Philip Mellows has added some young up-and-coming talent to The Players Film Company roster and announced that he is transferring 30% of the ownership of his shop to executive producer/partner Derek Sewell.

The new Players are Brad Walsh, who joins from Zoo tv, and Mitch Gabourie from The Partners’ Film Company.

Walsh made a mark at Zoo with work for the nba, Toronto Star and Weetabix as well as a heart-tugging Tim Horton’s spot shot earlier this year aboard a destroyer in Kuwait. His last project with Zoo is a seven-day shoot for the Canadian Mint. Walsh is also working toward film projects and recently won support from the Ontario Film Development Corporation’s Calling Card program.

Gabourie, a previous Saatchi & Saatchi/Playback First Cut finalist, has done work for Bravo! and Bell Vista as well as a recent psa for the White Ribbon campaign out of Grey Advertising called ‘Why.’

Mellows calls Sewell an ‘important part of the infrastructure’ of the shop and says that the pairing maximizes the particular strengths of each.

*Daily Post closing

Editorial shop The Daily Post, a presence on the Toronto post scene for eight years, will officially close its doors at the end of January. The move to cease operations is motivated by a decision by Daily Post partners to change their respective career directions.

The shop was founded by Peter McAuley, Krysia Szyszlo and Archie Van Dyke, all of whom had previously worked at former post shop The Editors with filmmaker Kari Skogland.

Szyszlo says the decision to disband was made for personal, not financial reasons; although the shop had been enjoying a profitable period, the partners wished to pursue separate career paths.

Szyszlo says while her own plans have not been finalized, she will be ‘seeking opportunities to tell stories in a longer format.’

The other partners are also finalizing their objectives. ‘It’s a positive step,’ says Szyszlo. ‘But there’s also a sadness. I really want to thank the Toronto community for being so supportive.’

Editor Chris Van Dyke will be pursuing his editing career in the u.s. as well as Canada; at press time the younger Van Dyke was working on a job in l.a.

The shop will cease taking on new jobs at the time of its year-end, the close of next month, and then will handle cleanup and sale of its equipment.

*D’Alessio’s great Dane

Imported Artists Film Company/Clarence Square Pictures director Richard D’Alessio picked up the gold award in the independent film and video category at the Worldfest International Film Festival in Flagstaff, Arizona with his seven-minute short The Dane.

Written and coproduced by David Huband, The Dane is a comedic version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet set in a contemporary bar.

Jeffrey Berman produced, Christina Ford executive produced and Chelsea Hulme was associate producer. Simon Mestel was the cinematographer, Peter Faragher was the art director and Mark Hajek edited.

*On the move

After screening his Roots spot featuring snowboarding champ Ross Regabliatti, Industry Films has added Jeremy Lynch to its roster.

Lynch is repped by Revolver Films for music videos.

*Rave rep Shane McCleary has moved out of the commercial production end of the business and over to cfto as tv retail sales executive.

*Sex games

Head Gear Animation and Taxi Advertising and Design put together three 15-second psas heralding the old message of safe sex but giving it a rather absurd, hilarious new twist.

‘Partner,’ ‘Head Scratch’ and ‘Only Girl’ star a promiscuous cartoon dog who has not yet picked up on the condom kick.

The first spot shows the dog humping a pillow, a teddy bear and a person’s head – the message here being that you don’t know where your partner has been.

‘Head Scratch’ finds our uncomfortable four-legged friend with his paws in his pants scratching while the voice-over intones: ‘So, you didn’t use a condom last night? Sort of makes you scratch your head.’

And ‘Only Girl’ introduces a female dog to the picture and plays with the idea of bisexuality. While the two dogs flirt, the v/o says, ‘He would never lie to you. You are the only girl he’s sleeping with.’ When the camera zooms out, we see the pooch has a big, butchy canine companion – dressed in what looks like it should be leather – on a leash.

All three spots end with the tag line coming at you in big black words one at a time, ‘wear a con dom dum dum.’

The spots are cel animation as the idea was to keep it simple and low-tech – charming without losing the lesson.

‘We didn’t want to pump it up with a whole bunch of textures,’ says Head Gear animation director Steve Angel. ‘The message is really simple, so we kept the image really simple and let the character and the lines do the talking.’

Paul Lavoie was the creative/art director, David Stortini and Peter Ignazzi wrote the copy and James Wilkes was art director. Julia Deakin was assistant animator, Nick Fairhead edited, Persis Reynolds executive produced and Tom Eymundson and Tom Third handled the sound design at Pirate Radio.

*Streetwise

TOPIX/Mad Dog got back into the Eaton’s action with, not a spot, but a 90-second animated Christmas tale projected above the heads of holiday shoppers on the outside walls of the Toronto and Montreal Eaton Centres.

In keeping with the department store’s Christmas tv campaign theme of peace, love and joy, the animated short also uses a dove symbol and shows three of the festive birds going out to collect something representative of the theme.

Art director Mark Cutler, animation director Livio Passera, animators Mark Ainslie and Andrea Leo, along with producer Anne Deslauriers worked on the job for five weeks. Marco Polsinelli spent four days in Inferno doing post/effects, and composer Eric Harry wrote the music, which is being piped in along the streets to accompany the animation.

*Bench-mark PSA

Wolf Advertising and Toothin Films director Park Bench recently wrapped a two-day psa shoot for Mental Health Week.

The spot features a young man and a solid business type trapped in an elevator. While the young guy is concerned about the predicament, the older one is calm, but grows more and more agitated with the young man’s activities. In the end, we realize that it is the businessman who suffers from mental illness and that those who are afflicted aren’t as obvious as we might think.

Stephen Thorne was the dop, Alex Appel produced, Bench penned the copy and Julie Markle was art director.

*Fenn’s on a roll

Marshall Fenn, the agency behind the award-winning Casino Rama creative, has brought a Canadian creative and production flavor way down south, having been named agency of record for a u.s. casino, Players Island in Lake Charles Louisiana.

The one-year multimedia campaign is running now in Houston and Beaumont, Texas, with the tv portion produced out of Avion Films and directed by John Zurik.

The campaign manages to create a fun personality for the casino, even within the smotheringly stiff fcc regulations concerning casino advertising – no casino interiors, no excitement, etc. The tv spots focus on people being ground down by routines and the pointer ‘Get Excited’ attached to the casino’s name.

*New at Blink

Blink Pictures will have a new rep starting in January, Tara Ferguson, who also reps Red Rover. Blink will be her only commercial production house client.