There’s a hippo in the bathtub at Halifax’s Cage Digital, but this one won’t be slipping down the drain out of sight of Canadian children. Cage president and CEO Jan-Peter De Souza assures they’ll know all about The Hippo Tub Co. come fall.

The Hippo Tub Co., a 3D animated kids show to air on CBC, coproduced by Cage and Evening Sky of L.A., is based on the popular children’s album by Canadian crooner Anne Murray.

‘Basically it was born out of an idea of Bob Fortier’s [founder of The Animation House, a Toronto production company owned by Evening Sky],’ says De Souza. ‘It’s a character-based series, and these characters live in a place called Drainworld where all lost things accumulate. When you lose a sock in a dryer or a set of keys they go to Drainworld. The characters are the guardians and keep inventory. Each story involves them finding a unique item and trying to return it to its rightful owner.’

He says there are five principal characters in the series, with about 30 to 50 secondary characters and a number of different sets and environments.

Budgeted at $5 million for 26 11-minute episodes (or 13 x 30), Cage is currently working on the first two seasons of Hippo.

De Souza estimates 40 of the 50 fulltime staffers at Cage are working on the show. He says all the animation is being done in a 3D format in-house at Cage, primarily using Discreet’s 3D Studio Max software.

Originally, Hippo was to be 2D, but a few words from De Souza and company created excitement about the prospects of a 3D show.

‘It started as a 2D traditional show, but we were able to convince all the players involved that we could do it using 3D toolsets and still give it a hand-drawn 2D look, so the style of the show is very unique,’ says De Souza. ‘Even though it is done in a 3D domain, the characters still look hand-drawn and it is kind of interesting that way.’

The project was financed mostly by the partnering companies using tax credits and licence fees. The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and Shaw Communications also contributed.

MacKenzie gets Deep with Granelli

It’s taken seven years, but Colin MacKenize has finally checked his 52-minute documentary Deep Beats – about the life and career of Halifax jazz drummer Jerry Granelli – into post.

Nearly a decade ago, MacKenzie and a friend met Granelli after a performance and were immediately inspired to document his talents and philosophies. The drummer seemed amicable to the idea and work began on a film about the respected jazz musician, whose life and outlook was changed through his discovery of Buddhism.

The pair shot footage of Granelli for about two years, before running out of money. MacKenzie’s partner became frustrated and jumped ship, but MacKenzie still wanted to get one more set of shots of the musician.

‘I decided there was one thing I wanted to do and that was spend a day with Jerry at a drum kit and talk to him about drums and have him play,’ says MacKenzie. ‘So I set up this one-day shoot and shot it all on 16mm. I hardly had any money – about $1,500 – and then parked all the film in my fridge for about four years.’

Deep Beats (then only 15 minutes in length) was filed into the back of MacKenzie’s mind until a local jazz festival got wind of it and contacted the director about screening the film to coincide with a Granelli performance.

‘I had another $1,500 to $2,000 I had earmarked for something else, and I took [the festival invitation] as some sort of sign that I had to do this,’ says MacKenzie. ‘I spent the money on processing and edited it together and screened it at the jazz festival on the night of the show. That same night, the programmer from the Atlantic Film Festival was there and she said I should submit it to the film festival in Halifax.’

With renewed faith in the film’s potential, MacKenzie went back to work. He enlisted the help of friend and co-executive producer Jan Nathanson.

With her encouragement, MacKenzie, under the prodco banner Badadoom, managed to raise $200,000 through licence fees, starting with Vision TV. CBC Maritimes, SCN and CLT also came on board.

Additional funding came in from the Independent Film and Video Fund, the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation, the Nova Scotia Arts Council, Rogers Documentary and Cable Network Fund, Canada Council and CAPCO.

MacKenzie continued to shoot Granelli’s story all over the world, as the musician has roots in Berlin, San Francisco and New York as well as the Maritimes.

He expects to deliver the completed doc to Vision in August. He says there will be a slightly longer cut available to screen at festivals in the fall.

In addition to the film, the collaboration between MacKenzie and Granelli has extended into the music world. As co-owner of Halifax-based Perimeter Records, MacKenzie has released two of Granelli’s records and says it is likely Granelli will venture back into the studio to record some original music for the film’s soundtrack.

Tsosu Kay and Klassen

Halifax-based writer Ed Kay has teamed with his new bride and fellow scribe Judy Klassen to launch Tsosumi Productions, where the ideas seem to be flying off the printer at a furious rate.

While the projects Tsosumi (pronounced ‘so sue me’) has in the works are very much at the concept stage, Kay and Klassen are hoping to strike up some development deals at this month’s Banff Television Festival.

Kay, one of the cocreators of Collideascope Digital Pictures’ Ollie’s Under The Bed Adventures and the head writer and supervising producer on Salter Street Films’ The Itch, says he and Klassen incorporated Tsosumi to better manage their writing endeavors. In addition, he says, working on The Itch has given him a taste for the production side. ‘Forming a production company seemed like a logical next step.’

Among the projects Kay and Klassen will be pitching at Banff is Revisioning Mann, a sitcom about a three women ‘bound by friendship and the pursuit of non-conformity.’ Led by a struggling standup comic named Adrienne Mann, the women use men as muses for their varied artistic escapades.

Kay says while the show is geared toward a female audience, men should also get a kick out of it.

Another project is Hand Jobs, which lampoons the entertainment industry. It is a dark comedy featuring two puppets who used to be the sidekicks of a well-respected TV star who is abusive and just plain nasty when the cameras stop rolling. Tired of the stresses of the job, they pitch ideas to various networks and finally score their own cable show.

‘It’s a low-budget puppet show, so that is part of the aestethic,’ says Kay, who is flirting with the idea of doubling as a puppeteer on the series. ‘The puppets are kind of archetypes of Casey and Finnegan [Mr. Dressup], and Jerome and Rusty [The Friendly Giant], so they don’t have a lot of moving parts. It’s actually what they say that is the entertaining aspect of it, but they are very funny-looking puppets.’

Another series, 7 & 30 X 4, puts a new spin on the show-within-a-show genre.

‘Since I left This Hour Has 22 Minutes to do The Itch I’ve been looking for a project that will indulge my penchant for political humor, because I do really miss doing that,’ says Kay. ‘This would be a show about a political satire show. You would have these four hosts on a desk doing this satirical, political commentary, and then we go back stage and see the infighting that goes on amongst the cast and producer when they are not on stage.’

Kay says this project would likely have a larger budget than Hand Jobs, and would also have a more universal appeal despite the Cancon.

‘There is the comedic element to it that takes you behind the curtain to see what is really going on back stage and still allows us to make commentary on Canadian politics,’ says Kay.

In the meantime, the writer/producer has no immediate plans to drop his day jobs on The Itch and Ollie’s.

Omission

Astral Media was among the financial backers of imX communication’s digital feature series, seats 3a & 3c, reported on in the May 14 Atlantic Scene. *