Winnipeg: For many in Manitoba, winter is a slow, cold season, but for Winnipeg’s Frantic Films, it has been busier than ever. The company’s live-action division currently has a feature and three doc series in post, and its doc/reality series Last Chance for Romance is now airing on Global.

Before Jamie Brown joined the company as CEO and executive producer in 2000, Frantic was focused on local, primarily commercial, animation and had eight full-time employees. Today the company has 70 full-time staff and has completed visual effects work for features including X2, Paycheck and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed. Frantic has also produced original series including Pioneer Quest: A Year in the Real West, Quest for the Bay, Klondike: The Quest for Gold and Quest for the Sea, as well as the MOW Zeyda and the Hitman (with Toronto’s Miracle Pictures).

Now the company is in post on its first feature, Lucid, from writer/director/producer Sean Garrity (Inertia). Brown produces and executive produces the thriller about an insomniac psychotherapist who unveils the mysteries of his own past while treating three patients with extreme cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The $1.7-million film, currently in post, shot in and around Winnipeg in fall 2004.

Frantic coproduces Lucid with Garrity’s Winnipeg prodco Bedbug Films. The film stars Jonas Chernick (The Eleventh Hour), Callum Keith Rennie (Flower & Garnet), Lindy Booth and Michelle Nolden. It will be distributed theatrically by Mongrel Media, with The Movie Network/Movie Central taking first broadcast window and CHUM second. Lucid received funds from Telefilm Canada, Manitoba Film & Sound and The Harold Greenberg Fund. Brown says they are hopeful the film will premier at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Also in post at Frantic is The First Year, an approximately $1-million doc-reality series for Life Network about the articling experiences of four law students. Brown is exec producer and produces with Lynne Skromeda. Thirteen half-hours, directed by Peter Findlay, started shooting in Toronto last summer and will follow the students over 12 months.

Meanwhile, the FX, commercial and year-old software divisions continue to surpass expectations.

‘The software division [Frantic Films Software] rolled out of our visual FX division quite organically as we’ve been working on projects,’ says Brown. ‘We’ve started selling one piece of software and are in negotiations with a very large company to bundle our second piece of software.’ Frantic’s Deadline, a rendering management system for VFX companies, is now on the shelves.

In December 2004, the FX division added a new office in Sydney, Australia, to existing offices in Winnipeg, Vancouver and L.A. Recent FX work includes Miramax’s Cursed, Alliance Atlantis’ Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Warner Bros.’ Catwoman.