Believed to be the first tripartite coprod among the Maritime provinces, Steeplechasing is currently in production on its second season, shooting in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.

A coprod between exec producer Michael Volpe of Halifax’s Topsail Entertainment, New Brunswick producer Frank Savoie of Connections Productions, p.e.i. producer Larry LeClare of East West Media and Nova Scotia producer Bud Delaney (also the series’ dop) of ABD Productions, Steeplechasing is a 13-part doc series budgeted at roughly $700,000. It is also one of 34 projects currently backed by Vision tv and the first Atlantic-based series with which Vision has ever been associated. The series is expected to air sometime early in the new year.

Created, written and hosted by Nova Scotia-based singer/composer/playwright/athlete Geoff Noble and cowritten by his partner Susan Shillingford, Steeplechasing follows a steeple-obsessed Noble as he rides his bike through the highways and byways of the eastern countryside looking for steeples to climb, which he does at the end of each episode. In the process, he talks to locals about the community and the history of the churches.

For each episode, two churches are chosen as the setting for musical performances by Atlantic Canadian talent – from a single fiddler, a vocal soprano and classical quartets to Noble’s own contemporization of traditional church hymns.

Unlike the current season, for which four episodes were shot in p.e.i., five episodes in New Brunswick and the remaining four to be shot in Nova Scotia in November, the first six episodes were shot exclusively in Nova Scotia.

‘Next year we hope to go to Newfoundland and make it a complete Atlantic provinces production,’ says director Charlie Doucet, who is also the Atlantic representative for Vision.

Doucet believes regional coprods are the next hot East Coast trend. ‘It’s helpful to split the financing up among the provinces. It cuts down the investment from each and it’s another way of having more production done in the region. By sharing the cost, I think more production will be done here.’

Doucet says in the three years since he has worked as Vision’s Atlantic rep, the percentage of money the specialty broadcaster has spent in the region has more than doubled. Close to $500,000 or 20% of Vision’s independent production budget is spent in Atlantic Canada. And Vision does not have regional quotas.

‘There’s a strong storytelling tradition in the Atlantic provinces and a high degree of personal passion over projects they’re involved in. It’s much more than just a way to make a living, and that very much suits our ethos as programmers at Vision,’ says Peter Flemington, director of programming.

Vision is currently backing 34 projects in the region, eight of which were featured in the 19th Atlantic Film Festival last month, including ImX Communications’ The Divine Ryans. The remaining 26, the majority of which are in development, are mostly one-off docs or doc-style programming.

*Four Big Motion Pictures on the horizon

Production has just begun in Halifax on Caviar, the first project from newly formed Big Motion Pictures, helmed by Wayne Grigsby and David MacLeod.

Coproduced by Andre Picard of Montreal-based Motion International, Caviar is a $3.28-million mow for Global, written by Grigsby and directed by Richard Ciupka (Le Dernier Souffle).

Starring Alex Carter, Clark Johnson (Homicide: Life on the Street, e.n.g.), Richard Robitaille, Patrick Goyetge and Maxin Roy, and shooting for three weeks in Halifax followed by a week in Montreal, Caviar is based on the detective and task force responsible for, and the events leading up to the 1996 22-ton hash bust in Montreal.

Although Global has yet to commit to an air date, the film is slated for delivery Feb. 4, 2000.

For the past year, the new prodco has also been developing the series Sherpa Love for the cbc.

Grigsby wrote the first script and then workshopped it through the Canadian Film Centre’s Prime Time program from January to March, from which three more scripts were born. ‘Now it’s all in the cbc’s court. They have four scripts and it’s just a question of whether this is a show they want to do next year,’ say Grigsby.

Sherpa Love is about life among the ‘edges and ledges’ in Ottawa – the exec assistants and the legislative assistants who work with cabinet ministers on Parliament Hill, ‘the bright young twentysomethings that make the country run.’

Grigsby and MacLeod are exec producing.

bmp is also concluding a deal with ctv to develop an mow based around the Swissair 111 disaster. ‘[ctv] wanted to know if we’d be interested to find an mow. . . based on the book [Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair Crash] by Stephen Kimber,’ says Grigsby. The book focuses on how people come together in such catastrophic circumstances.

‘We’re at the point where we’re about to acquire the rights, we’re talking to a writer. It’s a project we’ll have in development this fall.’

Another project the duo is ‘trying to develop’ is a feature script called Johnny and the Illusions, written by Ray Hutcherson and brought to bmp by Allan Nicholls when he was in Nova Scotia directing an episode of Black Harbour.

‘We immediately thought, this would work so well if we transposed it to Nova Scotia,’ says Grigsby.

Johnny and the Illusions is about a guy who hits rock bottom, returns to his home town, falls in love and turns his life around.

Nicholls, who has worked as a writer, coproducer and first ad for Robert Altman, from Nashville to Short Cuts, and with Tim Robbins on Bob Roberts and Dead Man Walking , will direct.

Grigsby will write the adaptation.

*NSFDC drops the axe

Christopher Worth, who was director of marketing at the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation since its inception in 1997 and headed location services, left the agency last month, the victim of budget reductions and subsequent restructuring. ceo Ann Mackenzie is assuming all marketing responsibilities and Barbara Stead, Worth’s former assistant, has been appointed the new locations services officer.

‘They’re going back to the model they had before they hired me in ’97,’ says Worth, who, although not committed to another job, wants to stay in the film industry.

*Clarification

Re the Sept. 6 Atlantic Scene: David Beatty is producer of Eckhart, Paul Bellini is story consultant on Mary 2 1/2 D and Jack MacAndrew is former head of variety for cbc.