Since its inception 15 years ago, the Banff Television Festival’s International Market Simulation has grown into a must-attend event that has spawned similar programs at various conferences around the world.

The Market Simulation offers producers the opportunity to pitch their projects to an international audience of programmers, financiers and buyers. Not only do producers get to suss out potential interest, but with ringleader Pat Ferns urging the international broadcasting reps to lay down some cash, anything can happen – including the producers’ dream of landing a development deal on the spot.

Following to p. B20 are some of the projects stepping up to the plate this year.

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The streets are packed and country music pounds from every pub: the Country Music Week in Edmonton is in full swing. Into this scene comes Nashville record producer Sam Sherman, who is hot on the trail of the unrecorded country star she knows only as ‘the kid.’

This is a view of Guitar Boogie, the Quick Pitch candidate for the first day of the Banff festival’s market simulation.

The 100-minute feature or tele-film is the story of a country music performer ‘who has not had the opportunity to become a star,’ says Australian producer Harry Yates of Land of Oz, and the talent scout who wants to change all that.

Edmonton may seem like a strange location for a project coming from Down Under. Writer Jill James (whose resume includes that greatest of Australian exports, teen soap Neighbours) discovered during her research that country music is the largest musical genre in the world, that it’s growing and that Edmonton was the site for this year’s Country Music Week.

James and Yates are bringing their fully developed screenplay to Banff in search of a production partner, their ideal being an Australian/Canadian coprod option. Funding from the Australian Film Commission is also a possibility, but the nature of the project means it would also work as a solely Canadian-financed project. ‘There are a number of scenarios,’ Yates says.

Meanwhile, the two are keeping busy on a variety of projects, including their current feature, The Blonde Wore Boots. The screenplay is based on two historical incidents in Australia during the Second World War. First, Bob Hope’s plane, returning to the u.s. after he had entertained the troops, crash-landed on the coast of Eastern Australia. Around the same time, three midget submarines penetrated Sydney Harbour, one of the few times the war actually came to Australia. Two of the submarines were destroyed and the third has never been accounted for.

These events have been transplanted to Canadian ground, as the plane carrying fictional entertainer Steve Diamond is forced to land on the Northern tip of Vancouver Island outside a tiny coastal village where he falls in love with a local, a woman involved in the local coast watch who is placed in danger when midget submarines come close to shore.

Land of Oz is also currently in preproduction on a project for Discovery Channel Worldwide involving the Australian chapter of a series of dramatic recreations on famous serial killings.