After 30 years in advertising, veteran commercial director Bill Irish, 65, has tried to retire a few times, but to the industry’s good fortune, his wife keeps telling him to get out of her kitchen.
In addition to creating a series of four-foot by five-foot paintings and writing a book about Canadian heroes, Irish takes to the director’s chair again with some longtime friends at Avion Films in Toronto.

Plans to make Toronto home to two of the largest soundstages on record are moving forward. The $100-million Studios of America is in the early stages of construction on the site of the former R.L. Hearn Power House, hoping to be open for business by the end of 2003, and Pinewood Shoot City Studios is planning to complete negotiations with the city to greenlight the development of its $150-million-plus facility at Toronto’s portlands by early fall.

On The Spot asked its readers and members of the commercial production industry to identify the top editors working in the business today. After tallying the results of an e-mail poll, plus considerable consultation and a lengthy debate among OTS staffers at the bar at the Four Seasons Hotel, Andy Attalai, Mick Griffin, David Hicks and David Baxter were identified as the top four editors in commercial production. OTS reporter Laura Bracken spoke to the four to find out what it takes to become the best of the best editors.

On July 3, bright pink Cadillacs and Hollywood stars, including Shannen Doherty (Mallrats) and Parker Posey (Best in Show), descended on Winnipeg to begin shooting The Battle of Mary Kay, an MOW for CBS about the coveted cosmetics queen, played by Shirley MacLaine (Salem Witch Trials). Principal Canadian actors include RH Thomson (Road to Avonlea), Barry Flatman (Rideau Hall) and Rachel Crawford (Traders),
Alliance Atlantis executive Ed Gernon makes his directorial debut on the AAC production, which satirizes the rivalry between Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics and Jinger Heath of BeautiControl Cosmetics, played by Posey. The MOW is coproduced with Howard Meltzer’s TurtleBack Productions of New York and AAC’s Ian McDougall. Patricia Resnick (Nine to Five) penned the script.

With SIGGRAPH 2002, the digital graphics industry’s premier trade show, fast approaching, hardware and software manufacturers are scrambling to be ready with their latest product and strategy announcements.

Samuel, the first French-language drama to be produced in New Brunswick and Radio-Canada’s first major dramatic production made outside Quebec, wrapped 36 days of shooting on June 10.
‘This country is so multicolored with so many regions and it’s vitally important for people from New Brunswick and Acadians to see themselves on the air,’ says series producer Sam Grana, who cowrote the original story with Robert Hache. Guy Fournier penned the script with Mario Bolduc, Andre Melancon and Pierre Gang.
The $4.4-million miniseries (four one-hours), coproduced by Moncton’s Sam Grana Productions and Cite-Amerique out of Montreal, tells the story of a man who dreams of being a fisherman until a terrible storm claims his father at sea.

Content producers and rights holders may have cause for celebration as a loophole in the Copyright Act that has given way to the likes of iCraveTV and JumpTV may soon be closed.
Bill C-48, an act to amend section 31 of the Copyright Act, had its third reading in the House of Commons on June 18 and was passed unanimously, although is still to be approved by the Senate. Section 31 pertains to the compulsory licence that allows retransmission of copyrighted works without permission from copyright holders through royalties set by the Copyright Board.

Canadian animation recently reaffirmed its excellence on the international stage, with two very different kinds of films winning awards at a pair of the world’s premiere festivals, both in France.

It looked like director James Cameron was going to single-handedly kill the physical F/X industry.

With few surprises or emerging trends, the 2002 fall TV lineups, announced in early June, reflect, for the most part, a safe and balanced approach to programming.

Anne Wheeler

Calgary’s Voice Pictures, launched by Wendy Hill-Tout in 1984 as a small independent focusing on documentary and performing arts productions, is gearing up for one of its busiest years after deciding to work more drama into its business plan.
In the works for CTV is the $3.8-million MOW Windermere, the story of Nancy Eaton’s relationship with a troubled man that ended in her murder. Mario Azzopardi is dircting. Coproduced with Bernard Zukerman of Toronto’s Indian Grove Productions and executive producer Michael Prupas, the film will shoot in Calgary in the fall and receives funding from the EIP, LFP, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit and the CFRN fund.