Halifax-based Chronicle Pictures has a pair of new projects in development. The three-year-old production company gained some notoriety last year with a Gemini nomination for its first, and only project to date, December 1917, a half-hour drama for Global Television.

First up is a feature film called Touch and Go from first-time director and Chronicle partner Scott Simpson.

From the word processor of Nova Scotia playwright and screenwriter Michael Melski, Touch and Go is a dark romantic comedy set in Halifax about a group of friends just out of university and trying to figure out what to do with their lives.

The main character in the story is a guy who’s desperately clinging to his youth.

‘It is basically about him trying to find his place in the world and grow up a little at the same time,’ says Chronicle producer Graeme Gunn, who doubles as the company’s director of development and distribution. Chronicle execs Craig Cameron and Evangelo Kioussis are executive producing.

Development assistance came from Telefilm Canada and the Harold Greenberg Fund.

Gunn says they’re ‘tossing around’ the idea of finding a coproduction partner, but nothing has been confirmed. ‘It could happen,’ he says. ‘What we would probably do if we were to bring someone else on board is find an experienced executive producer with some good feature experience, but it will still be very much a Chronicle Pictures production.’

The film is budgeted at approximately $1.5 million and has been presold to TMN-The Movie Network and Superchannel.

Chronicle had planned to shoot the film this summer, but Gunn says it’s looking more and more likely that the first shooting day will be pushed back to early next summer.

In the meantime, Chronicle has hired a casting agent in Toronto and also has eyes on the look-out for cast in Los Angeles.

The second project in the works – a sci-fi series called Weaver – is very close to the heart of its creator/writer, Evangelo Kioussis, who has been laboring on the project for about five years.

The series follows the exploits of Julien Weaver, who on his 21st birthday acquires a mysterious black rectangle which has the ability to send him back in time, into space, and virtually anywhere a sci-fi freak has ever dreamed of being able to go. Although he is reluctant at first to use his new powers, he soon realizes that with this mystical gizmo he can help solve the universe’s problems.

‘It’s not going to be a big-action, spaceship, shoot-’em-up science-fiction series,’ says Gunn, who will likely receive a producer’s credit on the series. ‘It is going to be a lot smarter and have a lot of historical aspects to it when Weaver travels in time. It will be different than the usual time-travel show where you see people going back in time and hanging out with Napoleon or whatever.’

Gunn goes on to say that in the series pilot, Weaver will be transported back to wwi, where he will find himself in the trenches with soldiers rather than in the copilot seat with ace Billy Bishop.

The 90-minute pilot has an early budget of $1.5 million, with each one-hour episode thereafter budgeted in the $700,000 to $800,000 range.

Financing in the development stages has come in from the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation and Space: The Imagination Station.

Kioussis was at the Banff Television Festival earlier this month trying drum up interest in the series.

According to Gunn, Kioussis was influenced heavily in his younger years by the British sci-fi series Doctor Who. Not ironically, Chronicle is hoping to get a u.k. coproduction deal for Weaver and is looking forward to the Atlantic Film Festival this fall, where the Strategic Partnerships event will focus on fostering partnerships between Canada and the u.k.

*MacLeod’s whale of a tale

Anne MacLeod of St. John’s-based Anigraph Productions reports she will be returning to work on a self-financed animated short she began developing at the National Film Board in 1984.

MacLeod spent a year at the nfb animation department in Montreal where she was given the opportunity to experiment with back-lit colored sand. At the time, she had been reading articles in newspapers about fishermen in Newfoundland accidentally catching whales in their nets and shooting them instead of setting them free. Based on these articles, MacLeod put together a script for her short film Sea Urchin and decided to animate it using sand.

MacLeod says come September, Sea Urchin will once again become her priority. She recently received a grant from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, which will help, she says, but won’t be enough to complete the film, which she projects will be about 15 minutes in length.

She has 10 minutes worth of footage completed thus far.

In Sea Urchin, an elderly Newfoundland fisherman finds a whale trapped in his net. Despite his inclination to kill the whale, the man lets the beast go. To show its appreciation, the whale gives him a magical sea urchin, which turns out to be a very important gift for the old man and his wife.

MacLeod says the process of animating with sand is a long one. During her first crack at the project at the nfb, a full day’s work would only result in one second of film.

She says as production continues, she is hoping to incorporate computer animation in the process.

‘It’s quite a challenge, actually, because I want the film to be seamless, but I know it won’t be,’ says MacLeod. ‘I’m looking to introduce some of the digital animation and kind of weave it in. As you work on something I find it is best not to worry because these problems usually resolve themselves.’

MacLeod says she has a number of scenes sketched out on paper, which she will use as guides to finish the project.

‘I put a piece of paper down and put a piece of glass on top, and then using the sketch on the white piece of paper, it shows me the image I am creating,’ she explains. ‘I use that as a guide and I carry that to a lightbox and get some slides, some film and a 35mm camera. I’ll shoot that, scan it in, and that will be my first frame of the animated sequence. It is not going to be a fast process.’

*A Linda Joy-ful call for applications

The Linda Joy Media Arts Society, established in 1986 in the memory of Linda Joy Busby, is calling for applications for this year’s Linda Joy Media Society Film and Video Development Awards.

Busby, a filmmaker, artist and co-ordinator of the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, died of cancer in 1984.

This year, the Linda Joy Society has $54,000 to dispense among worthy East Coast filmmakers.

Interim co-ordinator of the society, Marie Koehler (who won the Linda Joy Media Arts Award in 1995), says she is very surprised and pleased at how the cash and services prizes have grown over the last 14 years.

The prizes this year include a grand prize of $5,000 in rental services and $500 in materials from PS Atlantic and $3,500 in soundstage rentals from CineSite and much more. Ten other prizes will also be awarded.

Applicants must be citizens of Canada or landed immigrants, living in one of the four Atlantic provinces. Applications are due July 31. For info call (902) 420-4522.