It took two years of ‘wooing,’ says Canamedia Productions’ Les Harris, to convince u.k. publisher Dorling Kindersley that his prodco should turn their top-selling kids book The Way Things Work into a tv series.

What finally clinched the deal was Canamedia’s unique production methodology.

Rather than the usual live-action/animation combination, the Harris pitch was to use the process of chromavision – mixing animation (mostly 2D, some 3D), artwork and live action in multilayers (up to six layers) – so actors become an integral part of the animation. Canamedia has perfected the technique over two previous projects, Take Off, produced with Friday Street Productions, and the Banff Rocky Award-winning The King of Friday Night.

The publisher was impressed. Its production division inked a copro deal with Canamedia and a 13-part, half-hour series is in early development.

The how-to book for kids, written by David Macaulay, captured Harris’s attention because of its humor. A Great Wooly Mammoth, a ‘loyal and long-suffering assistant to an eccentric inventor,’ unwittingly demonstrates the workings of all sorts of machines – from ovens, microwaves and tvs to calculators and drills.

Development deals are signed with tvontario and tfo (a French-language version will be produced), The New vr, and Terrace, b.c.’s cftk. Shaw’s Skippy Fund has also put some financing into the pie.

Discussions are underway with cbc for the East Coast, and Harris reports strong interest from pbs and Encore in the u.s., Canal J in France, Access Alberta and b.c.’s Knowledge Network.

Budget is preliminary but likely in the $300,000 to $350,000 per half-hour range.

An animation bible, artwork and two scripts will be completed by the end of April. Adrien Raeside, political cartoonist for Victoria, b.c.’s Times Colonist and Sesame Street animator, has been commissioned to write for the series and Harrison plans to utilize his expertise as production designer. Halifax-based writer Richard Zurawskiby has also been hired on. A few more writers will be required.

Harris and his partners (Simon Jollands is working on the creative) have held meetings with Ottawa animation companies and will also be scouting in Halifax later this month.

Harris, is weighing the economics of producing the series in Ontario or heading to Halifax, but hefty financial incentives are swinging the scale in favor of Nova Scotia. He is considering forming a new company with Eco-Nova MultiMedia Productions (Canamedia is currently exec producing the Halifax-based prodco’s 13-part, hour-long Oceans Of Mystery series for Discovery Channel).

Canamedia has just wrapped a $160,000 one-hour special, Alien Obsession, licensed by a&e, tvo, Space: The Imagination Station, CFCF 12 and The New vr. The doc examines the widespread fascination with aliens and includes ufo footage and interviews with believers, skeptics and… ‘abductees.’

– Angels, nuns and sisters

Debra Day is one of the recipients of the Ontario Film Development Corporation’s new Calling Card Program and is now in production on Alter Piece, an adaptation of Melissa Bell’s Fringe Festival play about an encounter between a nun and an angel one night in a church.

Day is directing and cowrote the script with Bell. Dean Perlmutter is producing. Incidentally, this is the inaugural project for his new prodco, Smash Art.

The Calling Card Program has put up a $30,000 grant for the half-hour drama.

The Hanging Garden’s Joe Kellar is playing the angel. Cast also includes Gabrielle Rose and Christa Bridges.

Day has penned a feature with episodic tv writer Bonnie Buxton. Titled Feature Bites, the dramatic comedy revolves around a reunion between three sisters and their mother. It is a ‘you love them, you hate them’ story of family relationships.

The script is in its final draft stages, with development money from Harold Greenberg Fund. Day is shopping for an exec producer.

She also has two other projects lined up with Saskatchewan’s Jeff Beesley and his company Light Over Canvas Productions.

In the feature Rust, cowritten by Beesley and Devin Keefe, a young boy is left with mild brain damage following a car accident which kills his father and leaves his mother paralyzed. The boy makes a promise never to leave his mother, but 25 years later he struggles with his desire to set out and find a life of his own.

Beesley and Day are coproducing. The project is in early development and without any financing attached.

Day is exec producing the $100,00 privately financed feature Sparkle, written and to be directed by Beesley and coproduced with Jud Laing.

The plot involves a woman who moves to l.a. hoping to become a star, hooks up with a small-time promoter, and ends up in a Miss Nude Canada pageant in Winnipeg. Principal photography begins in April.

– Motiki Time

While The Larry Sanders Show is at an end, a new Canadian series in a similar vein – but for a tween audience – is being pitched by Martin Markle, associate producer of The TVO Kids Crawlspace.

Motiki Time will star Crawlspace’s ever-popular host Joe Motiki and will chronicle the misadventures of the bickering cohosts and frazzled production staff of a daily kids’ series.

The half-hour ‘comedic swipe at kids’ tv programming’ contrasts the behind-the-scenes jealousies, egos and back-stabbing with the oh-so-happy on-air kids’ variety program’s hosts and assortment of wacky guests.

Target audience is 13- to 18-year-olds, but Markle says the show will also appeal to an older crowd since it focuses on the comic scenarios of adults within the framework of a kids’ tv program.

Markle is just setting out to flag the project to broadcasters, but is also aiming to hook up with a production company on the series.

– Power breakfast

A&E’s vp, Canada Shelley Blaine Goodman was guest speaker at the recent Women in Film & Television-Toronto’s Breakfast Club, where she handed over a $5,000 check in support of the monthly mentoring/ meet-and-mingle sessions featuring discussions with female power figures in the biz.

An inspiring note for all up-and-comers, Blaine Goodman sold encyclopedias and worked as a door-to-door cable salesperson before climbing the ranks at the American specialty.

Ready or Not creator Alyse Rosenberg is guest speaker for the March 10 Breakfast Club.