Jane Kessler and Kate Hunter have taken Kessler Irish Films solo, leaving The Partners’ Film Company family after reaching the end of their contract this summer.

The split is effective immediately. While weathering all the inherent difficulties of a divorce of this kind, Kessler says the break is a reflection that her company has reached a level of maturity and adds she’s excited to be taking Kessler Irish to its next stage of evolution.

In the short term, it’s business as usual, although the long-anticipated change in the name of the company may come sooner rather than later. Also on the agenda is the development of the newest addition to Kessler Irish, David Strupp, a bright young director fresh out of the Canadian Film Centre who is developing a niche in performance dialogue and humor.

comm.bat Clusiau

comm.bat films is grooming another young talent with the addition to its roster of Carol Clusiau, recruited from Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre training program.

Full-time Player

the Players Film Company has fortified its ranks with the full-time addition of Meredith Dorion as executive producer. Dorion, a veteran of the post and production realms, began at Command Post, completed a stint at Skogland Films and did considerable line producing for Players before joining the company officially Sept. 9.

Players was also a recent recipient of an ITS Monitor Award (See Network, p. 16).

Memento mori

toronto’s Atomic Broadcast Design has introduced a service which offers the advertising industry a chance to further explore and reflect on its favorite topic ­ itself ­ with ‘making of’ videos based on commercial shoots.

Atomic has brought on director/cameraman/editor Marco Porsia, who has vast experience producing ‘backstages’ in Europe. Porsia videotapes the live antics of the set and edits a five-minute video with titles, graphics and music with the resulting self-referential production perfect for meetings or getting media coverage.

Virtual agency

de-emphasizing private property and social stratification, promoting communal work and spacesŠ sound eerily familiar? Don’t worry, it’s all in the service of capitalism at TBWA Chiat/Day’s new virtual offices in downtown Toronto.

The open-concept workplace encourages staff to plug in and work at any number of workstations and keep in touch with portable phones. At the core of it all are several brand-centered ‘war rooms’ where client confabs and heavy noodling take place.

At the launch of the new space, industry types (including producers, posties and press, but no other agencies) buzzed about the spectacular views and the funkified stairways and queried on a number of practical issues (How will you remember what your kids look like without their pictures on your desk? What if you like to scratch yourself while you work?) while noshing tasty morsels and stopping at many of the virtual bars scattered throughout the facility.

Consensus was that the Toronto interpretation of the virtual office is an improvement over the Venice Beach and New York incarnations. ‘We’re trading real estate for other opportunities,’ one employee summarized.

Art for art’s sake

cuppa Coffee has done its part for art with the creation of a pair of spots for the Arts Foundation of Greater Toronto’s ArtsWeek celebration, being held Sept. 28 to Oct. 6 in Metro. The arts extravaganza features a multiple venue/format look at ‘all the arts, all at once,’ and Cuppa’s Julian Grey was charged with assembling a suitably creative ad in a cost-effective way. The spot consists of a ‘moving collage,’ a series of boxes containing moving images.

An initial print campaign provided the framework of a metaphorical hive. Grey originally considered capturing box content with blue screen and motion tracking, but since all time on the project was being donated, he opted for lower tech yet equally creative methods, using real photo cycles, generating images from various photographic formats.

The spot features ‘lots of weird little cycles’ and represents the diversity of the event within the context of animation.

The spot was shot over three days at Cuppa and will be posted at Command Post. ‘It was important not to come out with a cliched ad with a paint brush in it,’ says Grey.

Dangerous debut

sparks Productions’ Holly Dale has another of her long-form projects in the spotlight with the airing of Dangerous Offender on cbc Oct. 6. The film is based on the life and times of Marlene Moore, Canada’s first female dangerous offender and will launch the cbc’s new fall drama season.

Dale and Dangerous Offender writer Janis Cole met Moore while making P4W, a documentary about a women’s prison, and became interested in the failings of the penal system and the life of a woman who became caught up in a spiral of incarceration at age 14.

Meanwhile, Dale’s feature Blood & Donuts continues to do well for itself and is set for limited theatrical and subsequent video release in the u.s. Dale is also set to begin a Benelyn spot for Bates in Toronto.