Vancouver: Executive producer Kirk Shaw started out in the audio recording business 14 years ago when he cofounded what would become Vancouver-based Insight Film & Video Production. Now he’s turning up the volume in another way, by boosting his 2004 production budgets to $29 million, up 45% compared to last year.

Driving growth is a new, six-picture, US$6-million deal with Los Angeles-based distributor Regent Entertainment, signed late last month. That deal is the third major contract at Insight for drama production, followed by the remains of a separate six-picture, US$6-million deal with Blockbuster started in 2003 and a backdoor pilot for Warner Bros. set to go in February.

For Insight, bolstered by a two-year-old partnership with Vancouver-based producer Shavick Entertainment (The New Addams Family), it means 10 MOWs on the schedule for 2004.

‘Managing the growth has been difficult,’ admits Insight president Shaw, who founded the company with Maryvonne Micale in 1990. ‘We could always use more people, but cash flow doesn’t allow for it. It’s been hard on our staff. We’ve been adding an employee a month.’

The first project in the Regent package is the US$1-million seasonal story Too Cool for Christmas, scheduled for spring production, followed by the disaster movie Superstorm, a script that sat on the Insight shelves for two years, and the earthquake movie Fault.

Insight and Shavick co-own the Canadian-content productions – mostly horror, sci-fi and thriller storylines. CHUM has the Canadian television rights.

The Insight-Shavick partnership was designed to minimize overhead and allow for collaboration on production, says Shaw, who met producer James Shavick as a co-panelist at a Vancouver International Film Festival Trade Forum talk in September 2001. The companies remain independent, with Insight employing about 25 people and Shavick about three, all of whom work at Insight’s offices in Vancouver.

‘We find it very easy to work together,’ says Shaw of the partnership, done on a handshake.

The business plan has been about creating volume, adds Shaw. The lower-budget productions for Blockbuster and Regent mean low margins for the producers. Shaw and Shavick take small fees up front to cover overhead, but have to wait for money from foreign market sales.

Shaw’s first foray into drama, after seven years of producing mainly documentaries, was the 2001 production of the sci-fi thriller Maximum Surge, starring Yasmine Bleeth and Walter Koenig, for Space and Movie Central.

Shaw’s first work in collaboration with Shavick was in 2002 with the productions of Killer Bees and Wildfire 7: The Inferno, made for PAX TV and Movie Central and distributed by Regent, that company’s introduction to Insight.

In 2003, Insight did Deep Evil (formerly Biohazard) and It Waits Below, the first MOWs of the Blockbuster deal, and the larger-budgeted Monster Island for MTV and corporate thriller Pursued, with Christian Slater, for Lions Gate/Artisan.

Blockbuster’s vampire movie Thralls (formerly Jugs) stars Lorenzo Lamas and goes into production Jan. 26, with supernatural thriller Canes, the ‘mutants in a high-rise’ movie Glass Trap and shark movie Blue Demon on deck.

In February, Insight begins Zolar for WB Kids, an action-oriented, backdoor pilot about extreme sports, for which Insight expects to handle the series.

‘We’ve been lucky,’ says Shaw. ‘The trick has been to get out of the Canadian funding system, which doesn’t make business sense. If you’re a production company that’s trying to build infrastructure, it’s hard to live on that [Canadian funding system]. That’s why we’ve been forced to go into the U.S. and foreign markets.’

The growth of the drama business has meant a decline in Shaw’s documentary business. According to Shaw, Insight did about 14 hours of documentary work in 2002, five hours in 2003 and is expected to produce only two to three hours of documentary in 2004, including Cuban Dancing Dreams, about a flamenco competition that can turn young Cubans into national superstars.

On the information programming side, Insight is wrapping the 10th season of automobile review series Drivers Seat (airing on Craig Media) and will start season 11’s 13 half-hours this spring.

Insight’s high-definition television adaptation of Ballet BC’s Dance of the Faerie Queen debuted on CBC Jan. 8. Insight, meanwhile, is bidding with multicultural M Channel to acquire B.C.’s Knowledge Network.

-www.insightfilm.com