Vancouver: CHUM Television, in its first wholly owned and controlled feature film, can be credited with making a road movie that really travels.
Production on the MuchMusic Movie/The Road Movie (final title, we can assume, to come) began in Newfoundland Aug. 25 and has since traveled to Toronto, Montreal and Alberta. Production wraps after a lengthy stint in B.C., with visits to Vancouver’s Stanley Park and the regional hotspots of Yarrow, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Ladner and White Rock. At press time, the crew was shooting in Tofino on Vancouver Island and was going to Campbell River and Victoria for the final big three days of shooting.

Vancouver: Blame dive-bombing terrorists, stingy advertisers, runaway production lobbyists and reality television if you want, but the bloom is off the dogwood tree in Vancouver, no matter whether you toil in service or domestic production.

Vancouver: In television crime series, you get killed off and that’s that. You’re dead. They examine you, they pray over you, they move on.

Vancouver: It’s official. The anti-runaway production lobby terminated an estimated $80 million in direct spending in Vancouver in 2002 when the US$170-million Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines abandoned six weeks of preproduction here to shoot instead in L.A.

Vancouver: All three gala films at the 22nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival will be Canadian.

Vancouver: Western Canadian documentary filmmakers will get a regional shot at pitching their ideas to commissioning editors and distributors at Hot Doc’s Forum – West, a highlight of the inaugural DOC TALK conference in Vancouver, Oct. 27-29.

Vancouver: The worldwide television production lull has dragged down revenues at Vancouver-based Mainframe Entertainment by 34%, according to its year-end financial report.

* Director: Gary Burns

* Director: Scott Smith * Writer: Esta Spalding * Producer: Robin Cass * Cinematographer: Greg Middleton * Diary by: Ian Edwards

Vancouver: With most of British Columbia on high alert, Kelowna, under drifts of ash like the second coming of Mount St. Helens and thousands of families being evacuated from their burning homes, the $160,000 Canadian feature Ill-Fated had to avoid living up to its name.
The comic-tragedy feature, which wrapped a month of production Aug. 31, shot in the Hat Creek Valley near Cache Creek with the huge Ashcroft fire as a backdrop.

On July 28, Regina-based Minds Eye Entertainment voluntarily applied for bankruptcy protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in Saskatchewan in a bid to restructure and continue with its core business of film and TV production and international distribution.
‘We’ll be a smaller and leaner company,’ says CEO and president Kevin DeWalt, blaming the volatile international markets for the 17-year-old company’s current financial woes. ‘This is a reality of the times and situations that are out of our control.’

VANCOUVER: Brightlight Pictures in Vancouver has signed a five-picture deal with H2O Motion Pictures of Los Angeles and London, worth $50 million.