Vancouver: A quartet of MOWs based on the stories of Mary Higgins Clark will wrap back-to-back (to-back-to-back) production in Vancouver Dec. 3. Production began Sept. 3.

Produced as an interprovincial coproduction by Saskatoon’s Edge Entertainment and Vancouver’s Waterfront Pictures for PAX TV and CanWest Global (with an array of international presales), the Suspense Theatre anthology, as it’s being called, features $2.8-million adaptations of We’ll Meet Again, He Sees You When You’re Sleeping, Before I Say Goodbye and A Crime of Passion each at $2.8 million.

We’ll Meet Again, with its planned November airdate, just wrapped, with Laura Leighton (Melrose Place), Brandy Ledford (Baywatch) and Anne Openshaw (Narc) in the leads. Done for this Yuletide season, the Christmas-themed He Sees You When You’re Sleeping was just prepping at press time and no cast was signed.

Bruce Cohen Curtis and Lance Robbins, who secured the rights to the stories, share executive producing credits with Edge’s David Doerksen. The partners have options to do six more MOWs in 2003, another six in 2004 and a 22-episode series.

This group of Higgins Clark mysteries is a different deal than the six MOWs produced by executive producers Sonny Grosso and Larry Jacobson in Toronto last year.

Spirit of the game

Little War takes its inspiration, not to mention its anglicized title, from the spiritual aspects of the native game lacrosse. In the local $1-million feature, an eight-year-old boy goes on a journey to find his dead parents, a story that is intertwined with a lacrosse tournament.

Little War was written by coproducer and director Damon Vignale (who produced Zacharia) and story edited by coproducer Andrew Hamilton, who hopes the story evokes comparison to features such as Billy Elliot. While some funding will come from British Columbia Film, the financing is mostly private, says Hamilton. Shot on 16mm, the producers expect to bump up the final edit to 35mm. Delivery is scheduled for the spring in time for Cannes and other festivals.

Naughty, not nice

Bardel Entertainment has sold the international distribution rights for its half-hour animated family special The Christmas Orange to L.A.-based B. Wooding Media. The story about a boy who gets only one orange instead of the 600 toys he requested from St. Nick and decides to sue, will air on Teletoon in Canada later this year.

Based on the 1998 book by Canadian writer Don Gillmor, the production features watercolor illustrations by Marie-Louise Gay that required Bardel to develop new techniques blending Flash with traditional 2D animation.

B. Wooding also represents Silverwing: The Series for Bardel.

For effect

After 25 years of trailblazing in the West Coast’s film and television industry, Thomas FX Group has reinvented itself.

The longtime coordinator of special effects and stunts is now a supply centre of special effects gear, including: equipment to create wind, rain, snow and fog; pyrotechnics for simulated explosions; fall pads and dummies for action sequences; motion bases to simulate the movement of large objects such as cars, buses, and airplanes; and so on.

Also on hand is a large inventory of expendables and production supplies, from fake blood to custom-made windows and glass objects that shatter without harming performers.

The renovated North Vancouver facility offers a fabricating shop where technicians can assemble their own effects and stunts and a visual effects soundstage with prelit green and blue screens.

‘Previously, the company was competing with its own customers, now it will dedicate all of its resources to helping its customers to become more effective and more successful,’ says John Quee, an executive coach whom company founder Betty Thomas recruited to help guide the change in business.

‘The business has been transformed into a place where industry professionals will be comfortable dealing with people who understand their needs, and who are committed to supporting them 100%,’ he says.

Says Thomas: ‘Special effects and stunts are very important parts of the film industry in B.C., and we are fully committed to remaining a presence at the heart of it.’

You are what you eat

Deconstructing Supper, a one-hour documentary by Vancouver filmmaker Marianne Kaplan (Songololo: Voices of Change) and producer Leonard Terhoch, explores the world of genetically modified foods.

The $370,000 documentary is hosted by Vancouver celebrity chef John Bishop and will air Oct. 24 on VisionTV. According to the producers, Bishop’s odyssey ‘takes viewers on an eye-opening and engaging adventure into the billion-dollar battle to control global food production, unraveling fact from fiction, and information from disinformation.’

Kaplan is also cowriter with Merrily Weisbord. Kirk Tougas is DOP.

Open for business

Producers at Davie Pictures celebrate their first anniversary in October as makers of films of, as they say, ‘social bite and critical edge.’ Cari Green, Aerlyn Weissman and Harry Sutherland have combined their skills and resources since October 2001, with Weissman’s 60-minute censorship documentary Little Sister’s vs. Big Brother providing the most recent bite and edge for broadcasters Pridevision and Global.

Solidifying the trio’s rep for long-form docs, Madame President is a one-hour for CBC Newsworld and RDI about Vaira Freiberg, a retired Canadian professor who is president of Latvia. Directed by Zoe Dirse, Madame President is set for release in January.

In development are Web Cam Girls, a one-hour pilot for W Network, and 100% Woman, a one-hour for The Documentary Channel about transgendered mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq.

The trio is working on some drama projects with international coproducers from the Philippines, Japan and the U.S.

Short stories

The 30 Second Guaranteed Foolproof Ancient Cantonese Method wrapped three days of shooting Sept. 23. The 10-minute black comedy, shot on 16mm, features actor Colin Cunningham (Beggars and Choosers) as a man who seeks a stop-smoking remedy from a Chinese herbalist.

Producer Robyn Wiener says the ‘less than $10,000’ project is ambitious for a short film, with eight locations in busy Chinatown, a bus, 12 cast, 35 crew and visual effects.

Robert Holbrook, who financed the production, is also writer and director (when he’s not a boom operator at IATSE 891).

* Unrecoverable Error, written by local Tim Carter, wrapped nine days of production in Vancouver and Chilliwack Sept. 22. The 22-minute Titan Pictures comedy-drama tells the story of a disaffected 30-year-old graphic designer whose life is teetering on collapse when God e-mails him with an offer to be a new-style prophet.

Brad Sivhon, Michael Kopsa, Melissa Poll, Zahf Paroo, Doug Abrahams, Shannon Jardine and Toren Atkinson star in the $8,000 HD project. Bob Fugger directs, Andre Fernandes is DOP, Denise Foxall art directs and Michael Patience produces. Delivery is scheduled for March 2003.

* A Good Day for Pie is a $4,500, five-minute comedy by first-time filmmakers Martin Warkentin, (cowriter/producer) and Bruce Harms (cowriter/director). The 16mm film about a guy who eats pie wrapped Sept. 23 after shooting in Abbotsford, Chilliwack and Mission, east of Vancouver. Adam Cosby stars.

Kudos

Access Challenge, a documentary about disabled hikers climbing the Cascade Mountains, won a Silver Hugo award at the Chicago International Film Festival last month. Knowledge Network and SCN commissioned the one-hour by producers Mehdi Ali and David Ozier of Burnaby-based Fountain Production.