A half-hour comedy series centering on the ins and outs of a music video production company could be landing at MuchMusic.

Daniel Hawkes and Jesse Shamata, partners in The Ink Monkeys Film Company, have pitched their Flash Frames project to David Kines at the music specialty and received a verbal go-ahead.

‘MuchMusic says it is in and will cut part of the budget,’ report the filmmakers, who have completed a pilot and treatments on four half-hours and are now lining up financing and a production partner.

Flash Frames will follow a cast of production types at a fictitious music video company. The partners are dubbing the show a ‘mockumentary,’ a behind-the-scenes look at the video biz, from ‘pitch session mayhem, casting session twilight zones, on-set production hell to editing chaos.’

Music personalities and bands will have scripted parts in the show as clients of the video production house and performances will be incorporated, thus the show will fall under the MuchMusic mandate.

Not wanting to limit broadcast opps, international bands will be cast to nab worldwide windows. mtv is interested in seeing a rough cut, and hbo and other u.s. cable networks have shown interest, the filmmakers report. Sales to European music channels will also be investigated.

Hawkes and Shamata plan to direct the series and are in discussions with a number of Canadian and American producers to partner on the project. ‘We don’t want a producer who’s out to just bang off the show and move on to something else,’ says Hawkes, but rather a company with a music and comedy sensibility.

Both partners are music video director/producers but are making the move into long-form film production. Hawkes along with Alan Collins recently directed and produced Ice Monkey’s first film, a National Film Board/Ontario Arts Council-supported short entitled Rosa’s Time to air on tvontario. Thom Ernst wrote the script, Derek Vanlint shot and Gary Farmer (Henry and Verlin) stars. Shamata has wrapped a second draft of his first feature screenplay, Rock, Paper, Scissors.

*Shultz on board for Alberton

Albert Shultz has committed to star in a one-hour pilot scripted by Toronto screenwriter Edgar Lyall, who has penned numerous Canadian shows including Ready or Not and Kratts’ Creatures. Maybe Shultz’s attraction to the project is its title – Alberton. Lyall says the name similarity is entirely coincidental, the show wasn’t written with Shultz in mind.

Alberton is a quirky dramatic comedy about a Harvard grad and failed writer who winds up teaching at a second-rate community college. A mysterious Xmas package – his ex-wife in a coma – sets the stage for future eps.

‘It’s a little odd,’ says Lyall of the show, but David Garavitch at the cbc apparently likes the idea. Now Lyall’s agency, Harrison Artist Management, is trying to match the project with a production company.

Lyall has also been commissioned by Insight Productions to write an mow entitled Takeover, the story of a youngster who takes over his workaholic father’s company and promptly fires him in the hopes of spending more time with his dad. The project is in early development.

*First feature double-up

From the projects being shopped around town these days, it seems first-time feature filmmakers are starting to think bigger when developing their initial projects – attracting international partners with a track record and putting together budgets in the low millions. They are also doubling up on their films, figuring that before they dive into their pet project, it wouldn’t hurt to wade into feature waters with a smaller indie flick first.

Take freelance writer Helen Tallis, for example. She optioned Story of My Life from author Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City) a year ago and decided to write the screenplay herself and coproduce her first $3 million to $4 million feature with actress Haylee Hofbauer. A blurb on the option in the Hollywood Reporter brought l.a.’s Muse Productions (Trees Lounge, Two Girls and A Guy) knocking to coproduce and a shoot is skedded for next spring.

In the meantime, Tallin decided they might just as well get their feet wet in the production pond. Hofbauer had an idea but no script for a screwball comedy that follows a young actress on the road to her first not-so-big break.

‘I said, `Let’s make this into a film right now,’ ‘ says Tallin, who felt that after starting up and running her own car-care company as well as directing and producing promo videos, she was up for the challenge. ‘Haylee said, `Are you crazy?’ and I said, `No, let’s just do it.’ ‘

Nine weeks later they are cutting their first feature, Hayley’s Comment.

The pair cowrote the script in a couple of weeks (although Tallis admits they were rewriting right up until the shoot), private investors were assembled and lots of favors were called in for the $100,000 film. A 16-hour casting session put together the cast of 35 speaking roles and a 10-day marathon around-the-clock Toronto location shoot quickly ensued, with Tallis in the directing chair and Hofbauer starring. Hofbauer has acted since she was six, written for Ed’s Night Party, and worked for the Toronto International Film Festival’s Industry Centre and the Canadian Independent Film Caucus.

The producers are now going after an American distributor.

Muse is currently working on financing and distribution for Story of My Life. Set against the decadent ’80s, drugs, the jet-set crowd, investment bankers and overprivileged New Yorkers play into this female-driven black comedy. The producers are looking at possible directors.

Also set to make their first two features are Aaron Goldman and Sandra Kovacs, who recently bought director/dop Derek Vanlint’s soundstage and formed Freedom Films.

Budgeted at $4 million, The Glasgow Kiss is a thriller based on the gang warfare dubbed the Ice Cream Wars, which erupted in Glasgow in the ’80s. The story begins when a Scottish immigrant and owner of a Niagara Falls motel is visited by a guest from his home town, sparking a course of events involving murder, revenge and a buried bag of stolen money which lead the hotel owner back to the u.k. The script comes from music video/commercial director Paul Gardner, who will also direct. Vanlint is interested in shooting.

Financing looks promising. Clydebank Art Centre in Glasgow has signed on as coproducer, the Glasgow Film Fund has committed money, and Channel 4 is considering a prebuy. Kovacs has two American distribs waiting on a final script before placing an offer. She is also shopping the project to Malofilm, which picked up her extreme snowboarding video Charlie at Zero Gravity.

Production is slated for next fall, so Kovacs is planning a first run as a feature producer with a smaller film to be shot this spring. Soulmates, a $1.5 million to $2-million copro with Emmerson Denney, is a male buddy movie scripted by Frank Petrielli which centers on an aggressive sportsman who always finds his way into trouble and his introverted bookish friend who follows him around – that is until a strange set of circumstances sees their roles reversed.

Malofilm is looking at this script and Kovacs’ lawyer, David Steinburg at Heenan Blaikie, is helping them round up money.

u.k. cash is being sought for Stephanie Morgenstern’s $5-million minimum first feature, The Woman Clothed With the Sun.

Morgenstern, an actress most recently seen in The Sweet Hereafter, as well as coproducer of the multiple award-winning short Curtains, is writing the script after eight years of research. The historical drama is set in 1800s England and is based on the true story of a housemaid who became a prophetess of the millennium and what was believed to be history’s second immaculate conception.

Morgenstern has optioned the screenplay to Montreal’s Onion Factory Productions, a new company set up by ex-Torontonian and Nelvana producer Jennifer Hibbard and partner Melissa Malkin. Morgenstern will codirect with brother Mark, currently a Canadian Film Centre Directors Lab resident.

A u.k. coproducer is being sought for the project. At the Toronto International Film Festival, Mark Shivass, exec producer at the bbc, and reps from Channel 4 asked for a treatment to be sent their way.

The plan is to shoot in London, Devonshire and Canada next fall for release in time for the next millennium.

*F/X fights Toronto crime

While fighting fictional crime with all sorts of special effects wizardry is the on-screen plot thickener of Fireworks Entertainment’s F/X: The Series, the production recently had the chance to fend off real-life bad guys.

During a location shoot on Howard Street in St. Jamestown, a downtown Toronto area plagued with drug traffickers and robberies, the crew and police officers staffing the shoot stopped a break-in, carted away someone giving a local pharmacist a hassle, and stepped in when a couple of kids were attacking a cab driver. Who knows, the real-life incidents may emerge in the plots of upcoming eps.

f/x will likely not have any problem securing future location shoots as it is establishing a rep as quite the community-friendly production. Residents of Howard Street have been lobbying for more lighting and safety measures for the area, so location manager Peter Boboras decided that rather than offering local businesses a couple of hundred dollars each in compensation for the week-long shoot, he would fork over $5,000 worth of local improvements, including backyard floodlights, to help reduce the crime problem. A paint job on store facades is also in the works.

*Upcoming Toronto shoots

Showtime has just opened a production office for the two-part tv movie Universal Soldier and plans a long stay. The four-hour tv movie is being shot Oct. 23 to January ’98. Jeff Woolnough is directing the mow based on the mid-’80s movie of the same name about a futuristic army. Bob Wertheimer is producing and John Board is line producer.

Silent Echoes, a tv movie for USA Network, is in prepro at Power Pictures. Principal photography begins Oct. 27 and runs until Nov. 21, with Artie Mandelberg (Leaving l.a.) directing. Cast is still to be locked.