Watching Elvis and Richard Nixon do a duet on My Way at the White House is not an experience enjoyed by many people, but Lisa Shamata counts it as one of the fringe benefits of her job.
For the unit publicist – in the above case working on the movie Elvis Meets Nixon for Dufferin Gate – the energy of being on set is one of the best parts of the job. Shamata has a preference for unit publicity and puts heavy emphasis on being part of the on-set team rather than an outsider whose needs disrupt filming.

Canadian agents tend to be closer to their clients than their American counterparts. By its nature, agents say, the Canadian system lends itself to a somewhat more intimate client-agent relationship than that experienced south of the border. Agents point out their fee of 15% (compared to the standard American agent’s 10%) is in part compensation for their duties, which are more managerial than their U.S. counterparts.
‘Most Canadian agents would consider themselves both agents and managers to their clients, which is why we take 15% as opposed to Americans who take only 10% and have managers who take another 10%,’ says Paul Hemrend, on-camera and theatre agent at ETM in Toronto. ‘We have jobs that fall within both those categories.’

Calgary: The teenage boy, decorated in sacrificial face paint, is forced back onto a stone altar by two elaborately dressed guards. A hand bearing a knife comes down to his chest and he screams – ‘NO!’ ‘Go to glory,’ says the…

A humble packaged meat that has straddled the century from Depression-era savior to pop cultural icon is the subject of director/producer Anne Pick’s Documart pitch, An Ode to SPAM. Or as she describes her project, ‘It is the amazing true story…

A young man living with his parents starts a newsletter from his mother’s kitchen table; a young woman goes home from a waitressing stint and writes an article about her experiences; a young man drives from potential client to potential client…

Almost 50 years ago an experimental polio vaccine manufactured using chimpanzee kidneys was administered to more a million people in Central Africa. Could this have been the origin of AIDS?…

The Secret Language of Girls, a one-hour ‘documentary with a sense of humor’ from Copie Zero Television and Media in Montreal, is premised on the idea that ‘Women have a way of communicating with each other that doesn’t involve men, that…

Demon in the Freezer, a Documart pitch planned as a commercial one-hour with a budget of $350,000 from Dugald Maudsley’s Toronto-based company Infield Fly Productions and Atlantic Television in the U.S., has its origins in another project….

Out of the Fire from Bishari Film Productions of Toronto triumphed at the Golden Sheaf Awards, taking the best of festival award as well as the prize for best documentary history. The project’s director, Shelley Saywell, won a Golden Sheaf for…

With Teen People and Cosmo Girl on the racks, cinemas full of American Pie-like romps and Britney Spears on seemingly every channel, it can feel like teenagers have taken over the world. But it was not always thus….

Scott Harper, producer of Sunday Night, being pitched at Banff’s Documart, says he could do either a commercial hour or a 1 x 90 on the $2 million- to $3 million-budgeted project….

Beachcombers – a Canadian institution of almost two decades standing – will find a new life if producer Nick Orchard of Vancouver’s Soapbox Productions has his way. Soapbox’s pitch in the Banff Market Simulation for the New Beachcombers (budgeted at $500,000…