Newfoundland will be well represented on Canada’s production list in the new year as many production houses are hard at work on several projects currently in various stages of development.

Red Ochre Productions’ president Ken Pittman alone reports a full plate heading into Y2K, with two features in the works and a children’s series with a separate production entity known as Newland Films.

The Dog and Pony TV Show, and will feature a cast of live animals with human personalities and voices, headed up, naturally, by a dog (named Dory) and a pony (named Ruffus).Pitman will produce the show for Newland along with partners Jennice Ripley and Mary Sexton. Jim Byrd, formerly of the cbc, is acting as executive producer.

New Land is planning to make 130, 15-minute episodes of the Dog and Pony TV Show, with a budget of less than $75,000 per episode. A pilot has already been made and shopped around at the international markets. Pittman reports broadcasters are responding positively to what they have seen.

‘It got a lot of interest from the markets, particularly the European market,’ says Pittman. ‘We are anticipating that it will be well received.’

Working with development money from the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation, Pittman is especially excited about the project because of what it could mean to the Newfoundland production community.

‘The Dog and Pony TV Show represents 48 months of steady production and would employ 25 people over that period of time,’ he says.

Red Ochre, meantime, is about to embark on a complicated interprovincial and international coproduction. The project is a feature called Struck Lightning, a coprod with two layers. The first is a coproduction deal between Red Ochre and New Brunswick’s Cinefile, represented on the project by producer Barry Cameron. The second layer will come after the script is finished when the Canadian faction will buddy up with Angel Arena out of Copenhagen (still with me?) with producer Ulrik Bolt Jorgensen. Struck Lightning is being made under the Canada/Denmark coproduction treaty.

The production is being backed in its development stages by Telefilm Canada, the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation and Film New Brunswick. Pittman estimates a budget of under $2 million for the production. The script is being penned by Jonathan Mabey, a New Brunswick native currently writing out of Denmark.

The story focuses on a 13-year-old boy whose brother dies in New Denmark, n.b. The boy then moves to Copenhagen to live with his aunt and start over in a new environment.

Pittman says he hopes to have filming underway by summer 2000 and that Red Ochre is currently in talks with directors for the film.

The last of the films currently in the works at Red Ochre is a feature now known as The Omega Deception, based on 1985 plane crash in Gander, Nfld., where 250 American soldiers perished. Pittman describes the plot in two ways. The first way: ‘It is a film that explores the efforts to find the truth in a maze of diplomacy, militant covert action, u.s. and Canadian politics, and personal and professional territorialism.’ Huh? He offers a second synopsis: ‘It’s really the story of two people, a young reporter from Gander and a woman who lost her son in the crash, and the two of them fighting together to get at the truth.’ Okay, gotcha.

Pittman says the film is still in treatment stage and Red Ochre is in the process of finding a screenwriter to pen the first draft.

‘It’ll hopefully be a film that has the intelligence and the intensity of The Sweet Hereafter,’ says Pittman. ‘We want to make sure we have a script in our hands that we are all happy with before we talk to a distributor and before we consider casting.’

*Awaiting the green light

Also in development in Newfoundland are two documentary projects from Annette Clarke’s Ruby Line Productions, Mailbox Romance and Half Man, Half Fish. Producer Clarke has just finished research and development on both productions, with the backing of ctv, Telefilm Canada and the Newfoundland & Labrador Film Development Corporation and is waiting hopefully to see a green light for one or both films. She estimates the films will have budgets of around $300,000 each.

Clarke says Mailbox Romance focuses on a number of women who have fallen in love with prison inmates and examines why these women stand by their men. Half Man, Half Fish she bills as a look into the world of tabloid journalism, exploring how the tabs have affected mainstream media and the emergence of infotainment.

Toronto’s Wendy Rowland is attached to direct Mailbox Romance, while St. John’s-based director Steve Palmer is ready to swim on Half Man, Half Fish.

*Genuine trailer trash

In Halifax, Collideascope Productions’ president Steve Comeau is almost ready to begin telling chilling tales of children trembling under beds – and of irredeemable white trash.

The four-year-old company, specializing in television and multimedia production, is churning out new product at a great speed. Projects in the works include the half-hour children’s animated special Always Under the Bed Adventures to air on Teletoon in the coming year. With a budget of approximately $500,000, Comeau says the project is ready to go into production as soon as Teletoon is ready to give it the go-ahead.

Written by This Hour Has 22 Minutes scribe Ed Kay and directed by Sean Scott, the cg animated special can be subdivided into 10 two-minute shorts, says Comeau.

‘The thing we are trying to do is really cool,’ says Comeau. ‘Even though it has a positive message, it isn’t preachy in any way and children will get into that because, first and foremost, it is a very cool thing to watch.’

Other projects in the works at Collideascope include a situation comedy titled North of Northwood. Kay is attached to write the series with Judy Klassan. It is tentatively budgeted at $70,000 per episode and set to air on ctv’s Comedy Network.

Says Comeau of the series: ‘It’s sort of a low-fi trailer-trash situation comedy with no redeeming social or cultural value whatsoever.’ Of the casting, he jokes: ‘We’ll probably be using the genuine product.’

There is another project in the works for ctv, a documentary about laughter under the working title The Heart of Laughter. Kay, once again, is writing, reportedly working on the first draft at present.

Comeau cites Telefilm Canada, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and ctv as helping through the development stages.

*Crafty cows and Radical Sheep

On the heels of the recent nation-wide opening of the imX communications-produced, Stephen Reynolds-helmed feature The Divine Ryans, Cheryl Wagner has joined imX as a creative producer. She is set to produce for the children’s series Crafty Cow, which is still in its development stages. Wagner has worked in children’s programming for many years, recently at Toronto’s Radical Sheep Productions, and has been behind kid-focused hits such as Big Comfy Couch, Panda Bear Daycare and Ruffus the Dog.