Halifax’s Ocean Entertainment has gone beyond its post-production house roots and evolved into a major player on the Eastern Canadian production circuit. After launching programs like The Resourceful Renovator and The Inn Chef, the idea mill at Ocean has been churning out documentary and series ideas in impressive numbers.

One project in production at Ocean is tentatively called The Shag Harbour UFO Incident. Directed by Ocean’s vp Mike MacDonald, the $160,000 one-hour documentary is about an alleged ufo saucer crash in Shag Harbour in 1967. At the time, it was written off as a plane crash, but the military was monitoring the ufo during its stay underwater. The doc will also examine the work Canada and the u.s. have done together on ufo cover-up operations since 1947.

MacDonald says he is hoping to get William Shatner to narrate. The Shag Harbour UFO Incident has been licensed to Space: The Imagination Station, scn and cbc Atlantic.

MacDonald will also direct Barker v.c., the story of Canada’s most decorated war hero. White Pine Pictures’ Peter Raymont is aboard as executive producer. Budgeted at $280,000, History Television, Vision tv, scn and Knowledge have all secured licences for the hour-long doc set to premier on History during Remembrance week. Ocean is also seeking funding from Telefilm Canada’s Licence Fee and Equity Investment Programs, and the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation.

A 26-episode series called For Pete’s Sake is also in development at Ocean. MacDonald says the production house is in talks with the Food Network for the project, to be hosted by Pete Luckett. Luckett will travel the world in search of the roots of fruits. The budget for the 26 half-hours is approximately $1.5 million. There is also a distribution deal in the works with Minds Eye.

Also coming out of Ocean will be Patchwork Planet, a one-off documentary about a Canadian woman in Jordan, trying to help the local women start a business based on their phenomenal quilt making. Budgeted at $150,000, the film will be directed by Sonja Jampolsky. Vision has shown interest in the project, says MacDonald.

Ocean will team with Toronto’s Northern Lights Productions for two series. The first, Journeywoman, will be based on the popular website journeywoman.com and will give female travelers helpful hints on how to conduct themselves in strange places. The 26 half-hours will be hosted by Leslie Ehm. Ocean is in talks with wtn for the series.

The second project is a three-part documentary series known as Rituals. The series, budgeted at $200,000 an episode, will focus on how rituals affect our lives and how people rediscover themselves through ritual. The series has secured licences with Knowledge, scn and Vision, and will be funded through the lfp and the nsfdc. No director(s) are attached at press time.

*Full steam ahead at Rink Rat

St. John’s, Nfld.-based Rink Rat Productions president Mary Sexton reports major activity out of her production house. With the feature Violet nearing completion and the Rink Rat-produced television special Ron Hynes: The Irish Tour set to premiere on ctv on St. Patrick’s Day, Sexton says she and her colleagues are never content with resting.

Currently in the works at Rink Rat is a talk show spoof known as Town Beat!, based on the CBC Radio show The Great Eastern. Sexton, who will produce, hopes for 13 episodes of the series being developed for cbc Atlantic. She will seek the backing of Telefilm and various corporate sponsorships to make Town Beat! happen. The cbc’s Jim Byrd will executive produce the series, which Sexton projects will have a $300,000 per episode budget.

Sexton also foretells of a one-hour documentary called 11:11. Developed with money from Telefilm and the cbc, 11:11 will feature the songs of Ron Hynes from his album of the same name, to be sung by 11 women – five from Newfoundland and six from Ireland. Sexton says she is hoping to sell the special to rte in Ireland, having already sold The Irish Tour to the network. The projected budget for 11:11, says Sexton, is in the ball park of $350,000.

Also in the works are two new screenplays being written by Rosemary House, Sexton’s close friend and colleague, who served as the writer and director of Violet. The first is a project House relishes, as it delves into one of her favorite fictional genres – the murder mystery.

‘I’ve read a million of these murder-mystery-in-a-country-house books and I’ve always thought one of these days I’ll have to put all of the time [spent reading] to use,’ says House. ‘It is more of a psycho murder mystery, but it has all of the elements of everybody gathered together in one place.’

Old Sins (working title) is the story of a man who after suffering a nervous breakdown is put up in a resort for a month on the tab of a wealthy friend. He spends the month alone, relaxing and getting his head together, but on the day he is supposed to leave, a group of American tourists come to the resort. Someone is murdered during the evening and the mystery begins.

A second project from the pen of House is The Battery. House says it will be a romantic comedy, a la The Odd Couple, where two men (one recently divorced and one a confirmed bachelor) share a very dirty abode. They hire a cleaning lady, whom both men end up falling in love with.

House says she is halfway through a script for Old Sins, while The Battery is still in the treatment stage. She hopes both projects will be ready to begin production in the vicinity of 2001.

Meanwhile, House has begun editing on a project very close to her heart. Tommy: My Brother, My Sister is a one-hour documentary about Mary’s brother Tommy Sexton, a founding member of codco who died of aids in 1993. Mary says the doc will be completed for Dec. 13, the seventh anniversary of Tommy’s death. She is hoping the special will air on cbc.

*Animated copro at Companion

st. John’s, Nfld. producer Sharon Smith is gearing up to be a coproduction partner on the new animated feature Shelagh NaGeira. A coproduction between Ireland’s Fred Wolf Films and Smith’s Companion Films, Shelagh NaGeira is based on a Newfoundland legend.

The legend is that of an Irish princess, Shelagh NaGeira, who is abducted by British pirates. She falls in love with one of the pirates and settles with him in Newfoundland.

Aimed at a family audience, Smith says NaGeira is a character children can look up to.

‘There are lots of stories of her being politically active and a heroine and having one of the first children here in Newfoundland,’ says Smith.

Although the story may sound a little adult on paper, Smith assures there will be some special surprises for the kiddies, including leprechauns and enchanted animals.

With the budget yet to be finalized, Smith says the producers are looking to the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation and Telefilm Canada for financial support. She is hoping for some Irish money to help out as well.

Smith is currently writing the treatment and hints at a possible codirectorship between Fred Wolf and Companion’s John Vatcher, although nothing is concrete at this early stage.

Smith is also working on a one-hour documentary with St. John’s-based NewfAngled Films called Seeking Vinland. Smith, who plans to direct, says the film will be a multi-disciplinary performance special. She is currently working on the poetic narrative for the story.

Seeking Vinland will retell the story of the Vikings discovery Newfoundland through dance sequences to be shot in Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland. A suite of music will be written for the piece.

*Spring shoot for doc?

Sharon Halfyard of St. John’s-based Curzon Village Production is currently in development on a one-hour documentary called Artists and Adventures. The ‘modestly budgeted’ project will be directed by Halfyard and focuses on two unlikely friends bonded by art and the wilderness.

The film is about Bill Ritchie, a young artist in the mid-1970s who had always wanted to live a life of solitude. He moved to northern Labrador to learn the art of self-sufficiency. While in Labrador, he met an Inuit gentleman named Gilbert Hays, whom he made a pact with: Bill would teach Gilbert about art and Gilbert would teach Bill about surviving in the wilderness. Over the years, the two collaborated on artistic projects and their friendship endured.

The documentary will be about their friendship, their work together and, of course, their adventures in the wilderness, say Halfyard. She hopes to flesh out the film by doing some simple re-enactments from instances in their lives, and from collected film footage and photographs taken over the years.

She says Vision tv is very interested in the film and contributed development money, along with the Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation and Telefilm. Halfyard says shooting wasn’t scheduled to get underway until September, however, all of the participants in the film, including Hays and Ritchie, are anxious to get started and filming may begin as early as April.

*Looking for a new home

The Global Television Network has cancelled Abrams Media’s The Blue Rainbow after its coming season. St. John, n.b.-based producer Greg Abrams says this is due to Global cutting back on its children’s programming, leaving The Blue Rainbow without a home. Abrams, whose involvement with the series dates back to 1995, says he is currently shopping the more than 100 episodes of the series around, focusing more on the distribution of existing episodes rather than producing new material.