Vancouver: Producer Brian Hamilton of Vancouver’s Omni Film Productions is one of five b.c. producers to take part in the annual U.K. Immersion project, this year taking place in London the week of Nov. 16 and dedicated to documentary filmmakers.

For Hamilton, it will be a quick return visit since he just flew home from the u.k. after a week-long post-production session on The Spell of the Yukon, a one-hour episode of a series called Trailblazers by TransAtlantic Films of London. Trailblazers is in its first season on the Travel Channel and Discovery Channel Europe.

Yukon was shot on Europe’s pal video format – necessitating the final post work in London – and features British host Sarah Tucker following the footsteps of the Stampeders on the 100th anniversary of the gold rush.

Producer Hamilton was joined by other Vancouverites in the making of Yukon. Peter von Puttkamer is the director and Cliff Craven is associate producer.

The success of Yukon has Hamilton feeling optimistic about the U.K. Immersion conference, where he will be joined by Vancouver documentary makers Trish Dolman (Screen Siren Pictures), Cindy Leaney (Voyager Media Productions), Hugh Beard (Force Four Productions) and Harvey McKinnon (Harvey McKinnon Productions).

‘We need to build bridges with kindred spirits and the Brits are perfect coproduction partners for us,’ says Hamilton.

In all, 20 Canadian documentary makers are sponsored by Telefilm Canada, though participants have to pay an $800 tuition and cover their own food and lodging. British Columbia Film is paying $500 toward the cost of the trip for the b.c. delegates.

‘People come back with excellent relationships,’ notes Hamilton, who is lucky to attend Immersion with his pump primed with existing business.

‘With TransAtlantic,’ he says, ‘we found a partner that has a similar background.’

Hamilton says he hopes to involve TransAtlantic in an Omni development project – an adventure travel series called Off the Beaten Path. He also hopes to be more involved in the second season of Trailblazers.

In other Omni news, production is underway on the first six episodes of Vision tv series Quiet Places, a meditative exploration of ways to get away from it all in places such as Buddhist, artist and nature retreats.

Thinking ahead, Omni is planning for six more Quiet Places installments in 1999.

The series is produced by Gabriela Schonbach of Vancouver.

Champions of the Wild, produced by Christian Bruyere, is in production with its third season of 13 episodes. The series is about humans who take up animal causes around the world and has been sold to Animal Planet.

On the dramatic front, meanwhile, Omni will coproduce with Annie Frazier-Henry of Full Regalia Productions a one-off half-hour called Legends, sponsored by the National Film Board and Telefilm and airing on Vision and Baton stations.

Legends shoots in the spring and is a modern retelling of the story of Siwash Rock, a landmark along the seawall of Vancouver’s Stanley Park.

*Bridge gets a Mission

Susan Croome, gm of The Bridge Studios, wasted no time filling the 40,000-square-foot effects stage when the Eddie Murphy film Toddlers (by Paramount) evaporated. Disney’s Mission to Mars, a big-budget feature, has paid a deposit on the space and will occupy it January through September.

‘And if it hadn’t been Disney, it would have been Fox,’ says Croome. ‘We had a lineup.’

Tax credits and low loonies are keeping the interest in Vancouver high, she adds.

Meanwhile, The Bridge is enjoying a refreshing change of pace from the dark sci-fi shows that usually call the facility home.

Dudley Do Right, Universal’s comedic feature with grand song-and-dance numbers, has had a good run, says Croome, and will likely finish ahead of schedule. That opens up the big effects stage to commercial shoots for most of December.

*Studio space relief

The Bridge’s lineup of productions will have a new, private-sector option in Burnaby in the new year.

Two 17,000-square-foot, sound-proof stages with 30-foot clear-span ceilings are under construction and are available Jan. 1, 1998, says leasing manager Mitch Cramp of CB Richard Ellis in Vancouver.

Quietly developed by real estate developer John Lee of K&L Holdings, the facility is called Eagle Creek Studios and will have a 20,000-square-foot, multibay warehouse suitable for carpentry, set decoration, office and wardrobe by the second quarter of 1999. Eagle Creek is being built on five acres near the existing Lake City Studios in North Burnaby.

‘He wanted to capture a growing market,’ says Cramp about Lee, who used VanCity credit union to secure the land, worth about $2.5 million when purchased a year ago.

But does he have a lineup? Not yet, says Cramp. Turns out the l.a. studios and networks, having heard many promises from would-be studio owners in Vancouver, are playing wait-and-see.

Rates will be higher than converted warehouses, but less than The Bridge, says Cramp.

*On key

Blues artist Colin James plays host for the West Coast Music Awards, which was taped by CBC British Columbia Nov. 8 in Vancouver but airs in two hours of local primetime on Nov. 22. A one-hour package is expected to air nationally later, probably in December.

It’s the second year of the event (previously called the Pacific Music Industry Awards) and the first year cbc has aired it.

‘Televising the West Coast Music Awards is the best way CBC Television can showcase the talent and vibrant music scene that exists in b.c.,’ says Rae Hull, regional director of television.

The show will feature Spirit of the West, Trooper and Bif Naked, among others.

*Production notes

Avanti Pictures of Vancouver has completed its latest documentary, Voices of Ayacucho, Peru (formerly I’d Like to Be Like the Wind).

Written by Cable Ace-winner Sharon Gibbon (The War Between Us), the film chronicles the experiences of a weaver named Edwin Sulca and his struggle to survive in the aftermath of a brutal terrorist war.

Voices will premier on Vision tv and will be seen regionally on scn, the Knowledge Network and Rogers Broadcasting.

* To Have and To Hold, an advice-oriented investigation of three stalking victims, will air Nov. 17 on CBC British Columbia. Vancouver’s Documentary Productions has created the one-hour in association with CBC Newsworld.

* And Vancouver director/writer Robert Duncan’s doc John McCrae’s War: In Flanders Fields received a special screening at Ottawa’s Museum of Nature Nov. 9 before it aired on Remembrance Day on cbc.

Coproduced by the National Film Board, the documentary comprises diary excerpts, contemporary footage and wartime images and chronicles the author of Canada’s most famous poem, which was written on the battlefields of Belgium in the First World War.