Frantic Films CEO and executive producer Jamie Brown has some advice for those who want to get ahead in the highly competitive film and TV business. And some won’t want to hear it.

‘There is no way to achieve success in a 40-hour week,’ he says.

It is this outlook that has helped Winnipeg-based prodco and F/X house Frantic grow from a staff of eight or nine upon Brown’s arrival in 2000 to what it is today – a 60-staff operation with an office in Vancouver and one opening soon in Los Angeles.

‘We were a fledgling company, had lots of potential, but the only way to achieve it was to work our butts off – and you know that’s what the studios in the States expect,’ he says. ‘You don’t call them and say ‘Well, we’re mostly done, but you know, hey, it’s Friday and cottage time.”

For Brown personally, this level of commitment has also led to his winning the first-ever $5,000 Lions Gate Innovative Producer Award at the Banff fest.

Brown’s many accomplishments stand in contrast to his youthful photo. No Dorian Gray here – Brown really has done a lot by the age of 36. He began his career at Toronto law firm McMillan Binch, working in entertainment law and corporate financing. He moved over to Sullivan Entertainment in 1996 as director of business and legal affairs, managing the production and financing of projects including Wind at My Back and securing public funding.

Next it was on to Nelvana, where Brown oversaw the business and legal aspects of a slew of the animation prodco’s properties, developed programs and arranged international copro agreements.

Never one to stand still, Brown left for Credo Entertainment in 1999, where he created and coproduced the ‘living history’ series Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West. It is likely this project and its subsequent spin-offs that won over the producer award jury.

Anticipating the reality TV craze, Pioneer Quest monitored the progress of two ordinary couples that agreed to live for about 10 weeks in the manner of early Canadian prairie settlers. Brown also executive produced Kanadiana (2000), a quirky caper flick with Canuck cultural references that played the festival circuit.

Explaining his move toward the content side of the business, Brown explains, ‘When I was doing the entertainment law stuff, it seemed like the [production] executives got to do all the fun stuff. They got to go to France and New Orleans… And of course, everybody thinks they have a couple of good ideas and maybe some creative thoughts. Initially I just thought I could be a good executive, a good team player beyond strictly the legal [side].’

And as if his CV was not full enough, Brown is also a member of the Canadian Film and Television Producers Association Finance and Tax Committee and Industrial Relations Committee, is co-chair of the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association and has served as a member of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.

Now he finds himself at Frantic, a company with a range of interests as diverse as his own. It is not only a prodco with long-form and commercial divisions but is perhaps best known for its special effects work on blockbuster Hollywood films including Swordfish, The Core, X2 (as the main pre-viz supplier) and, most recently, The Italian Job.

Brown is a partner in Frantic along with president and creative director Christopher Bond and VP and producer Ken Zorniak. The latter two founded the company out of Bond’s mother’s basement in 1997, while business school grad Zorniak held down a job at a Safeway grocery store. Their big break was providing snow effects for the locally shooting 1999 Stephen King-penned MOW Storm of the Century, which earned Bond an Emmy Award nom.

While the focus of the original partners has been on the F/X side, Brown is the driving force behind the company’s live-action production.

‘They were looking for someone who might be able to introduce them to someone like a Nelvana or help them expand their opportunities,’ Brown says.

Brown continues to develop new ideas for the Quest series, as Frantic is in the process of trying to acquire full ownership of the property out of receivership. The latest installment is the four-ep Klondike: The Quest for Gold, in which a team of five participants recreates the 1890s gold rush by hiking and sailing to Dawson City to stake a claim and find gold. The program aired on History Television in February, was sold to a U.S. broadcaster and no doubt inspired Frontier House, a U.S. version airing on PBS.

Next on the slate is Quest for the Sea, which will bring two families with Newfoundland roots back to one of the province’s 1930s-era ‘outports,’ the 1,100 coastal, fishing-based communities that have mostly disappeared over the past half-century. The series begins principal photography June 22.

The Quest projects provide a case where Frantic can put in-house synergies to work, incorporating its own expertise in the effects field into the programs it is producing.

Frantic is striking out in new directions as well, by coproducing the CTV MOW Zeyda and the Hitman. The movie will be directed by L.A.’s Melanie Mayron, a cast member from Thirtysomething who has since helmed TV series including Ed and Dawson’s Creek. Frantic is also coproducing the $2-million feature Bedbugs, to be helmed by Sean Garrity (Inertia), and will be taking a six-part drama series to a broadcaster at Banff.

In other words, there is no end in sight to Brown’s hectic schedule.

‘I’m trying to figure out when I get to ramp back a little bit or slow things down,’ he says with a laugh. ‘But right now my busy-ness is all the kind of busy-ness you want to have.’

-www.franticfilms.com