There are a number of universities, colleges and other training centers from coast to coast where students can learn the fundamentals of film and TV production, post-production and film theory. But, as many graduates will tell you, few sufficiently prepare their graduates for the dollars-and-cents realities of the industry. But there are other places where those budding Egoyans or MacMillans can go to get the kind of information necessary to get their projects off the ground, and, conceivably, make a living at this crazy business.

Before Canadian Adventure Productions president Ben Webster took his 35-member climbing team and production crew on the expedition for Ultimate Survival: Everest, a six-hour miniseries for Discovery Channel Canada, he knew exactly what he’d be up against.

Canon’s new XL2 miniDV camcorder builds on the manufacturer’s success with the XL1 and XL1S models, and, according to the company, is a far more filmmaker-friendly production tool.

Before Da Vinci’s Inquest, Blue Murder, Diana Kilmury: Teamster and a truckload of Gemini Awards, all there was to Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions was husband-wife team Laszlo Barna and Laura Alper, and the mutual interest they shared in documentaries. And even with the higher-profile success of Barna-Alper’s episodic dramas, the company’s documentary division continues to produce acclaimed doc programs for television, and recently crossed the threshold into theatrical documentaries with The Take.

As the president and general manager of Discovery Channel, Paul Lewis knows a thing or two about Barna-Alper’s documentary productions. Discovery has been running Barna-Alper’s doc series since the channel first came on stream in 1994, with such programs as The Body: Inside Stories, Human Wildlife and Frontiers of Construction mainstays on its schedule.

The Reginald Pike directing team of Ian Letts and Michael Gelfand, better known to those in the advertising biz as The Perlorian Bros., has won this year’s Saatchi & Saatchi First Cut Award for breakout Canadian commercial directors. Their irreverent work has put them on the ad map as a major new force, with spots for clients including Saturn, Bootlegger, Aspirin and Timex.

Last December, six weeks after having an initial conversation with untitled and Reginald Pike executive producer James Davis about a career shift, Vancouver-based commercial photographer (and this year’s First Cut runner-up) Mark Gilbert found himself in a Toronto morgue shooting his first television commercial. It was a PSA for WISH (the Women’s Information Safe House) – a refuge for prostitutes and street people in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – via agency Rethink.

When asked last year how he felt about his show’s chances in the Gemini’s best comedy series or program category, Trailer Park Boys actor Mike (Bubbles) Smith was not optimistic.

Wilby Wonderful, an Ontario/Nova Scotia coproduction making its world premiere at the 2004 Toronto International Film Festival, marks the second time Halifax-based Palpable Productions’ Camelia Frieberg and Canadian theater maverick and director Daniel MacIvor have worked together. The film, coproduced with Toronto’s da da kamera pictures, is set on a fictitious Maritime island where the lives of residents intertwine, and stars a talented ensemble cast including Paul Gross and Jim Allodi.

TIFF 2004 sees the launch of Canada First!, the new program featuring works by rookie Canuck feature directors as well as those making their TIFF debuts. Despite the thematic differences among this year’s Canada First! entries, all the directors Playback spoke with have one thing in common – they are all coming to the fest in search of sales.

The impact of digital technology in all aspects of the motion picture industry continues to grow exponentially, bringing with it a host of new issues, including a large rise in piracy, and millions in lost revenues. ShowCanada 2004 will address the matter of piracy, which can range from videotaping a movie in a theater, to bootlegging DVDs and peer-to-peer distribution on the Internet, from a variety of angles.

Following a healthy box-office run and several awards, Montreal writer/director Louis Belanger’s Gaz Bar Blues now also finds itself in contention for an original screenplay award, one of the drama’s pair of Genie noms. A win would mean a second such prize for Belanger, a self-proclaimed reluctant writer who won a 1999 Genie for the script for his feature debut Post Mortem.