Newfoundland producer Paul Pope is busy looking for a director and top-level cast for his new feature film Rare Birds. The comedy is being produced by Pope’s Pope Productions and Vancouver’s Big Pictures Entertainment (with producer Janet York), adapted from a novel by St. John’s-based writer Ed Riche, who collaborated with Pope on Secret Nation. Riche also penned the Rare Birds screenplay.

The film is about a government employee who takes an early retirement to chase his dream and open a gourmet restaurant in rural Newfoundland. The restaurant is a complete failure and the man turns to a neighbor who concocts a scheme to drum up business. A rumor is spread by the neighbor that a very rare breed of duck has made its way to the restaurant. Once bird-watchers and curious locals hear of the duck, the restaurant’s business booms, until the hoax is placed in jeopardy by the neighbor’s other schemes.

Budgeted between $3 million and $4 million, Pope is hoping to finance the project through presales, the Canadian Television Fund Licence Fee Program, Telefilm Canada equity investment, tax credits, provincial incentives and private investment.

The film will begin preproduction in the late spring, and Pope hopes it will go to camera in the fall.

Another project a little closer to Pope’s heart involves an autobiographical documentary he is producing about his friend and colleague, Newfoundland doc-maker Gerry Rogers.

‘I’ve worked with her quite a bit,’ Pope says, ‘and a year ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She is going through chemotherapy and all of that, so she has been making a documentary about the whole event.’

Pope says Rogers’ story is budgeted at $250,000 for an hour-long doc, with development support from CBC Newsworld’s Rough Cuts. Rogers’ films include Referendum Take Two and The Vienna Tribunal.

‘She has done a lot of social-action type documentaries and this one fits right in,’ says Pope. ‘She is very passionate about it.’

*Drama on the high seas

Halifax’s Tri Media Production Services and Great North Nova Scotia Communications will be producing three one-hour documentaries called High Seas Rescue for The Learning Channel and Discovery in Canada. The two coprod partners have been busily compiling footage from around the world to put the three hours together.

‘They are built around actual footage of rescues at sea,’ says Tri Media president Whitman Trecartin. ‘We are doing this here because Nova Scotia is the gateway to the most hostile ocean environment in the world – the great North Atlantic.’

According to Trecartin, they have been compiling the most exciting rescue footage available for quite some time.

‘We have researchers working long hours looking for footage from all over the world, and that is the big thrust for us right now – to find footage and get it in,’ he says. ‘We access the footage at the point and see if we can get interviews with the survivors and the search-and-rescue people who took part in the rescues, and do some recreations to fill in the gaps.’

All three episodes are being produced for about $1 million. The docs are being financed through a tlc broadcast licence, Discovery, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and tax credits. Trecartin is hopeful High Seas Rescue ‘will be a long-running and popular series.’

The three episodes are to be delivered in April.

*NSFDC gets youth rolling

The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation is undertaking a new initiative to help youths who are unemployed and out of school to serve their community and generally feel better about themselves. nsfdc ceo Ann MacKenzie reports a training and development program is about to be launched that will help these young people find direction by getting their hands dirty in the process of local filmmaking.

MacKenzie says the program, known as Nova Scotia First Works, will place local youths in a training program with two components: film training and a course in leadership skills.

‘They are going to do everything on their film, from write it to act in it to shoot it and edit it,’ says MacKenzie. ‘Then they are going to go work with a community development person so they will learn leadership skills and things like that.’

At the end of the eight-week intensive program, the films put together by the young people will be screened at Input 2000 in Halifax, May 14-20.

Funding for the new training program is coming primarily from the federal government and contributions from the industry, in the form of equipment, rental houses and soundstages among other things.

MacKenzie says that while visiting the various regions throughout Nova Scotia during Film Talk ’99 and spreading the word of the upcoming program, she found a strong response from young people wanting to participate.

‘We are going to do two pilots of the program at first in two areas of the province, so we are initially going to take 16 participants,’ says MacKenzie. ‘We want to expand it to the rest of the province and do four other areas.’

MacKenzie adds the nsfdc will be accepting applications for the next few weeks from would-be participants and is hopeful the program will get underway in March.

‘I think it is going to be great for our industry and our communities,’ she says.

The nsfdc also reports a new record has been set in the first nine months of its fiscal ended Dec. 31, 1999. Film and television production in Nova Scotia during the period contributed approximately $130 million production dollars to the provincial economy.

The record-setting figure is a 9.2% rise from the complete 1998/99 fiscal, which totaled $119 million. The nsfdc says the increase is due to an upswing in foreign production coming to shoot in the province. Foreign production alone is responsible for approximately $60 million of the total.

Nova Scotia residents can rejoice as well. Jobs created related to the film and tv industry have risen to 2,500 in the first nine months of the fiscal, whereas in last year’s total fiscal 2,300 jobs were created.

*A historical moment on History

victory Film’s Jeremy McCormack can stand tall and hold his head high these days. His two-hour documentary Camp x, which debuted on History Television on Jan. 9, was significant not only in its content, but also for viewer response.

The premier broadcast of Camp x was viewed by approximately 257,000 Canadians, making it the highest-rated documentary in History’s history. It was also the only doc to attract more than 237,000 viewers on a single play.

History personnel confirm after five plays on History, Camp x has drawn 517,000 viewers in total. An encore airing, says McCormack, is currently being discussed.

For those who didn’t tune in, Camp x represented a true challenge for Nova Scotia producer McCormack. He went to great lengths to break the story of the real-life Camp x, touted as Canada’s top-secret commando spy school, which trained spies, special agents and saboteurs from all over North America and Europe during wwii.

‘It’s just a wild story and it’s unknown,’ says McCormack. ‘We shot in three countries and interviewed Camp x veterans because that was the only way to get the real story.’

McCormack says he worked on the film for two full years before hitting pay dirt.

‘We uncovered actual film which was shot there and footage of people training there,’ he says. ‘The film is a kind of tribute to all the people who served in the war and received no recognition because of Camp x’s secrecy.’

McCormack wrote, produced and directed Camp x. Kent Nason served as dop and Leslie Nielsen narrated.

*Awful truth spreads to Canada

Halifax’s Salter Street Films is now producing the second season of The Awful Truth with filmmaker Michael Moore. The announcement was made at natpe in New Orleans last month.

The Awful Truth (the first season of which aired in Canada on Bravo!) is hosted by Moore and features his special brand of investigative journalism and guerrilla filmmaking to expose the darkest sides of corporate America.

Moore, a self-taught filmmaker, shot his first film, Roger & Me, in 1989 after layoffs at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, nearly destroyed the morale of the entire town. He has since produced the Emmy-winning series T.V. Nation and directed his first feature, Canadian Bacon. He also completed a second film, The Big One, made in the tradition of Roger & Me.

The Awful Truth is currently in production on its second season in New York for 12 half-hour episodes.