Vancouver: With most of British Columbia on high alert, Kelowna, under drifts of ash like the second coming of Mount St. Helens and thousands of families being evacuated from their burning homes, the $160,000 Canadian feature Ill-Fated had to avoid living up to its name.

The comic-tragedy feature, which wrapped a month of production Aug. 31, shot in the Hat Creek Valley near Cache Creek with the huge Ashcroft fire as a backdrop.

According to Ill-Fated’s unit publicist Hope Kubryn, locations where the crew worked one day were engulfed in flames the next.

A Hare Krishna lakeside camp, where the crew hoped to return for other scenes, was lost to the fire and forced the production to scramble to find a safer lake. For the last two weeks of production, cast and crew were on evacuation alert and working in areas that, while safe, were being strictly monitored by fire authorities. During shooting, wind changes would sprinkle ash.

Writer/director Mark A. Lewis (The Junkie) and DOP Pieter Stathis had to frame shots to avoid getting the fire in the background. Trucks rented for production were commandeered for the fire effort.

‘The production tried to be low-key and not cause problems for the firefighters,’ says Kubryn. The shoot, she says, captured much of the beauty of the region that has since been erased by fire.

Ill-Fated is about a young man desperately trying to escape his surroundings. Asks the filmmaker: Can someone be ill-fated due to circumstances?

The feature stars Peter Outerbridge (Kissed), Bill Croft (Excess Baggage), Paul Campbell (Peacemakers), Nicki Clyne (Battlestar Galactica), script co-writer John Callander (Dark Angel), Howard Siegel (Jinnah: On Crime), Jane Sowerby (Jane Post) and Jennifer Copping (See Grace Fly).

Kulchera Matson, Andre Garrison and Paul Armstrong produce and editor is Robert Neilson.

Sara Shaak, film commissioner for the Okanagan Film Commission in Kelowna, has evacuated her own home.

With the back country in Kelowna off-limits, a commercial and a Swollen Members music video have been disrupted, but a Canadian independent feature is still considering Kelowna for a location in September, she says.

‘People seem to have the opinion that the area is obliterated,’ says Shaak, ‘but so far the fire has not affected the visual appeal of the valley.

People will be returning to their homes [soon] and it should soon be business as usual.’

Vicci Weller, executive director of film at the Thompson Nicola Regional District in Kamloops, says it is hard to scout locations, personnel have been pulled from the film commission and political decisions have been postponed because of the fire crisis. The U.S. feature Deep Water, she says, continues to be in prep for a Sept. 15 start date.

Featured features

Vancouver will be lit up In Living Color when the Wayans brothers – Keenan, Shawn and Marlon – return to the West Coast to shoot the comedy White Chicks, in preproduction for an October shoot. Shawn and Marlon dress in drag for their roles as undercover cops, directed by Keenan. Vancouver is home base for the Wayans’ Scary Movie franchise.

The Underclassmen, meanwhile, involves more undercover detectives, this time in a private school harboring car thieves. When production begins in Vancouver and L.A. in October, Nick Cannon (Drumline) and Vancouver actor Shawn Ashmore (X2) will star.

Finding Neemo

Vancouver’s Mercury Filmworks and Perfect Circle Productions hope to light up an expensive made-in-Vancouver animated feature called Edison & Neemo. Budgeted at $7 million, the film blends stop motion and 3D animation, inspired by inventor Thomas Edison.

In the story, which could go into production next spring, Edison not only faces the challenge of invention but also the challenge of being a father – the father of a son who, due to a tragic accident, has been both emotionally and literally electrified.

Perfect Circle producer Dean English (Kissed) sourced the story. Music video director William Morrison and James Dunnison (Stuff) will co-helm the project. Karen Powell (On the Corner) and Mercury’s Clint Eland will executive produce.

Forging ahead

Art History is a 23-minute twisty-turny pilot about three university students who stage an art heist. Production ran Aug. 21-24 in Vancouver.

Written and directed by Nick Bicanic and executive produced by Jason Bourque (Gold Star Productions) on spec, Art History has aspirations to be a feature film.

At press time, CBC and MuchMusic were considering the broadcast rights, say the show’s reps, who self-financed the fee-deferred shoot. Meanwhile, the producers are looking for Hollywood-style product placement endorsements. Retailer Off the Wall has sponsored the wardrobe.

Cast includes Dominika Wolski (The Uninvited), Martin Christopher, C. Ernst Harth (Scooby-Doo 2), Martin Novotny (The Funkhousers), Rachel Hayward (Cellmates), Hayden Baptiste (10.5) and Kenneth Gordon McIntyre (The Stickup).

Speak up

Voicebox Productions, founded in Vancouver in 1999 by Lana Carson, has made a lot of noise in the animation business.

In 2003, the voice production and casting business has done 52 episodes of Transformers Armada (Hasbro Entertainment), airing on Cartoon Network, the second season of Mucha Lucha with Warner Bros. Animation (which just got picked up for a third season by Kids WB! and Teletoon), the direct-to-video GI Joe-Spy Troops (Hasbro), the fourth and final season of Ed, Edd n Eddy for a.k.a. Cartoon, airing on Cartoon Network, and 26 episodes of the first season of Studio B Productions’ Yakkity Yak for Nickelodeon Australia and Teletoon. Other credits include Something Else and the third season of Yvon of the Yukon for Studio B.

Peace Arch piece

Vancouver’s Peace Arch Entertainment, though its Toronto-based subsidiary GFT Entertainment, has started production of Hollywood Flies in Saskatchewan.

Brad Renfro (The Job), Vinnie Jones (Snatch), Caprice Bourret (Nailing Vienna), Italian actor Bianca Guaccero and Antonio Cupo (The Lizzie McGuire Movie) star in the crime drama/black comedy, coproduced with Studio Eight Productions in London. IMAGO Film is the Italian coproducer.

Production began Aug. 5.