Montreal: VFX house Meteor Studios is producing 1,500 HD shots of the terrifying monsters that ruled the Earth tens of millions of years ago in the new four-hour doc series Dinosaur Planet.

The show is a round-the-world dramatic recreation of life in the time of the dinosaurs, with one of the main attractions being the creation of 25 new creatures never before revealed in primetime 3D animation.

Chloe Grysole, director of business development and a VFX producer with Meteor, says the animation texturing includes innovative segments with colorful feathers (as in raptors) and the reactive dynamics of primeval wind and muck.

Total production is 145 minutes worth of character animation and visual F/X.

Producers are L.A.-based Evergreen Films in association with Discovery Channel U.S. The series will be simulcast in the U.S. and on Discovery Canada Dec. 14 and 21.

The house is also producing the VFX, including 60 photo-realistic matte paintings, for The Great Warming, a three-hour Discovery Canada series on the impact of global-warming, produced by Montreal’s Stonehaven Productions and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio.

It also produced the cinematics (short, mood-animated film sequences) for the new adventure game The Hobbit, produced for Vivendi Universal/Sierra Games of Seattle, WA. The game cinematics are also part of the big-screen promotion for the next installment of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Dec. 17).

Meteor’s very first production, When Dinosaurs Roamed America, was nominated for an Emmy, but its biggest hit so far has been the creation of more than 60 VFX HD shots (15 minutes) for James Cameron’s Expedition: Bismarck, the two-hour Discovery extravaganza produced by Great Wight Productions of New Zealand and Cameron’s Earthship Productions.

Most notably, says Grysole, Meteor created 10 transition shots that dissolved from a fully CGI underwater environment and the Bismarck wreck into actual HD footage shot by the Cameron crew. The model of the wreck was perfectly faithful to its current state, both in terms of geometry and textures.

Meteor created some 120 shots for the three-hour Canada/U.K. doc series 21st Century Outbreak, about the effects of three killer viruses. The show was produced by Toronto’s CineNova Productions and the U.K.’s Wall to Wall Television for Discovery Heath Channel.

Meteor opened in early 2001 as a joint venture between Evergreen Films, LLC and Discovery Communications and now employs over 130. Pierre De Lespinois is president and co-owner of Meteor and CEO of Evergreen. A multiple Emmy winner, he also exec produced and directed on the Canada/U.K. HD series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne and produced and directed the action-adventure series The Challengers.

The Life of Smiley

VETERAN actor Carlo Essagian and DOP Neil Oakshott recently completed shooting on the 15-minute dramatic short The Life of Smiley, produced by Productions Eclipse and the first project produced under ACTRA Montreal’s Member Initiated Program.

Essagian, who plays Smiley and directed, has appeared in films such as The Score, Ararat and Gerard Pires’ Steal (aka Heist). Oakshott, who scripted and produced alongside Essagian, earlier produced/shot the 26-minute short Boning and Stuffing A Chicken: Based On a True Recipe.

Shot in and around Montreal with a D/9 camera and edited by Oakshott, Smiley is a thriller about a murdered top cop, the lowlife character who says he didn’t do it, Smiley, and his extremely manipulative lawyer/girlfriend. Cast includes Charles Doucet, Winston Wood, Pascale Devigne, Claudia Besso, who plays the evil lawyer, Neil Kroetch and Ilan Srulovicz. Actor and legendary Montreal DJ Dean Hagopian also appears.

Multitasking craft credits go to 1st AD Ivan Presser, PM Emily Newell, Erika Reyburn, Karine Bougie and veteran unit publicist Bram Eisenthal, the film’s associate producer.

ACTRA’s MIP program provides a framework for performers to develop characters they would otherwise never have a chance to do, and/or direct, write, produce and undertake ambitious roles.

The program allows the cast to also own a small stake in the film, with a 5% share held by the ACTRA Performers Rights Society. ‘It’s a great vehicle to showcase opportunities for actors. This allows me to be able to afford to hire myself,’ quips Essagian.

Eclipse has two or three other projects lined up, including a short film comedy and possibly a feature.

Montreal actor Michael Sinelnikoff, who plays Professor Summerhill in the Telescene-coproduced sci-fi series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, is slated to take on the role of an elderly painter in one of the upcoming shorts.

The producers are looking for distribution and late ’03/early ’04 festival dates for The Life of Smiley.

Barichello directs

Dans l’Oeil du Chat

PRODUCTION is underway for 21 days through to Aug. 11 on the Films Zingaro psychological thriller Dans l’Oeil du Chat, a first feature for director Rudy Barichello and the first theatrical production for L’Equipe Spectra.

Produced by Zingaro president Pierre Beaudry and based on a script by Marcel Beaulieu and Barichello, l’Oeil du Chat is the mysterious and erotic story of Pauline, a woman who leaves on holiday and never returns. Fiancee Simon receives news she has died while traveling in India. Later, he makes several disturbing discoveries while rummaging around Pauline’s apartment, and begins an affair with her best friend GeGe, all under the watchful eye of the dead woman’s hauntingly beautiful Abyssinian cat.

Leading players include Jean-Nicolas Verrault (La Turbulence des Fluides, Jack Carter) as Simon, Isabel Richer (La Loi du Cochon) as GeGe and Julie Le Breton in the role of Pauline. Pierre Lebeau (Seraphin), Louisette Dussault and Frederic Desager are also featured.

Crewed by the STCVQ, Steve Asselin is originating in Super 16mm film. Claude Marchand is the production designer and Michelle St-Pierre is PM.

Barichello is head of production and development at Dragone Films in Belgium. Franco Dragone is a longtime creative associate of Cirque du Soleil and directed the troupe’s international hit feature-length film Alegria, which Barichello produced.

Beaudry’s dramatic credits include the telefilm adaptations Les Sept Jours de Simon Labrosse and Cyberjack for ARTV/Radio-Canada and Bilan, an ambitious SRC/Tele-Quebec adaptation of the classic Marcel Dube play. Zingaro also produced Don Quichotte, Durocher le milliardaire, by the late Robert Gravel, and Michel Tremblay’s Albertine en cinq temps, a BTVF/Telefilm Canada winner in 2000.

Dans l’Oeil du Chat is budgeted at $1.5 million, with support from Telefilm, SODEC and Fonds Harold Greenberg. Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm anticipates a spring ’04 release, with broadcast presales to Astral Media pay-TV movie network Super Ecran and SRC.