Producers – imagine having access to over 70 years worth of historical NHL footage – what would you most want to get your hands on? Wayne Gretzky’s first game back in Edmonton after being traded, or his final game with the New York Rangers? Maybe Bill Barilko’s OT goal in game five to clinch the 1951 Stanley Cup for the Toronto Maple Leafs? What about Bobby Orr’s first shift in a Boston Bruins uniform as an 18-year-old rookie?

Toronto’s First Light reports a jump in business thanks in part to stock footage giant Getty Images’ recent closings of its Canadian offices. While Getty has made the move to consolidate its various satellite facilities into its Seattle headquarters, the result amounts to another plus in the local market for the likes of First Light.

Kodak Canada has unveiled Vision2, its latest high-speed color negative film stock, which stands to be a boon for TV series and low-budget feature production as well as low-light shooting in general.

Welcome to Playback’s annual Year in Review spectacular. This issue, we look back on a year marked by the production industry waiting with quiet anxiety to see if business would recover from a trouble-plagued 2001 and regain the record success of Y2K. The evidence indicates we’re a ways off.

If 2001 was a bad party, then in 2002 the production industry reeled under a long, nasty hangover.

Can a project win awards for best writing, direction and actor despite not even being nominated for best TV movie or dramatic miniseries? The answer to the riddle is yes, as demonstrated at the 17th Annual Gemini Awards by Trudeau, the two-part mini chronicling the public and private lives of Canada’s most flamboyant prime minister. The trophy recipients were confused by the inconsistency.
‘It’s bizarre and endemic to award shows,’ Wayne Grigsby said backstage after getting the nod for best writing for Trudeau. The former Montreal journalist currently heads Nova Scotia’s Big Motion Pictures, producer of the mini, which drew two million viewers. He added that CBC and Radio-Canada have asked him to produce a prequel to Trudeau showing PET’s early years before he entered the political stage.
Trudeau director Jerry Ciccoritti picked up his seventh Gemini Award. When asked what he thought of Trudeau’s snub in the TV movie or miniseries category, he offered a polite ‘No comment.’

You won’t hear a Canadian broadcaster dismiss the notion that digital broadcast means better pictures, better sound and a window to a host of interactive possibilities. What is holding up broadcasters’ widespread adoption of digital television is rather their concern over the complication and cost of upgrading to an all-digital operational infrastructure.

The following is a list of selected Canadian academic institutions offering programs relating to film, television and new media.

The International Cinematographers Guild, IATSE Local 667, has taken steps to allow cash-strapped productions to use its camera technicians and make films with the visual proficiency needed to hope to ever find an audience.

Representatives of ACTRA and the Union of BC Performers agree with the Screen Actors Guild that the implementation of SAG’s Global Rule One ‘has not presented any significant administrative difficulties,’ according to a joint statement released by the three organizations.

Alarmed at recent rulings by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, actors and other performers are fighting to protect their status as independent contractors. Senator Tommy Banks, in the artists’ corner, met Oct. 9 in Ottawa with representatives from across the entertainment industry to discuss the problem of Employment Insurance, performing artists and Canadian tax law.

Digital special F/X are a given in this day and age. That’s why Richard J. Anobile, for one, can’t understand why more productions don’t go the step further and do all their picture post-production in the digital domain. The associate producer on Cypher (formerly Company Man), the US$7.5-million Pandora thriller directed by Vincenzo Natali and starring Jeremy Northam (Gosford Park) and Lucy Liu (Charlie’s Angels), recently pushed for the movie to be posted at Toronto’s Command Post/TOYBOX using the shop’s Cinema HD process.