Vancouver: Baton Broadcasting, through vtv, is living up to its crtc promise to support local, b.c.-made production.

Of 12 productions (either series or specials) receiving money from provincial funding agency B.C. Film in the first quarter of calendar 1998, Baton supported eight with broadcast licences.

Variety program producer Badry Moujais Communications got the lion’s share of that patronage with three vtv specials: Circle of Friends, Under a Latin Moon and What Legends Are Made Of.

In development, Baton is backing four of the 10 scripts to receive B.C. Film funding: Nick Orchard’s six-part series Drawn Together, Forefront Entertainment’s series The Magician’s House, Jack McGaw’s documentary Mother of all Mothers, and Pacific Motion Pictures’ family-oriented Stevie Diamond Mystery Series.

The cbc comes in second among contributing broadcasters. With a consortium of other broadcasters including Discovery Channel and cfrn, cbc is backing the production of Force Four Productions’ documentary Grizzlies.

The Corp is also assisting in the development of three scripts: Omni Film Productions’ documentary Children of a Cruel God, Romney Grant’s kids’ series Digger and Dozer and a McGaw documentary called To Have and To Hold.

Western-based broadcasters CanWest and wic each supported one project. wic (with Beta Taurus) continues to back Chris Delaney’s animated series Adventures of Nilus the Sandman and CanWest will air the comedy special Howling at the Moon by Michael French.

Bravo!, meanwhile, backed the production of the drama All the World’s a Stage by producer Beverly Caron and is developing the profile called Strunz & Farah: Americas. Specialty channel Vision tv is in development with Avanti Pictures’ documentary I’d Like to Be Like the Wind and Ghost Films’ The Pipe and the Chalice.

In all, B.C. Film committed $1.1 million in the first quarter.

– Movies in the ‘hood

Disney is back in town with a holiday-themed feature called I’ll be Home for Christmas starring Jonathon Taylor Thomas (Home Improvement).

Production on the comedy ends in June, with shooting in Vancouver bookended by a week in Canmore, Alta. and a week in l.a.

On the television side, Shadow Warriors is a tv pilot that shoots through May for Turner Network. A continuation of a Shadow Warriors that aired last year, this proposed action-adventure series involves the likes of Hulk Hogan and Carl Weathers as heroes who save the day. In this installment, the Warriors rescue a girl kidnapped by her evil stepfather.

Don’t Die My Love is the latest offering in nbc’s youth-oriented Moment of Truth mow series, this time about a boy with cancer. Casting was still underway in late April for the tv movie that also shoots throughout May.

In the Dog House is a tv pilot for Showtime and Viacom. Production runs through May 16. About a family in which the performing pet becomes the sole breadwinner, the project features Matt Frewer (Max Headroom, PSI Factor) and Allison Hossack (Another World, Dead Man’s Gun).

– Local action

The Clutch is an independent local feature by comedian Richard Lett and Big House Productions. Actors featured are locals Dave (Squatch) Ward, Leslie Wilson, JP Mass and Lett in the lead role of the autobiographical film based on Lett’s short story and stage play.

The film, billed as a comedy thriller, chronicles a standup comic on the road whose car breaks down and who is then taken in by a crazy biker family. Production on the $500,000 feature wraps at the end of the month.

– Emmy comes north

Mainframe Entertainment’s production designer Clyde Klotz has won an Emmy from the American Academy of Television for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation for the kids’ series Beast Wars (Beasties in Canada).

Beast Wars is currently heading into its third season of production. Klotz is also heading up the production design team for Mainframe’s new series War Planets.

In other kudos news, casting director and budding screen writer Coreen Mayrs picked up an award April 29 from Women in Film and Television-Toronto and Kodak Canada for the half-hour script A Feeling Called Glory, adapted from a Barbara Gowdy story. As recipient of The Kodak First Filmmaker Vision Award, Mayrs gets $5,000 worth of Kodak Motion Imaging film stock.

Mayrs says she’s going to shoot the film in Vancouver in July with a crew she has pulled together from the sets of The X-Files and Millennium, including Millennium’s co-exec producer John Kousakis who takes on the same role for Mayrs.

b.c.-born Janice Porteous won the cbc wift-t writers award, $5,000, from the cbc to be applied to a licence fee for development of her half-hour tv movie Minor Mischief.

– Rogers grants $20,000 to ICTV

Rogers Cablesystems will grant $20,000 to Vancouver tv co-op Independent Community Television, in the form of a $10,000 cheque and $10,000 in goods and services.

ictv was formerly Rogers Vancouver East Neighbourhood Television Office and is best known for producing East Side Story, Nitewatch, After Hours and EarthSeen. The programs air locally on Rogers Community tv, and a series on the Gustafsen Lake Stand-off as well as an episode from East Side Story aired nationally on Vision-tv.

– Rainmaker deal

Rainmaker Digital Pictures has signed an exclusive deal with Sugar Entertainment/Vidatron Entertainment whereby Rainmaker will provide all post-production and visual effects, including on-set effects supervision for the prodco’s upcoming slate. That lineup includes tv series First Wave, shooting now, Dead Man’s Gun, set to begin shooting in May and a Disney co-produced pilot Too Weird.