A bit of cash is always a good thing, and as the winners of the 2007 Telefilm Canada Pitch This! competition and bearers of a giant $10,000 cheque, writer/director Jim Goodall and producer Paul Lenart joked that their victory allows them to ‘eat and sleep for a week without having to worry about a job.’

But some things are better than a cheque that won’t fit through the door, added Goodall.

‘The best part about it is we’ve been able to show our project to 200 people,’ he says. ‘The money is great, and it will certainly help us develop the project further, but we want to raise awareness about it. From your head to the screen there’s a lot of difficulties in between, and this is a huge step.’

Goodall and Lenart pitched Giantland, a ‘live-action/animation eco-story’ which uses an animation technique so new that it doesn’t yet have a name. It’s a blend of live action, CG, puppetry, motion capture and classical painting developed by Budapest-based animation team Erik Novak and Aron Gauder of Lichtof Productions, producers of the Oscar-nommed animated feature Nyocker! (The District!).

Goodall and Lenart met the duo when The District unspooled at TIFF two years ago. ‘I hooked up with them and we started developing other projects,’ said Lenart.

Their first collaboration using the technique is a feature currently in production called Egill, the story of a 10th-century Icelandic poet by that name. The duo used a clip as a sample for the Giantland pitch.

Giantland is about 12-year-old Jeremy and his pesky little sister Louise and their adventures after accidentally falling through the kitchen drain into a land of earth-loving giants who are being hunted by polluting humans.

For kids it’s a straight-up adventure tale, while adults get to chew over an allegory about environmentalism and the world we live in. Though given that — spoiler alert! — the kids save the world and solve the grown-up dilemmas in the end, it’s not all doom and gloom.

‘You will see Giantland in the theater, soon, we promise. We’re going to be working on it,’ Lenart pledged upon accepting their prize on Tuesday.

Indeed, two previous Pitch This! winners — Amal from 2005 and Poor Boy’s Game from ’01 — are unspooling at the festival this year. A third, Anthony Del Col’s comedy Outsourced from ’06, is in development.

The pair had some tough competition, with 75 hopefuls applying for just six spots on the stage.

Other presenters were Geoff Redknap and Katie Weekley with their witty horror/comedy The Auburn Hills Breakdown, in which the chainsaw-wielding maniac is the hero; the romantic comedy The Engagement Pact from brothers Daniel and Steven Shehori; Shelly Hong and Soo-won Lee’s revenge drama Swallow; and the human trafficking tale Invisible City, from Adnan Ahmed.

The catchiest slogan (‘Twenty is the new eighty’) came from Mona Waserman and Peter Reynolds’ Senior Year, whose plot, about a young man posing as his grandfather to gain entry to a retirement home for the free room and board, was outlined by thesp Howard Jerome (Puppets Who Kill, Lucky Number Slevin).

‘It’s okay if you call me a miserable old son of a bitch,’ Jerome hammed, ‘because that’s what I am.’