smith and starring Vancouver’s Nick Lea (The X-Files), Paul Coeur (Cold Squad), and David Warner (Titanic) from the U.K., the film focuses on the RCMP investigation into the murders of 11 children in B.C.’s lower mainland in the 1980s, which led to the arrest and conviction of Clifford Olsen.

Wheeler, along with many others, was initially concerned about the film’s controversial subject matter, but says, ‘We shot it in a way that it’s very much about the police and the investigation. We see so little of Olsen, he’s just a shadow and we don’t see anything of his victims.’

Virtual Illusions

The grand opening of the Canada/Saskatchewan Sound Stage in Regina is tentatively scheduled for June 24 and the facility is already bringing business to the province. Taylor Moore, VP and partner of Virtual Illusions, a 3D animation and visual FX company, says it was the new soundstage that led him to set up shop in Regina.

Moore, together with partner and company president Ken Hartfield, is bringing state-of-the-art technology and new faces to the production scene in Saskatchewan. Just over a year ago, they launched a 3D animation and multimedia school called New Media Campus, a post-secondary facility in Saskatoon, and in the fall they will open a second campus to be housed in Regina’s new soundstage. They are also planning to move Virtual Illusions into the same facility.

‘The whole point is to train students with the technical skills, philosophy and work ethic so that we are able to hire the top students out of our class,’ says Moore, who explains that the soundstage will only increase the demand for trained animators in Western Canada.

New Media Campus currently has 47 students at its Saskatoon campus and Moore expects to more than double that number with the opening of the new campus in the fall.

According to Moore, Virtual Illusions has Western Canada’s first motion-control system, a highly sophisticated camera and dolly combination often used to integrate CG 3D characters into live-action scenes.

2002 Yorkton winners

The 2002 Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival wrapped on May 25 in Yorkton, SK with the Golden Sheaf Awards ceremony. Stan Feingold, director/producer of the festival’s top film, Heroines, says it was very different than any industry event he’s been to.

‘It was a very informal situation where you might be playing softball with the head of a network or having a beer with the head of the documentary unit at the CBC,’ says Feingold.

Heroines (from Vancouver’s Peace Arch Entertainment), a one-hour film featuring street women in Vancouver’s downtown east side, received best of the festival, Yorkton’s top award, as well as best documentary general subject, best videography, best original music and the National Film Board Kathleen Shannon Cash Award of $1,000 for giving voice to people outside dominant culture.

Baba’s House, directed, produced and written by Shandi Mitchell, came away with three awards: best drama, best script and best cinematography (Stan Barua). Produced with Barbara Badessi and Shanit Mitchel of Halifax-based Flashfire Productions, the film tells the story of how a young girl who has lost her mother gains a new best friend and learns a little magic while spending the summer with her grandmother.

La Premiere Fois, produced and directed by Claude Pare for Montreal’s Luna Productions, won for best female performance (Isabelle Guerard), best experimental and best editing (Robert Newton).

Frantic goes for Gold

Winnipeg’s Frantic Films starts shooting its third reality/adventure series, The Quest For Gold, June 5 running until the end of August. Cameras will follow five questersover 15 days, starting in Skagway, Alaska and wrapping up in Dawson City, Yukon. Directed by Don Young, it will air on History Television in January as four one-hour episodes at a total budget of $1.5 million.

Jamie Brown, Frantic CEO and executive producer, says the prodco’s location is a great advantage. ‘We’ve got a much lower cost structure and lower overhead, which makes us a lot more competitive.’

Frantic is recognized as the fourth fastest growing company in Manitoba and is a recent recipient of three Chamber of Commerce citations: the Innovative Company of the Year, Small Business and Next Generation Company Awards.