Vancouver: Local indigenous drama production has taken a beating over the last year. Reduced public funding along with the absence of any tax incentive to encourage private investment in the industry has exacted its toll.

When British Columbia Film changed its policies more than a year ago to disallow funding on any interprovincial coproductions where b.c. producers did not have financial or creative control, the financial motivation for producing drama here declined significantly. What we’re seeing is drama being replaced by more documentaries, animation and informational programming.

‘This is the beginning of the future,’ says Wayne Sterloff, president and ceo of B.C. Film. ‘Supplying the specialty channels and doing syndicated series deals avoid us having to use our (declining) funds to support Toronto-based companies.’

This, he says, will also encourage the capitalization of b.c. production companies.

‘Yes, the projects are smaller and the budgets far less, but producers here will at least own the copyrights to their productions, and at the end of the day, we are producing the same number of hours of programming with the same numbers of people employed.’

Last year, Sterloff predicted b.c.’s indigenous production community would return to its roots as a cottage industry. That’s now a reality.

Very few b.c. producers are servicing large Toronto companies these days. Ironically, however, several of our formerly active indigenous producers such as Richard Davis and Chris Bruyere are now traveling in the opposite direction, doing service work to learn line production skills – and, of course, make a living. Sign of the times, I guess.

Although many producers don’t view these lower-budget genres of production as quite so sexy as the big-budget stuff, Sterloff says they offer new opportunities. ‘Their main advantage is that producers learn the business affairs skills to grow their companies, but not on as costly and time-consuming productions as drama. They also provide a revenue stream from which to develop their other projects.’

Visionaries

Victoria producers David Springbett and Heather MacAndrew of Astericks Productions have just scored themselves one of the largest broadcast licences ever paid by the Vision Network to an independent producer for their new 10-part doc series, Communities. The half-hour shows look at the nature, purpose, significance, search for and creation of community in our lives.

Production is slated to begin later this summer.

Barber cooks up kids’ show

One of the most successful informational series produced out of Vancouver, The Urban Peasant, clocked out its 500th show late last month. The popular cooking series, hosted by chef cum Renaissance man James Barber, who also produces the series out of the local cbc studios with executive producer Romney Grant and producer/ director Lawrence McDonald, has sold to over 100 countries.

The seventysomething Barber, a self-confessed ‘addict of change,’ who over the years has worked variously as a physicist, engineer, musician, commercial fisherman, writer, choreographer, composer, surveyor and miner before turning his hand to cooking and broadcasting at 40-plus, attributes the series’ success to its ‘education by absorption’ style.

Next on the development plate for Barber is a children’s storytelling series.

Mr. Sandman,

bring me a dream

Vancouver-based writer Michael Mercer picked up two Gemini nominations last month for his work on the animated Nilus The Sandman special entitled The First Day, produced by Vancouver’s Delaney and Friends Animation and Cambium Film and Video Productions in Toronto.

After writing more than 200 hours of television, including a stint as senior story editor on the Lonesome Dove series, Mercer notes, ‘It was the first time I’d ever written about characters who were sent to bed for being bad instead of just being shot.’

Despite no hands-on experience in the parenthood department himself, Mercer appears to be enjoying the transition into children’s programming; he’s signed on as story editor for the Sandman series.

Mercer says Sandman is also allowing him to realize another longtime dream, doing a series entirely staffed by Western writers. Among those penning episodes on Sandman will be Dennis Foon (Little Criminals), Victor Nicolle (Neon Rider), Gary Fisher (The Odyssey), Julie Lacey (Lonesome Dove) and Jeani Read (Beachcombers).

Berlin bound

Producer Stephen Benoit’s feature For A Few Lousy Dollars (formerly titled Mob Story) has been invited to screen at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival later this month. The title change, Benoit quips, more accurately reflects the size of their budget, which was entirely privately financed.

Written by local scribe Evan Tylor, Benoit describes the film, shot in Vancouver last summer, as a hybrid of Pulp Fiction and The Good The Bad And The Ugly.

Michael Befaro, who wrote Crackerjack for North American Pictures, makes his directorial debut on the film.

Moving up the ladder, Benoit’s next film, The Stag, budgeted at a whopping $1.6 million, will be shot this summer.

Written once again by Tylor and Pat Bermel, this dramatic thriller with a snakes-and-ladders moral twist is the story of a group of young men who gather for a stag to celebrate an upcoming wedding. Only problem is, the guests have all been invited by the bride who used an old address book of the groom’s. The event brings together a disparate group of men, who in the tradition of Twelve Angry Men, are now all faced with confronting their pasts.

Negotiations are underway with Alliance Releasing for Canadian distribution rights and New Line for u.s. rights. A director has yet to be finalized.

Smashing success

Production on Paramount’s The Sentinel series took off with a bang this month, actually, a big, big, big bang, so big, in fact, it blew the door off a bank across the street and popped a substantial number of windows in buildings along Vancouver’s Hornby and Dunsmuir Streets.

Apparently the planned, controlled blast, which could be heard echoing all the way through Stanley Park, was a tad larger than anyone had expected, but remarkably, says Mark DesRochers, B.C. Film Commission manager of production and locations, ‘no one was hurt, and thankfully, we didn’t get one complaint from the neighborhood.

The locations department had a dozen glass repair trucks on site within the hour replacing plate windows. No harm done, just a few wounded egos on the special effects team.

Toe Tags

Alliance is in town this month to begin preproduction on Toe Tags, a one-hour pilot for abc and CanWest Global Television.

Produced by Toronto-based Ian McDougall and directed by l.a.-based ex-pat Canadian director/ screenwriter Dan Petrie Jr. (Beverley Hills Cop), it’s a comedy about a couple of young men who don’t want to work but whose mother gets them a ‘city’ job; unfortunately, it turns out to be in the city morgue.

Filming begins in mid-March with local producer Warren Carr production managing.

And word has it actor/comedian Adam Sandler of Saturday Night Live’s Opera Man fame loved working here so much on the feature Happy Gilmore, shot in Vancouver last year, he’s currently busy writing a script for a romantic comedy (as yet untitled) set in Vancouver, which Carr ‘hopefully’ will coproduce this summer.