It’s the second day of shooting on Family Passions, Baton Broadcasting and German producer ndf’s much-publicized new soap series. The cast and crew are finding their feet in 48,000 square feet of newly renovated space in the former steel foundry that is now Toronto’s Cinespace Studios. They will shoot two episodes in the next six days; after that the pace quickens. The goal is a one-hour program a day, five days a week, until they have the first 130 episodes.

It’s slick. Sixteen sets, in varying stages of completion, are set up on either side of a 300-foot ‘road.’ The crew – about 10 bodies, two cameras and a boom – is a tight little unit moving back and forth between an icily elegant marble entrance hall and the equally lavish living room it leads into.

Grandpapa Haller (veteran German actor Dietmar Schoenherr), patriarch of the aristocratic German Haller family, makes thinly veiled threats to his granddaughter’s equestrian coach. ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll see that Clair (played by Laurie Holden) continues training for the Olympics.’ Clenched jaw. Smoldering gaze.

Cut. The crew zips back to the living room. A one-hour show a day seems more feasible.

The $11 million series is the brainchild of executive producer Jorn Winther. The native of Denmark, whose credits include four-and-a-half years as executive producer/director on the u.s. soap All My Children, worked in Canada for many years before going to the States. He joined forces with producer Jack McAdam, with whom he had produced the u.s. soaps Rituals and Generations. They in turn joined up with executive in charge of production Mathias Wittich of Neue Deutsche Filmgesellschaft (of the Kirch Group in Germany). Wittich links up the Canadian and German backers on a daily basis. The three partners make up Family Passions Ltd.

Michael Hadley, former producer of Foreign Affairs, another ‘international’ soap produced by Toronto’s Catalyst Entertainment and Jon De Mol Produkties of the Netherlands, joined Passions as a coproducer, along with associate producer Mark Carter, a veteran of the Toronto commercial production scene.

Licences

Baton, through its production arm Glen-Warren Entertainment, and ndf have the broadcast licences for the program in Canada and Germany. Deals have also been struck for distribution in Australia, New Zealand and the u.k. and arrangements are ‘pending’ with broadcasters in Japan, Italy, France, Spain and the u.s. In Canada, the show will air on Baton stations and there is a chance the CTV Television Network might also come on board. The series will likely go to air this spring, but no dates have been set as yet.

Like its investors, the two families of Family Passions, the Hallers and the McDeeres, are from Germany and Canada respectively. Both are involved in the manufacture of luxury automobiles. The families, according to the show’s press release, are ‘tied together by business and blood, by love for each family and hate for the other.’

The series, the first of its magnitude in Canada, has brought in a bundle of soap veterans from outside the country, as well as repatriating Canadians working in the American soap world.

Canadian writers

Working from Winther’s bible and the long form created by Pam Long, an Emmy award-winning writer who has worked on the u.s. soaps Guiding Light and Santa Barbara, head writer Leo St. Pierre (La Maison des Chenes) supervises a team of Canadian writers. Associate writer Thom Racina has written for General Hospital, Days of Our Lives and Another World, and Paula Smith worked on Foreign Affairs. Toronto native Gordon Thomson, whose out-of-Canada credits include Dynasty and Santa Barbara, has been lured home to join the cast. He is joined by American actor Kin Shriner (General Hospital) and German actors Dietmar Schoenherr and Raphael Wilczek. Other Canadian performers in the ‘core’ cast include John Wildman (My American Cousin), Laurie Holden, Susan Hogan and Barry Flatman. In addition, the production will use up to 100 extras and bit parts in any one week.

In total, the show will keep about 100 people employed on a regular basis.

Party time

The third day of shooting: ndf and Baton officially launch the production with a party in the new set. The partygoers marvel at the transformation of the old warehouse. It took only 10 weeks to install control rooms, laser-poured cement floors, multiple camera systems, a lighting system which utilizes over 10 miles of cable, 20 production offices and 22 dressing rooms.

Sets

Cinespace owners Steve and Nick Mirkopoulos smile like proud fathers. The sets are beautiful. Besides the requisite soap hospital room, jail and bar, there are two- and three-story entrance halls, an extravagant wood-paneled library, opulent bedrooms, an automobile design center and a Bavarian beer hall. The beer hall and the bar are used as such for the launch bash.

Winther introduces the cast, joking that even they couldn’t imagine the ‘geometries’ of the affairs and deceits they would be going through in the next few months. The crew, many from Toronto’s Northern Edge Productions, sit down and enjoy the rest – the show-a-day schedule is approaching quickly.