NSFDC, SOGIC heads seek to ensure credit where it’s due

Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation president Roman Bittman and sogic head Alain Verneau have launched a two-person input group to address regional concerns over the new refundable investment tax credit announced in February’s budget. Bittman says he wants to ensure the new credit does not wind up cutting into existing provincial tax credits.

While the feds have said the new credit is separate and will not interfere with existing programs, Bittman has heard from sources that this promise may not hold true.

‘Chances are it won’t increase the financing for film, it will just replace it,’ says Bittman. ‘It all depends on whether the (federal government) lets the (credits) work together.’

Bittman and Verneau will meet with members of Canadian Heritage later this month.

Maestro, please

Citadel Communications’ feature, Symphony Number Three, should be ready to go into production this summer in Saint Margaret’s Bay outside Halifax. The $3.4 million project is a Nova Scotia/Quebec coproduction with Montreal-based Richard Sadler of Les Films Stock.

Set on an island off the Atlantic Coast, the film is about a burnt-out composer who rummages through the shambles of his ruined life. With him on the island is his 10-year-old son and a housekeeper with a checkered past.

Cowling says plans are to start putting together a crew from Quebec and Nova Scotia later this month. Most of the lab work will go to Montreal.

Also at Citadel, word is the Hi-8 Video Pen Pals series, developed with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures u.s. division, is being held up by some internal quarreling at the media conglomerate’s headquarters.

Plans were for a $3 million-plus, 21-episode children’s tv series. Cowling was aiming for all post to come in-province through Citadel. Five pilots have been produced and will air in Canada on CanWest Global. The future of the remaining 16 is in question.

Aiming for July

Latest word on the Imagex/ SkyLine (Glace Bay Miner’s Museum) coproduction, Love and Death on Long Island, is the feature will shoot in and around Halifax for four weeks starting July.

Coproducer Chris Zimmer says casting is still underway in Canada (with Stuart Aikins) and in London, Eng., where the other half of the shoot will take place. u.k.-based Richard Kiewzniowski is writer/ director of the dark romantic comedy about obsession.

CBC laughs its up

Just in Time, a Halifax-based comedy group that incorporates mime, gymnastics and dance with humor, is headed for cbc airwaves. A $750,000 pilot will be shot in June, partly in-studio and partly near Wolfville, n.s.

Producers are David Acomba and Morgan Earle of Toronto and music video/commercial production house Charles Bishop Productions of Halifax. Members of the troupe are Christian Murray, Sherry Lee Hunter, Mary Allen MacLean and Shelley Wallace.

Into the Dark Zone

Dark Zone, Salter Street Productions’ computer-animated brainchild, will likely start production this August, alternating between Berlin and Halifax. Coproducer is Wolfram Tichy’s German company TiMe, which has hooked up with the series’ computer animator, Toronto-based C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures, to create C.O.R.E. GmbH, based in Germany.

The $12.6 million series of four two-hour mows will be 100% computer animation – of which 70% will be computer enhanced live action, says showrunner Paul Donovan.

‘It’s a mix of live action and computer animation that will look like nothing else before. We have sets that are a mile-high and very complex and props that are very organic, not futuristic,’ says Donovan. Conceptually, he pegs the series as ‘Star Trek’s evil twin.’

Salter starts prep in late April or early May.

Citytv is the Canadian broadcaster. Showtime in the u.s. and BskyB and Seven Net in Australia are the international broadcasters to date.

Casting is underway in Canada with Toronto-based John Comerford and in Germany.

Donovan says the series, which is targeted at ‘adolescents aged eight to 80,’ is also headed for a cd-rom with games and cd-rom producer ZEV Productions of Halifax.

Greener pastures

Producer Gilles Belanger of Atlantica Films left New Brunswick over a year ago and headed for Nova Scotia to coproduce Les Secrets de Jerome. With very little production activity in New Brunswick, the producer chose to stay in Halifax.

‘It’s really hard to produce films out of New Brunswick,’ he says. ‘With no film development corporation, no labor rebate program, you always have a shortfall.’

Belanger now has a few projects in development, including an mow for cbc and a feature.

Safe Haven, from writer Mary Collin Chisholm, is based on her stage play of the same name. It’s about a woman who comes home to Nova Scotia to tell friends and family she is hiv positive. Script editor is Lulu Keating of Red Snapper Films.

Fake Heaven, a feature that may soon be retitled Panther’s Moon, is in development, with Keating and playwright Bryden Macdonald (The Weekend Healer) cowriting. It’s about a woman who tries to save a mystical town from ruin.

The second draft should be completed this month, says Belanger, who hopes to shoot the film in Nova Scotia in the summer of 1996.

Telefilm Canada and the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation are onside for development funding.

New Brunswick writer Rebecca Leaman is in early stages of Maura, a feature set in the 1960s about a woman caught in a web of circumstances that involve her family, a lover and a mysterious death. Belanger will produce out of Atlantica Films.

Halifax hosts $16 million feature

Two If By Sea, Morgan Creek’s feature in the $16 million range, will be shooting in Halifax over the months of May and June. The romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock and Denis Leary is about a blue-collar guy who gets talked into stealing a valuable painting for his cousin. In an effort to save his rocky relationship, he takes his girlfriend with him and everything goes awry.

Helming is action adventure director Bill Bennett (Backlash). Producer is James G. Robinson and executive producer is Gary Barber.