Imagex, Skyline planning next project

Chris Zimmer’s Halifax-based Imagex has another feature in development with the u.k.’s Skyline Films, the company which coproduced Glace Bay Miner’s Museum with Imagex this past summer.

Love and Death on Long Island, a dark ’90s comedy about obsession, was written by Richard Kiewtniowski, a u.k.-based director who will take the helm when the $5 million production starts shooting in the spring of 1995.

Steve Clark-Hall, who coproduced Glace Bay, will produce with Zimmer.

The story, based on British novelist Gilbert Adair’s book of the same name, is set in London, Eng. and Long Island, n.y. It will shoot three weeks in London and four weeks in Halifax.

Casting has started in Canada, England and the States, says Zimmer, but no one is signed yet. Stuart Aikens of Vancouver is handling casting in Canada.

Zimmer is also in development with Skyline’s Edinburgh office on a tv music special, Celtic Mass for the Sea, based on a composition by Nova Scotian Scott MacMillan. Plans are to shoot a performance of MacMillan’s piece in June or July in Halifax and to do some further shooting in Edinburgh.

Irish filmmaker Maureen White is expected to direct, and Trevor Davies of Skyline will coproduce with Zimmer.

The Danger Tree heads to the small screen

It is not definite yet whether it will shoot in Ontario or on the east coast, but David MacFarlane’s non-fiction book about family life in Newfoundland, The Danger Tree, is being adapted for a tv movie. Michael Maclear of Screenlife is producer, Michael Levine is executive producer and the National Film Board is coproducer.

3D training program in the works

The Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation has invested in Salter Street’s four-episode series for Citytv, The Dark Zone. At two hours per episode, the sci-fi series will combine live action and 3D computer animation.

The nsfdc’s Roman Bittman says plans are to launch an animation workshop at home to train animators for the series: ‘We have plenty of the 2D kind,’ he says, ‘but not many of the 3D kind.’

No dates have been set for the training program, but Bittman says when it is up and running, it will involve bringing animation professionals to Nova Scotia to work with commercial colleges that have shown interest in starting up animation programs.

Shooting for The Dark Zone is scheduled to start in Nova Scotia and Ontario in April or May, with preproduction set for February.

Cyber kids

Citadel Communications is developing a 21-episode children’s tv series, Video Pen Pals, in conjunction with Paramount Pictures u.s. The $3 million-plus series, produced by Terry Fulmer, is an autobiographical series of video-letter equivalents shot by children around the world on Hi-8.

All the post-production, which accounts for nearly 80% of the production budget, will be done in-province by Citadel. CanWest Global will broadcast the series in Canada.

Five pilots have been produced, each based on one theme per half-hour show. Barry Cowling of Citadel says the plan is to change the series format to a magazine style. Cowling also says Citadel is looking into the possibility of corresponding with some of the pen pals on the Internet and developing an interactive cd-rom based on the series.

Preserving the present

The town of Shelburne, n.s. – location last summer for Disney’s $30 million feature The Scarlet Letter – has arranged to have the 1680s town square created for the movie preserved.

The $3 million to $4 million vintage village was designed by British designer Tony Woolard (Gandhi). The square, which includes a market building, about 50 timbered houses and eight to 10 complete working buildings, has the added advantage of looking across a bay to a conservation park, ideal for pre-1800s waterfront sets.

‘Nothing much has changed around there,’ says Roman Bittman of the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation. ‘Change has gone elsewhere and it puts us ahead in the period department.’ To boot, coproducer Cinergi Productions of Los Angeles donated all blueprints of the village to the nsfdc.