Bell Fund announces latest projects to land support

The results are in from the May 1 round of applicants for the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund.

Among those that made the cut is season two of Ice Pilots NWT from Propheads II Productions. The 13 x 60 docu-series is for History Television, though Propheads also received funding for a browser-based mobile version of Icepilots.com for iPhone.

Season four of Murdoch Mysteries (13 x 60) from Shaftesbury Films, based on mystery novels by author Maureen Jennings, will also receive support. The series airs on Citytv and will also have a transmedia component via Smokebomb Entertainment’s 13 serialized webisodes, that have been woven through the TV series and expanded online.

Toronto-based interactive company The Secret Location also landed funds for two projects, including My Babysitter’s a Vampire from MBV Productions for Teletoon. The mixed-media MOW will be followed by 13-ep adventure comedy targeting tweens, and the company is developing a 3D combat game of humans versus vampires that will determine the outcome of the final TV ep.

Meanwhile, Secret Location is also attached to Storming Juno, from Storming Juno Productions/E1 Entertainment, for History. Secret Location will merge a short film into a 3D ‘dome’ of Juno beach, featuring hotspots that will let users watch or listen to first-person veteran accounts from Normandy.

Season four of Tout sur moi from Productions Trio IV has received funding on both the production and new media side. The 13 x 30 series airing on SRC revolves around the lives and challenges surrounding a trio of actor friends. The prodco has tapped service companies Toxa and Turbulent Media to develop a database of video and audio clips, images and music from the series along with online editing tools for fans to create their own trailers and webisodes for the show. It will then introduce a trailer competition to select the promo for the season and the most popular ones will be broadcast on TOU.TV.