In St. Jean Sur Richelieu, Que., the town’s residents are bringing out their faithful canine companions in droves to meet Lassie, a true-to-life original from the same gene pool as Lassie the First. As for commotions of a different kind, the cast and crew of Emily of New Moon in Prince Edward Island have weathered the remnants of three hurricanes in the first 10 days of production.

Montreal-based Cinar Film’s live-action projects are stirring up action across Canada and in Europe, where shooting continues for the live-action segments of the live-action/animation/puppet children’s series Dr. Zargle, a copro with Britain’s htv.

‘We’ve experienced exponential growth of our live-action activities in the last few years,’ says Patricia Lavoie, Cinar’s vp of live-action production and development, and producer of the company’s new Lassie series.

And while series production is obviously on the rise, Cinar is also looking to add films to its library. ‘We definitely want to develop our family film section,’ says Lavoie. ‘Series is a great staple, but we want to boost our films, staying in the family and children’s realm.’

To that end, Cinar is dealing with Australia’s Infinity Pictures to coproduce a feature called Sally Marshall’s Not An Alien. The script is finalized but no start date has been agreed upon. The plan is to shoot the film in Australia and post it at Cinar’s facilities in Montreal.

As for the small screen, the company’s development slate also includes a number of miniseries projects with Toronto-based producer Bernie Zukerman (Conspiracy of Silence, Love and Hate). Cinar and Zukerman last paired on the Gemini award-winning miniseries Million Dollar Babies.

This edition of mipcom promises to be rife with announcements regarding Cinar product, including a potential Canadian broadcaster for Lassie and foreign broadcasters for Emily (WIC Western International Communications is Emily’s Canadian window).

But back on set, where the issues are lighting and craft services over foreign sales and marketability, reports from both Emily and Lassie are ‘so far, so good.’

‘I have such wonderful passion about this project,’ says Marlene Matthews, Emily’s supervising producer. Shooting in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s pei, where the Emily series of books was set and written, has added an extra element of realism to stories which Matthews describes as ‘much more mature’ than the fare of the ever-popular Road to Avonlea.

In fact, after a cross-country casting call for a young girl to play Emily, Matthews ended up casting 11-year-old newcomer and pei resident Martha MacIsaac. To top it off, after another wide-ranging search for an actress to play Ilse, Emily’s best friend, Matthews struck upon nine-year-old Jessica Pellerin, MacIsaac’s real-life best friend. Now the young best friends from pei are playing young best friends in pei, just in a different era.

‘It’s amazing,’ says Matthews. ‘After all that searching, I knew these two were the right two. They’re blowing everyone away and their chemistry is unbelievable.’

The 13-hour series is partnered with Halifax’s Salter Street Films.

Over on Lassie, which is filming exteriors in St. Jean Sur Richelieu and interiors in Riverfield, the dog tends to pique everyone’s interest. ‘It’s so funny,’ says Lavoie, ‘people actually bring out their own dogs to meet Lassie.

‘It’s all about myth, I think. Lassie is the mythical dog everyone would like to have.’

Having finished number seven of a 17-episode slate, Lavoie says it will be a sprint to the December hiatus. Production picks up again in February.

The crew – which Lavoie describes as ‘beyond excellent’ – has been logging a lot of miles between the two locales, and beating themselves out with full days of ‘adventure-type’ shooting, meaning scaling mountains and traversing rivers. Lavoie says cost had much to do with the decision to avoid shooting anything in studio: ‘We don’t have a huge budget.’ Each half-hour episode is budgeted at ‘well under $500,000.’

Lassie is produced in association with New York-based Golden Books Family Entertainment.