Vancouver: Service producer Legacy Filmworks of Vancouver may scare up its first episodic drama series if the one-hour pilot Haunted raises the right network interest.

Legacy chief Deboragh Gabler, who is normally busy with U.S. network MOWs, says the UPN/CBS/Viacom production is about a private investigator who survives a near-death experience only to emerge from the trauma with the ability to see dead people who can help him solve crimes.

Fourteen days of production began April 1. No cast was set at press time.

Actually, brain injuries seem to be the theme for U.S. network series this year. Haunted joins the USA/Lions Gate series Dead Zone that began production March 18 on the story about a guy who emerges from a long coma with the ability to read the future. And of course, these series cement Vancouver’s reputation as the location of choice for series about strange goings-on – as seen with The X-Files, Millennium, Poltergeist, Mysterious Ways, Jeremiah, Taken, Dark Angel…

Some people say it’s the rain.

Now, also in production is John Doe, mentioned ever-so-briefly in the last B.C. Scene. This one-hour dramatic pilot for Fox is about a mysterious man who wakes up from an accident with the ability to know everything about everything – except who he is. If the series goes into production, he’ll spend the season using his omniscience to piece together the details of his life and audition for U.S. game shows. (OK, I made that last bit up.)

Dominic Purcell (BeastMaster) stars and Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker) directs. Production wraps April 5.

They even shot love

Paperny Films, the West Coast specialist in reality programming, launches Singles on Life Network on April 9. The 13 half-hours chronicle the lives of 11 single Vancouverites in their quest for love.

‘For five months beginning last summer, we had amazing access to the lives of each of our very different characters,’ says producer Stacey Offman. ‘They let us film them preparing for dates, sometimes even on their dates. We met their friends, lovers, parents and exes. We heard about what they hoped for, what they were afraid of, and how it all turned out. And each one told their own story to the camera.’

Pnina Bloch and Audrey Mehler direct, while David Paperny is the executive producer.

Size matters

Vancouver’s Sextant Entertainment is in preproduction with its biggest show yet – the $40-million, four-hour ABC miniseries Dreamkeeper.

Production on the Hallmark/Sextant ‘event’ that tells a series of Native American legends through the eyes of three generations of Native Americans, begins May 6.

Previously, Sextant and Hallmark made ABC’s miniseries Snow White, which premiered in March.

All dolled up

Success for the direct-to-video production Barbie in the Nutcracker is enough for Mattel to return to computer animation company Mainframe Entertainment for a curtain call.

Barbie as Rapunzel will feature the voice of Anjelica Huston as the evil stepmother Gothel and Cree Summer as Penelope the dragon. Kelly Sheridan returns as the voice of Barbie. Owen Hurley, who directed Barbie in the Nutcracker, will also direct Barbie as Rapunzel.

The video, in which Barbie portrays an artist who paints her way out of the castle tower to save her beloved prince, is scheduled for a fall 2002 release.

Barbie in the Nutcracker, named best animated video premiere movie at the 2001 Video Premiere Awards, was made using motion-capture sequences of principal dancers from The New York City Ballet.

Byte sized

Bardel Animation, a traditional animation studio in Vancouver, is going digital with the addition of a Flash department and a 3D Maya department.

‘Traditional animation is by no means dead,’ says Bardel’s president Barry Ward. Bardel is starting work on its fourth feature film with DreamWorks SKG in mid-March.

‘It’s alive and well and living digitally,’ he says. ‘The traditional skill set of our animators… is readily portable to a digital format and essential for quality 3D and Flash animation.’

Bardel has developed a proprietary 2D/Flash hybrid ‘pipeline’ with which it is producing three CBC specials called Stories from the Seventh Fire, which are based on ancient Cree legends. Bardel did the first Seventh Fire special in traditional 2D in 1999.

The National Film Board is partially funding the three new specials.

Bardel is also working with Maya on four CD-ROMs for Disney Interactive based on the Buzz Lightyear and Winnie the Pooh properties.

Walks like a duct

Vancouver’s Avrio Filmworks has acquired the U.S. and international distribution rights to the $4-million film Duct Tape Forever produced by S&S Productions in Toronto. Based on the popular Red Green Show, Duct Tape follows Red Green and his nephew to a duct tape contest in search of prize money to save Possum Lodge.

West Coast environment

Sometime this summer, CKVU 13 will become CITY TV Vancouver, the station’s sixth brand in as many years, and the new identity will be launched officially with the fall season in September. It’s expected the change will be accompanied with a shift to younger demographics, more local, urban programming, and higher energy. The fall season will feature the addition of 4.5 hours of news per week and 12 hours of local non-news programming, six of which are multicultural.

Doc talk

Vancouver journalist Sue Rideout has completed the one-hour documentary Depression: Fighting the Dragon. Produced for CTV’s Louise Clark, Dragon explores the growing problem of depression and the scientific search for cures. Knowledge Network, Saskatchewan Communications Network and Canadian Learning Television are also involved along with the usual government suspects.

* How the Fiddle Flows is a one-hour documentary about the roots of Metis culture and the people keeping it alive. It’s written and directed by Metis Greg Coyes, executive produced by Kirk Shaw and produced by Leigh Badgley and Ava Karvonen. It’s coproduced by the NFB and is set to air on Bravo!, APTN, Access, SCN and Knowledge Network.

* Vancouver director Robert Chesterman has turned his 1997 television documentary McGill Mahler Montreal – about students in the McGill Symphony Orchestra tackling Mahler’s daunting Fifth Symphony – into the first DVD released by a Canadian orchestra. Newly named Youth Magic and Mahler, the disc was manufactured at Vancouver Video Publishing Group and Pinewood Sound, with digital assistance from Sharpe Sound.