For 15 years Studio B Productions has built an international reputation with coproduction titles like Yvon of the Yukon, What About Mimi? and D’Myna Leagues. Even with that track record, the upcoming MIPCOM market is a coming-of-age milestone for the Vancouver animation house. This is the first time the company has launched a new, proprietary series all by itself.

Being Ian, a 26 x 30 animated series for nine- to 13-year-olds, about a kid who deals with his dysfunctional family through his cinematic imagination, will be introduced to international buyers, be the subject of an ad campaign in the industry trades, and will even get its own launch party at the Cannes trade fair, running Oct. 4-8.

Studio B usually sells its titles through coproduction partners, such as Toronto’s Decode Entertainment.

The US$6.5-million series debuts on YTV in January 2005 and has already sold to Barcelona-based Luk Internacional, which distributes in Spain. However, the goal at this MIP is to sell a key territory such as the U.K., France, Australia, Germany or the U.S., says Studio B partner Blair Peterson.

‘Our goal is getting the show on the right network,’ he says. ‘We want to sell some key territories and let momentum take hold. It’s really about getting people to believe in the series. We have high expectations that it’s going to take off. Licence fees and revenues will follow.’

He is also looking for copro partners. ‘The funding system necessitates finding coproducers,’ says Peterson, and MIP is a ripe environment to forge those deals. Studio B especially wants to woo producers from France, the U.K. and Germany with its development slate of other in-house projects, including My Pet Robot and Annie.

His company will take up space, along with 93 Canadian producers, in Telefilm Canada’s massive Canada Pavilion, which dominates the MIP trade floor.

Most go in with their eyes wide open to the ongoing challenge of lower average licence fees and tough international markets. Toronto-based 3J’s Productions will introduce its children’s program – the high-definition Nanalan’, a second-season CBC puppet series for preschoolers. The creators use storyboards but no scripts to keep the show fresh, innovative, and in tune with the wide-eyed awe of preschoolers. The series is produced in French and English.

Charlottetown-based producer Cellar Door Productions will also have a kids show, along with a new iteration of its successful cooking show Chef at Home. Its Doodlez interstitials (50 x 2) have already sold to Japan, Sweden, Australia, Latin America and Canada, notes president Gretha Rose, who will meet with potential coproducers for a half-hour version. With no dialogue, the series is ready for international sales, she adds.

Meanwhile, Chef at Home (26 x 30) is the latest Cellar Door production featuring chef Michael Smith. Launching on Food Network Canada in October, the series leverages the Smith brand created by earlier series including Chef at Large (52 x 30), The Inn Chef (65 x 30) and the hour-long Saturday Night and Mountain Magic. Rose expects to close a deal for the elusive U.S. market at MIP.

‘We build brands,’ she explains. ‘The U.S. deal generally helps cement a brand. It’s the opportunity to drive more merchandising and licensing deals. That audience reach is very important.’

Other Cellar Door properties include the documentary series Island Vets (8 x 30), based on the students, interns and doctors at the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown; and the one-hour doc Childhood Lost, about the 100,000 unaccompanied British children shipped to Canada as cheap labor between 1869 and 1930.

Toronto-based 100 Percent Film & Television will be at MIP to support the sales effort for its two seasons of The Newsroom, the comedy series sold by CBC International.

‘MIP is more of a place for distributors and buyers,’ says Peter Meyboom, a company partner with writer, director and star Ken Finkleman, ‘but it’s good to see what’s going on… what people are excited about this year.’

Meyboom says he has a slate of meetings, including potential coproduction pitches for his new CBC series The Imperial. He adds he actually signed a service contract with the BBC for an MOW about 9/11 last year, but the project was scuttled by management changes at BBC. He’s hoping to resurrect the project or other projects this year.

Toronto arts producer Rhombus Media will again be at MIP with an array of new titles. Beethoven’s Hair (one hour or 90 minutes) traces the unlikely journey of a lock of hair cut from Beethoven’s corpse, while unraveling the mystery of his tortured life and death. One-hour Shadow Pleasures is a dance piece written and narrated by Michael Ondaatje. Music from the Inside Out (one hour or 90 minutes) explores the musical experience through The Philadelphia Orchestra. Teardrops in the Snow (half-hour or one hour) is the ‘making of’ documentary of Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World.

Montreal’s Cineflix will offer up its successful documentary-drama hybrid with its second season of Mayday. With six new one-hours, the French coproduction has 12 episodes available for acquisition.

‘The first season of Mayday was one of the top-rated shows on National Geographic Channels International,’ says Cineflix CEO Glen Salzman. ‘We’ve found a way of telling history in a compelling way.’

The dramatic-nonfiction series about scientific investigations into notorious airline disasters takes viewers on board different flights in trouble, recreating the tension in the cockpit and cabin moments before the disaster. Episodes use news footage, interviews with key witnesses and computer graphics. The series also airs on Discovery Channel Canada.

Cineflix, meanwhile, has used the Mayday formula to produce the first six hours of True Crime Stories, which is a dramatic-nonfiction hybrid focussed on real murder investigations – blending cutting-edge science, real investigations and historical information with scripted re-enactments.

Likewise, Zero Hour (4 x 60), debuting on History Television in Canada in November, is a U.K. coproduction exploring the crucial moments leading up to iconic historical events by dramatizing the hour as it unfolds, minute by minute. A second season, with a $700,000-per-hour budget, is in production this fall.

Other Cineflix projects on offer are A Dog’s Life (10 x 30), a so-called ‘dogu-soap’ produced for Life Network about the rescue, rehabilitation and adoption of dogs near New York City; The Greatest Ever (8 x 60), an Irish coproduction about the 10 greatest marvels of science and technology; and The Ultimates (6 x 60) a technology series about the science of extreme speed and extreme power.

Winnipeg producer Jamie Brown of Frantic Films will have a format for sale at MIP. Last Chance for Romance (13 x 30), in post-production, will air on Global Television in October and is being sold by CanWest International Distribution. The series, in which couples at crossroads in their relationship travel to a Caribbean island for counseling with Toronto therapist Joe Rich, has branded segments including He Said-She Said and Remembering Romance, which help tell the story of why these people are together in the first place.

‘Audiences are open to stuff that is more constructive and less exploitive,’ says Brown. Frantic will also support its Quest series – Quest for the Bay, Klondike: The Quest for Gold, Quest for the Sea – and will talk up its new feature Lucid, which will wrap production in Winnipeg around the time of the MIP event.

Zone 3 of Montreal will also be selling a format. French-language series Wedding March (11 x 60) debuts on TVA in October. Contestants vie for a free wedding and $100,000 in the non-CAVCO series.