Some dub it a circus act that amounts to little more than spectacle. Others deem it a great way to generate some buzz around a project. But all generally agree that ringleader Pat Ferns’ Market Simulation is a must-see at Banff. Over 60 projects were submitted for the 1998 session, of which Ferns chose six that will be pitched by eager producers to an audience of international commissioning editors and broadcasters.

With the British salute a major thrust at Banff this year, Ferns chose a u.k. project for both the entertainment and documentary sessions. The Process, a drama from the u.k.’s Cafe Productions, will be hot, predicts Ferns, because it is based on a best-selling book on a controversial topic with international appeal – the Arab/Israeli conflict. Ferns chose kids’ show Little Pod’s Mission from Workhouse Television because of the unique combination of subject – science for kids – and medium – animation.

Historical recreation is a popular genre in Canada and throughout the world, says Ferns, which is why The Stork Derby from SDA Productions in Montreal caught his attention. An added bonus, he says, is a strong director attached to the project – Mario Azzopardi.

American pay and cable reps – hbo, Showtime, a&e and Turner Broadcasting, all strong players for the dramas to be pitched – will be out in force at the simulation, says Ferns.

The title alone says it all when it comes to Puppets Who Kill. The comedy leapt out, says Ferns, because it promises to be a hilarious alternative to the more serious fare and had the backing of an experienced team – Steven Westren and John Pattison of Toronto’s Gallimaufrey Entertainment.

Norflicks and Pixcom Productions’ The French In America holds obvious American, Canadian and French coproduction opportunities. Another sign of potential success is the healthy appetite for historical documentaries on the world stage.

The other doc, Dogs With Jobs from Merrily Weisbord and Cineflix, will cross boarders easily with its lighthearted subject matter, says Ferns.

bbc, Channels 4 and 5, BSkyB, Discovery, a&e, cnn and The History Channel are all potential fits for these projects, he says.

Here are the pitches…

Gallimaufrey Entertainment:

Puppets Who Kill

while Cuddles the comfort doll, Buttons the peanut butter bear and Rocco the dog may sound like playful childhood friends, they are actually the bad puppets seeking rehabilitation in John Pattison and Steven Westren’s sitcom series Puppets Who Kill.

Aimed at the ‘drunken late-night college crowd,’ the comedic duo are heading to the mountains with a ‘spectacular pitch,’ which will include the sad yet strange stories of the characters, possibilities for around 50 episodes and one pilot script.

Westren jokes that ‘they are looking for somebody who can make sure they don’t bankrupt themselves,’ and views hbo, Comedy Central or upn as good homes for their off-the-wall puppet show. So far there has been interest from Klasky Csupo (Duckman). On an international scale, Westren sees the British market taking a liking to the series as the humor is very verbal with plenty of wordplay.

‘We basically have the infrastructure to do it, we know who the puppeteers will be, who will build the puppets and how we want to shoot it,’ explains Westren. ‘It all comes down to whether we find a carrier and a service producer.’

Originally the two envisioned the series as a ‘cinematically stylish show’ in the $350,000 an episode range, but now feel it would work better as a small-budget series with more of a rough edge to it.

‘We came to realize that the bigger the budget the less likely we are to be involved with the show, so now we are talking about doing it quick and dirty and concentrating on the scripts as opposed to the technical look,’ Westren says. ‘We’re talking about a Hi-8 $8,000 [per-episode show] and everybody brings their own lunch.’

Puppets Who Kill was conceived by Pattison in 1995 and whatever deal they manage to strike, the two plan to stick by their puppets as writers, producers, puppeteers and directors.

Before turning his hand to writing on such series as Eric’s World and Wimzie’s House, Westren spent 10 years as a professional juggler. Pattison spent a dozen years performing as a ventriloquist, did some time with The Muppets and is presently working as a puppeteer on the Universal feature film The Bride of Chucky.

Workhouse:

Little Pod’s Mission

an animated series out of Workhouse Television in the u.k., Little Pod’s Mission is a multipurpose children’s show meant to entertain as well as educate.

The premise of the series is that an inventor was zapped into his computer, leaving him to exist only as a voice which communicates with the other characters. The computer contains all the knowledge of the world but the memory banks are beginning to decay.

It is up to Little Pod, who can travel anywhere as well as change his dimension, Ollo the fix-it guy, and Tenpin the control freak to rebuild the memory banks. Helping to create these characters was Canadian Don Arioli, who was part of the original Children’s Television Workshop and cocreator of Sesame Street.

Michael Blakstad, chief executive at Workhouse, is heading to Banff with illustrations of his characters, which he says are ‘absolutely fabulous,’ all the business details and the storylines. He’s hoping he will be returning to England with a Canadian animation partner on board.

The show has been budgeted at around us$150,000 per half-hour and the plan is to produce 26 half-hours a year for the seven-to-11 crowd and ‘really corner the science market’ internationally.

‘To our knowledge there has never been a really successful science program for kids that travels the world and we want to fill this gap,’ says Blakstad. ‘But we don’t want to stress the science part of it too much, because it is really a children’s animated series.’

Each week the show will deal with a different question (this is where the educational component comes into play), such as what is time? how do you catch a cold? or where is the earth in relation to space? Whatever the question, live-action visual images of the subject will appear on the computer.

In addition, Blakstad says they will be creating an Internet site and cd-roms for those interested in learning more, and he is also keeping his eyes peeled for an Internet partner who could set up a French-language site.

Workhouse is a sister company to Zenith, one of the u.k.’s major producers of children’s programming, while Workhouse specializes mainly in the Internet and cd-rom.

Cafe Productions:

The Process

chief executive producer at u.k.-based Cafe Productions Andre Singer is heading to Banff with a first-draft script of The Process, a behind-the-scenes thriller about the Oslo peace process.

The tv drama focuses on the secret negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis and leads up to the time of late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The Process is based on Uri Savir’s recently released book of the same name.

The project began as a documentary, but after reviewing the material Singer decided it would have stronger appeal as a drama.

At present the budget for The Process is somewhere between £1.3 million and £1.5 million, and Singer says he is looking at a few stars to play the delegation leaders.

With nhk Norway already signed on, Singer is still hoping to strike up deals with hbo, the bbc and any other interested broadcasters he can find at Banff.

Stephen Davis penned the script. The director is still to be determined.

Ideally, Singer would like to go into production on The Process sometime towards the end of 1998 – Israel’s 50th anniversary and the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Oslo peace accord – with delivery in mid-1999.

Cafe specializes in factual programming, and according to Singer, the idea is to develop a portfolio of issue-oriented programs

Other projects out of Cafe include The Great Egyptians, a six-part series about the Egyptian pharaohs which aired in April on Discovery in the u.s., and The Adventurers, a five-part series which ran on pbs last year.

Cineflix: Dogs With Jobs:

dogs with Jobs is a 13-part, half-hour series literally about dogs with jobs.

Produced by Glen Salzman of Montreal-based Cineflix and penned by Merrily Weisbord, the series is budgeted at $200,000 per episode and focuses on working canines around the world – from Moscow circus dogs to Swedish land-mine sniffers to Scottish sheep herders.

All stories are told from the pov of the dogs themselves – which will be sporting ‘Crittercams’ – and each has a dramatic story to tell, such as how a Labernese can open the world to a child blind from birth or how a Maltese show dog who wins the ultimate blue ribbon is ‘plagued by her beauty.’

Salzman will be heading to Banff with a proposal in hand as well as a distribution deal in place with Mediamax for international sales, excluding the u.s.

Pitch-wise, Salzman is hoping to get some tails wagging at Discovery, Animal Planet, The Learning Channel and ctv. On the international front, he says he has received a lot of interest from France.

Although the pooch project does not have a director at this time, several dog devotees have expressed interest; director Ali Kazimi is considering the episode on search-and-rescue dogs and Peter Wintonick may be taking viewers on a humorous behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Lassie.

The concept for Dogs With Jobs came out of a conversation between Weisbord and her veterinarian daughter. ‘We started thinking about all the great animal shows,’ says Weisbord, ‘and realized that while there were pieces of it in other shows there has never been a high-concept drama on dogs who have jobs around the world.’

And if history repeats itself, Banff should be a success for the series as Weisbord was a winner at last year’s Two in a Room pitch session with Arnie Gelbart.

Other projects out of Cineflix include feature doc Power, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance two years ago and won best doc at the Paris Environmental Film Festival. Brush With Life won for best of festival and best social documentary at Hot Docs ’95. Currently on the production slate is a human rights doc called Article 1.

Productions Pixcom/Norflicks Productions: The French In America

out of Montreal-based Productions Pixcom and Toronto’s Norflicks Productions, The French In America is a six-part documentary series which maps out the French settlement of North America and the Caribbean and the changes descendants and their communities have undergone from the 1500s to today.

The budget for the series is estimated at around $2.5 million to $3 million. Mary Armstrong will produce, Jean Lebel will write and Andre Barro is executive producer for Pixcom, while Richard Nielsen will exec produce for Norflicks.

History Television and tfo have provided development support.

At Banff, the producers will be on the prowl for a French coproduction partner and are hoping to spark some interest from British and American broadcasters.

‘We are pretty sure we have a Canadian broadcaster and we are looking at u.s. History or pbs,’ Armstrong says. ‘We think the doc will be really interesting for Americans because they know so little about their French history.’

The series will make use of various reconstructed forts and settlements and will provide information on how people lived through documents, letters and quotations.

SDA Productions/Lifeboat Productions: The Stork Derby

with Canadian broadcasters chum and Radio-Canada already on board, the production team behind The Stork Derby is seeking financing and coproduction partners for the $3-million mow.

The Stork Derby is a historical drama based on events that took place in Toronto between 1926 and 1938 when a very wealthy lawyer bequeathed the majority of his estate to the woman in the city who gave birth to the most babies after his death.

‘This led to one of the first media circuses and one of the most complicated legal cases in Canadian history,’ says Karyn Nolan, who has been working on the script for four years. Madeline Thompson also worked on the script.

Mario Azzopardi will direct as well as executive produce with Nolan and sda’s Andre Picard and Francine Allaire.

The plan of action for Banff is to nab an international coproducer, a presale or foreign distribution. Nolan says the u.k. would be a natural coproduction fit and there has already been interest from Germany, France, Italy and Japan.

‘The film has a cross-section of appeal because the issues are as relevant today as they were during the Depression,’ says Nolan. ‘The style of telling it will be very contemporary, and even though it’s a period piece, it will be very upbeat.’

Shooting is slated to commence next spring in Toronto and Montreal. Motion International will be handling distribution.