For reasons both ‘carrot’ and ‘stick,’ post-production houses across Canada are continuing to do more work on videogames – rushing in to claim partnerships and a share of profits from the growing-like-mad gaming field (there’s the carrot) while stepping away from the endless hassles and money troubles (aka the stick) of domestic film and TV.

Radical Entertainment, Vancouver

Producer Chris Zimmer of Halifax-based imX communications is currently shooting The River King, a $16-million feature starring Jennifer Ehle (Pride and Prejudice) and Edward Burns (Confidence).
Directed by Brit Nick Willing, the feature is based on Alice Hoffman’s novel of the same name, adapted by David Kane. The U.K./Canada copro is a mystery thriller about a small-town cop, played by Burns, whose investigation into a young man’s death is aided by visits from the deceased’s spirit.

Vancouver: After a banner year in 2003, generating about $24 million in film and television production budgets, the Victoria Film Commission finds itself again in a mortal struggle with funding.
According to film commissioner Russ Cowan, Victoria’s film office has six to 24 months of life left, unless new funding is secured to support the $228,000 budget.

Montreal dressed for The Jacket

The Outlander

Whale musings

Meet Lord Black

Last year’s National Association of Broadcasters conference was marred by the concurrent War on Iraq and fears about SARS, which kept many foreign delegates from making the trip. But those events are no longer at the forefront, and organizers of NAB2004, April 17-22 in Las Vegas, are optimistic about surpassing last year’s attendance of 88,200, down from the event’s 113,000-plus heyday of pre-9/11 2001.

Canadian staff at Sony and Panasonic are frantically preparing for their participation at NAB, where they will both help launch a variety of video products aimed at their wide client bases.

VFGadgets.COM will introduce itself to the North American film and TV production community at NAB with its new Pro HD/SD Camera Viewfinder Extension Arm System.

Since NAB2003, some of the post systems and software manufacturers have been enjoying boom times. And they hope to only build on that momentum at this year’s show.