Vancouver: Along with The Inspectors, which was written up here last issue, Dufferin Gate’s Vancouver office has two new productions on the film list, bringing to three the number of movies-of-the-week the company has in front of the camera at the same time. All three are for Showtime Network.

By Dawn’s Early Light stars veteran Richard Crenna as a grandfather who takes his delinquent grandson on a horseback riding trip to California.

On the first day of shooting in the Vernon area, however, Crenna fell from a fence during a scene and hurt himself. While, at press time, the injury was considered more painful than serious, the actor was being flown back to a Vancouver hospital.

Production, which began Aug. 1, is scheduled to wrap Sept. 10.

Ratz, meanwhile, is a comedy/ fantasy that warns that we should be careful what we wish for. Kathy Baker stars as an eccentric junk dealer who gets her wish to become a famous soap opera actress. Two teenage girls twig to the mystery of the missing junk dealer.

Production runs Aug. 23 to Sept. 21.

The Inspectors, about mail fraud, stars Lou Gossett Jr. and is scheduled to wrap Sept. 3.

Dufferin Gate is also producing (for Granada and Showtime) Beggars and Choosers, 22 one-hours about life at a television network. Called the television version of Robert Altman’s The Player, the series already airs on Showtime in the u.s. only. The series features Brian Kerwin (The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer) and Isabella Hofmann (Homicide: Life on the Street) and local actress Keegan Connor Tracy.

*Casting a wider net

Vancouver’s OnLine Production Services – creator of the Internet-based Casting Workbook – has expanded into Hollywood and into territory dominated by Castnet.com and The Link, two other online casting services.

According to the OnLine Production Services, casting directors and agents representing 14,000 actors are hooked up in Canada; to date, 60 American casting directors have enrolled since the product was introduced down south May 5 at 20th Century Fox.

As of Aug. 10, there were more than 15,000 actors in the database who have paid at least $42 per year for a basic web page in the Casting Workbook.

Many actors, however, augment their pages with additional photos and an audio clip, which increases the cost of their web page.

‘Having created the software in 1995, we are now at a point where Casting Workbook receives script breakdowns from many of the bigger shows and forthcoming feature films on a regular basis,’ says Susan Fox, vp sales and marketing and cofounder of OnLine Production Services.

Television productions such as Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, Beverly Hills 90210, The X-Files and Millennium have used the Casting Workbook, as have feature films such as Nuremberg (starring Alec Baldwin), The Virginian (starring John Savage and Dennis Weaver) and My Five Wives (starring Rodney Dangerfield).

The Casting Workbook allows casting directors to send over the Internet detailed script breakdowns (requests for actors) on film, television or commercial projects to more than 500 talent agents. In turn, talent agents reply to the breakdowns with current online portfolios of suitable actors, including resumes, photographs and audio clips.

The result is a paper-free casting process, says Aerock Fox, president and cofounder of OnLine Production Services: ‘The traditional process was paper-bound and, therefore, time-consuming. It is no surprise that the Internet is replacing other slower ways of communicating in the business environment, such as the fax machine, couriers, and in certain cases, the telephone.’

OnLine Production Services has offices in Vancouver, Toronto and l.a. It went public March 5 through a reverse takeover of a nasdaq shell company and presently trades in the over-the-counter market. On Aug. 5, shares were trading at a new low of $0.66 per share compared to the high since March 5 of $4.25 per share.

*Young man’s fancy

Short film Greener Grass gets its week of production Aug. 23-29. Written and directed by Stephen Rosenberg, the 22-minute film is about an eight-year-old and his fascination with the glamorous woman next door. The privately financed 16mm film has a presale to the Knowledge Network’s Independent Eye.

In a cast and crew of locals, Ben Baxter plays the boy and Farrell Spence plays the object of his ardor. The project is the first drama for producer Carmen Bohemier, who normally produces documentaries and children’s fare.

*At their service

* up Up and Away is a Disney Channel mow by director Robert Townsend, who directs himself in the lead role. The story is about a boy in a family of people with superhuman powers who awaits to see if he’ll gain special powers when he turns 14, the age by which one gets one’s superpowers (if they will ever get them) we’re told. Sherman Hemsley (The Jeffersons) also stars in the production which will air in December. Production runs to Sept. 10.

* North by Northshore, starring Jayne Brook (Chicago Hope) and Dyan Cannon (Ally McBeal), wraps production Sept. 3. By Hearst Entertainment for Lifetime Television, the story is about a 28-year-old woman who discovers her absent mother has been a cia agent and becomes involved in an operation.

*Vas sur l’est, jeune homme

The festival season is starting to heat up. Two b.c.-made National Film Board documentaries will premier at the Montreal World Film Festival (Aug. 27 to Sept. 6).

Opre Roma: Gypsies in Canada is produced by Gillian Darling Kovanic, directed by Tony Papa and written by Sharon Gibbon, who recently passed away from cancer. Opre Roma will eventually air on cbc.

Jeni LeGon: Living in a Great Big Way is a profile of a Vancouver woman who was the first black female performer to break the color barrier and sign a long-term contract with a Hollywood studio. The documentary is produced by Selwyn Jacob and directed by Grant Greschuk.