Lions Gate among Bridge Studios bidders

Vancouver’s Lions Gate Studios and local land developer Terra Nova are among the bidders putting up a $50,000 deposit to file proposals to buy the B.C. government-run The Bridge Studios, notable for having the largest effects stage in North America. Bids were due Aug. 21.

The total number of bidders and the contents of their proposals are confidential, says Maureen Murphy, communications director for the Ministry of Competition, Science and Enterprise.

It’s widely believed that the McLean Group, owner of Vancouver Film Studios, has also filed a bid to purchase the studio, but representatives able to confirm the application were on holiday at press time.

Coriolis Consulting of Vancouver, which is evaluating the proposals, should make recommendations by the end of September, with the government deciding how to dispose of The Bridge after that.

The 15-acre site in Burnaby is assessed for property tax purposes at $13 million, though the profitable studio is expected to fetch a better price.

Spot-less in September

Following America’s lead, many Canadian broadcasters will go commercial free on Sept. 11 to air specials and memorials commemorating last year’s terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. But unlike last year, it won’t cost an estimated $3 million in lost ad revenue.

Network reps say rescheduling ads has so far been a painless job. ‘The clients have been quite understanding,’ says Ken Johnson, senior vice-president of media sales at Global Television. ‘A number of them had already requested to not be run on that day.’

Global’s programming includes three ad-free hours of coverage from Manhattan and the one-hour primetime special Facing the Century. CTV has a total of seven and half ad-less hours scheduled and CBC isn’t even running station breaks.

CBC spokesperson Ruth Ellen Soles says the network plans ahead for ad-free programming. ‘We put this in the same category as an election night…when it’s crucial to Canadians and we feel commercials would be not appropriate, it’s something we don’t even think about.’

Reduce, refuse, recycle

First, the bad news. Your movie did not get into the Toronto International Film Festival. You will not get to schmooze buyers or scarf down plates of free risotto at the parties. But on the bright side, maybe your under-appreciated masterpiece got into the National Salon des Refuses, the annual mini-festival made up of Canadian movies that didn’t make the cut for TIFF.

Back for its ninth year, the Salon presents two programs of nixed 16mm, 35mm and DV shorts on Sept. 10 at Toronto’s Innis Town Hall – including the 13-minute drama Blueberry by Regina filmmaker Brett Bell.

Out east, Steven James May is also screening films rejected by the Atlantic Film Festival. He started the Salon des Refuses Atlantique last year as a ‘feel-good reject pride kind of thing’ when his film The Festival is Gravy was left out of the East Coast fete. Atlantique screens its new crop of rejected films at Halifax’s Khyber Club on Sept. 12.

Both Salons are programmed by a lottery draw. Films are shown in the order that they are picked out of the hat.

Convergence in a Snap

Toronto new media shop Snap Media went international last month with the Australian debut of Degrassi: The Next Generation (Epitome Pictures) and its Snap-built Syndication Engine – a software package that manages Web content across time zones and shifting broadcast schedules.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is now airing season one of the popular teen drama and is driving viewers to a content-rich website (www.abc.net.au/degrassi), as is Canada’s CTV, which is entering season two (www.degrassi.tv). Both sites are managed from Toronto by the Snap Engine, which keeps track of TV programming in both countries and releases e-mails and Web pages accordingly.

‘It serves multiple audiences simultaneously and invisibly,’ says Snap president and CEO Roma Khanna. ‘You’re on and you’re unaware that there are 70,000 other people on, all at different parts in the story.’

Snap handled all Degrassi Web content and 20 staffers built the Syndication Engine on a ‘seven-figure-ish’ budget in the year leading up to the 2001 series debut. It has been at work in Canada since then, managing season one content across six time zones.

Telefilm awards emerging Atlantic filmmakers

Four up-and-coming Atlantic filmmakers have received $15,000 each from Telefilm Canada, Atlantic Region as part of the Emerging Filmmakers Program, designed to promote the development of filmmakers from the four Atlantic provinces

The funds will go towards financing the following projects: Jason Buxton’s Drawing, Beverly Lewis’ Drive, Brian Heighton’s Quilts and Marcia Connolly’s Stella’s Room.

The selection jury included Ken Pittman of St. John’s-based Red Ochre Films; Deborah Carver, an independent producer from Nova Scotia; Sean Coyle of Cape Breton’s Virtual Media; and Renee Blanchar from New Brunswick.

Peace Arch unloads more debt

Vancouver’s Peace Arch Entertainment reduced its outstanding subordinated debt by $381,000 in August. Over the past 12 months, the company has paid back 94% of the original $7.9 million in subordinated debt and has a current balance of $493,000.

CFO Garth Albright, meanwhile, has left Peace Arch after 16 months on the job ‘to pursue other interests.’

Class A shares traded Aug. 26 on the Toronto Stock Exchange at $0.40 per share, compared to a year high of $3 and a year low of $0.30. Class B shares traded Aug. 26 at $0.35 per share, compared to a year high of $2.80 and a year low of $0.25.

TFC New Media deadline

Telefilm Canada has announced the next deadline for product and distribution assistance applications to the Canada New Media Fund is being extended to Sept. 23. This will be the last application deadline for fiscal 2000/03. The December deadline has been cancelled.

Telefilm has also issued a number of clarifications.

Applicants should note that all project phases previously funded by Telefilm must be completed before a project becomes eligible for subsequent phases.

For new media projects coupled with a TV program, any application to the fund must demonstrate broadcaster involvement. For the predevelopment and/or development phases, applications must include a broadcaster letter of interest for the allied program. For production and/or marketing phases, applications must include a broadcast licence agreement. For all phases, applications must include separate television program and new media budgets.

The list of non-eligible products has been extended to include linear and streaming content (music and video), catalogues or data bases and application software and system software.

In July, Telefilm announced funding support for 32 new media projects. The fund’s annual envelope is $9 million.

Zwaneveld wins prestigious German award

Ed H. Zwaneveld, assistant director of the National Film Board, is the 2002 recipient of the Oskar-Messter-Medal, a scientific achievement award presented at the recent Conference of the Society for Television, Film and Electronic Media Technology (Fernseh-und Kinotechnischen Gesellschaft) in Zurich.

The award is in recognition of Zwaneveld’s outstanding service in the area of film technology, and especially his initiatives and scientific contributions related to the protection and archiving of image media. He is the award’s first non-German recipient.

Zwaneveld’s work with the NFB has garnered much recognition and industry honours, including awards from SMPTE, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Oskar-Messter-Medal is named after Oskar Messter, a prominent film engineer and founding father of the German cinema industry.

You’ve heard of TIFF, what about TOFF?

If a couple of days after TIFF you find yourself suffering from film fest withdrawal, there’s always the 2nd annual Toronto Online Film Festival, running Sept. 16-18 at the downtown Indian Motorcycle Cafe. The fest will feature cutting-edge international shorts, features, docs, animation, commercials and music videos. Simultaneously, there will be technology seminars, exhibitions and panels involving manufacturers Adobe, Alias|Wavefront, Apple, Christie Digital, Discreet, ExTRA BYTES and JVC.

An opening-day panel will be hosted by Peter Broderick, president of Next Wave Films, an Independent Film Channel company that provides finishing funds to independent filmmakers. The Digital Gun Awards, honoring the best in a series of films shot digitally in the span of three days, will be presented on Sept. 18 at the Ontario Place Cinesphere.