The Playback Independent Production Survey ranks Canadian production companies based on the volume of the Canadian film and TV production they handle in a calendar year. As a compilation of home-grown production, it’s a valuable resource for everyone in the industry. The results are published in Playback‘s Spring/Summer 2012 issue.

To launch our 2012 survey, covering business activity in 2011, we’re profiling our first five respondents to hear about their year in 2011 and what’s on tap for 2012.

Timshel Pictures writer and director Justin Kelly says that the prodco’s main field of interest is in comedy.

So it makes sense that the one type of production they’d shelve their own projects for would be a big comedy special – maybe a Second City comedy special featuring, say, Martin Short, Fred Willard, Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy – which is exactly what the Timshel crew did.

The company supervised production for I, Martin Short, Goes Home (a Second City production, distributed by CBC), and were still able to crank out The Seder (pictured), a comedic short film written and directed by Kelly, produced by Timshel and Lifeforce Entertainment, and distributed by Lifeforce and Bravo!FACT.

Kelly says 2012 will bring more service production and more comedy – in the form of a web series that’s currently in development – and a feature film.

PB: Tell us about the year Timshel had in 2011: did you achieve the benchmarks for your business that you aimed for?

JK: Financially yes, creatively, no. From the “making connections” standpoint, we absolutely did. The three partners (Kelly, writer and producer Danny Mendlow, and producer Gerhard Gouws) in the company all worked on a comedy special (I, Martin Short, Goes Home) for the Second City starting Martin Short, Fred Willard and Eugene Levy, so we functioned in a service-production-style capacity.

The company made great money doing it, and we made wonderful connections. Our main field of interest is comedy television and comedy film, so partnering up and working for the Second City and such an incredible cast as we had, it was great. We far exceeded our goals in those terms.

However, because it was such an enormous undertaking, we were only able to do one of our own productions in 2011, and that turned out to be a short film, which will be hitting festivals [in the near future], The Seder.

PB: What were some of the highlights? Challenges?

JK: [Working on the special for the Second City], and The Seder was also a highlight. It was a great opportunity to work with some incredible people. The cast was stellar, the crew was great. Much of the crew also worked on I, Martin Short, Goes Home.

PB: What are some of your objectives in 2012? Are there any areas you hope to grow or expand in?

JK: We are doing a feature that is an enormous undertaking for us based on the subject matter – we’re restaging events in a live setting. It’s going to pose quite a few problems. There’s a good chance we’ll get arrested. It’s a really exciting piece.

It basically chronicles the year leading up to a big off-Broadway one-man show for a standup comedian. The show actually opens in March, so we’re shooting the ending first and then we’re going back and shooting the events leading up to it.

The shoot is in New York; it’s very exciting, we get to shoot a feature film in Manhattan, off-Broadway, in an ancient theatre. It’s currently an “untitled Aaron Berg project.” (The one-man comedy show Underbelly Diaries, written and performed by New York-based actor and comedian Aaron Berg opens March 22 in New York City).

Aside from that feature, and the shoot in New York for that feature, [we anticipate] more service production.

We’re also in development with Yuk Yuk’s for a web series based around their amateur night. It will be based on true stories that (Yuk Yuk’s founder) Mark Breslin has witnessed at the Yuk Yuk’s amateur night over the past 30-plus years. [It will be] web with potential second window television, and that’s called Amateur Night.