Montreal- and Los Angeles-based production company Kingsborough Pictures is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against MCA/Universal City Studios and Miramax Film Corporation, alleging the defendants plagiarized the script The Dark Lady in the hit release Shakespeare in Love.

In search of fresh sex adventurers, the Paperny Films documentary series Kink is moving production from Vancouver to Toronto for season two. The program focuses on the everyday lives – and kinky activity – of those in the underground cultures of sadomasochism, bondage, cross-dressing, fetishism and other fantasy games.
Preproduction will begin April 15, followed by 13 weeks of principal photography on the DV format commencing May 3. Field director Aerlyn Weissman (Forbidden Love) will shoot in Toronto and then return to Vancouver to edit the series along with codirector Dennis Heaton, who returns from season one. Also on board as field director is Winnipeg indie filmmaker Noam Gonick (Hey, Happy!). Stacey Offman is producing and David Paperny exec producing. Vancouver-based Paperny will set up a satellite office at Toronto’s Associated Producers facility.

Thom Best’s stock has soared in the past couple of years. The Toronto-based director of photography has shot perhaps the two most heavily promoted Canadian features: Ginger Snaps, for which he was nominated for a Genie Award, and the recent box office record-breaking curling comedy Men with Brooms.

The annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas provides a good indicator of the state of the U.S. television industry, and by extension, what the Canadian industry can expect. That’s why Canucks have traditionally headed down to the show in large numbers – NAB2001 had more than 3,500 Canadian attendees from the broadcast, production, post, and new media sectors and 66 exhibitors on the trade show floor. Despite an economic slowdown, NAB is expanding this year, taking advantage of even more space added to the gargantuan Las Vegas Convention Center, accommodating primarily multimedia companies. More exhibitors will set up camp at the Sands Expo Center.

The world’s major players in broadcast technology and services converge annually in NAB’s mammoth exhibit halls. Inevitably, some companies’ innovations from the past year have had a profound effect on the businesses of others. In the ever-shifting technology landscape, companies must explore various revenue streams should one aspect of their business dry up. Sonic Foundry is as familiar with this survival technique as anyone is.

Two years after leaving her post as CBC network program director, Phyllis Platt has several projects on the go at her new independent prodco, Platt Productions.
Combining her background in news and current affairs with her experience in arts and entertainment, Platt is positioning her company as a production partner to companies with an existing infrastructure, focusing on reality-based programming.
Platt has five MOWs in development, one of which is up for the next round of CTF financing. The tentatively titled Poisoned Waters, a coproduction with Toronto’s Barna-Alper Productions and Regina-based Minds Eye Pictures, is a drama mirroring recent contaminated water incidents in Walkerton, ON and North Battleford, SK.

FilmExchange: NSI’s Canadian Film Festival, held Feb. 23 to March 2 in Winnipeg, reports attendance as nearly double from last year.

Having launched last fall, Toronto production company 49th Parallel, headed by Noah Segal, Steve Hoban and Philip Mellows, has several projects moving forward.
Nothing, the third feature by Cube director Vincenzo Natali, will go to camera in Toronto for about four weeks in May. Segal describes the comedic fable as ‘Withnail and I in space,’ with a couple of dead-end schmoes who subsist on ketchup sandwiches wishing away the rest of the world. Script is by The Drews (a.k.a. Andrew Lowery and Andrew Miller, of Boys and Girls). Miller will star alongside David Hewlett (Treed Murray), and longtime Natali DOP Derek Rogers will lens, but the F/X-laden production has yet to choose between 35mm and high-definition video.

With eight new sports-based digital channels joining an already growing number of sports specialties, broadcast design studios report that sports nets have become the biggest consumers of 3D animated promos, station IDs, intros and bumpers. And although industry trends adhere to a pendulum-like pattern, one thing always remains: the challenge to imprint brands on viewers’ brains.

As anticipated, the night of the 22nd annual Genie Awards belonged to Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), the Igloolik Isuma Productions/National Film Board Inuit drama shot on digital video. Those criteria would otherwise make the film’s capture of six Genies a major upset, but the movie had already won awards at Toronto, Cannes, Edinburgh and Flanders. At the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Feb. 7, it added to its hardware case the Genies for best motion picture, direction, screenplay, editing, score and the Claude Jutra Award for best first director.

The popularity of shooting and posting in the high-definition format continues to rise throughout the province.
A recent example is Scar Tissue, a production of Shaftesbury Films in association with CBC. The MOW was shot on three sets at the CBC’s Toronto studios and on location at a farm in Hockley Valley, Jan. 28 to Feb. 14. What is unique about the $1.9-million project, lensed by vet spot shooter Henry Less, is that it used a three Sony 24p HDCAM setup, provided by Sim Video Productions. This multi-camera technique, inspired by Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns, enabled the crew to complete production of the two-hour movie with quality and efficiency.

In an industry based on whom you know and how you market yourself, everyone from college grads to professionals looking to make a career shift to top executives seeking fresh talent all benefit from good old-fashioned networking opportunities.