Nothing has made as big a noise at NAB in the past few years as the latest camera technology, specifically in the high-definition field. But the innovation did not stop with the debut of Sony’s 24p HDCAM at NAB2000. This year, local equipment suppliers, DOPs and post folks will return to the desert to see the state of the art of image capture.

Alias|Wavefront caught its competitors off guard at last year’s NAB by dropping the price of its Maya Complete package to US$1,999 (from US$7,500) and Maya Unlimited to US$6,999 (from US$16,000) in time for the show. With production budgets tightening and customers restricted in terms of how much they can spend on gear updates, A|W saw the discount as the best way of broadening its Maya user base.

JVC will be trying to steal eyeballs from competitors such as Sony and Panasonic at NAB2003 with new offerings in camcorder and digital dailies technologies.

Alias|Wavefront’s Kevin Tureski, GM Maya engineering, and Doug Walker, president, were presented an Oscar by actress Kate Hudson in Los Angeles on March 1. The Toronto 3D animation and F/X software provider received the award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for scientific and technical achievement for the development of Maya software.

HDTV products top broadcasters’ NAB shopping lists this year.

It was years ago, back when he was teaching English at the University of Toronto, that Jon Slan first tried to adapt a novel, Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, for the big screen. Slan’s office just happened to be right next door to that of the CanLit legend and, one day, he popped in and asked about getting the rights.
‘I didn’t get very far,’ says Slan, recalling how Davies cut him off, in mid-pitch, and curtly referred him to his American agent. The movie never got made.
Slan (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) hopes to have better luck with his new company, Slanted Wheel Entertainment, and the handful of novels for which he has already secured the rights.

In its sixth year, with 39 dramatic shorts to its credit, the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Al Waxman Calling Card program is proving itself to be an effective catalyst for emerging filmmakers looking to make the difficult leap into feature film.

Montreal: Shooting on the John N. Smith movie adaptation of the Michel Tremblay stage play Les Belles-Soeurs began in Saint John, NB March 24. The New Brunswick leg continues over six weeks, with filming moving to Montreal the second week of May.
Jane Curtin (Third Rock From the Sun, Antz) plays Geraldine, the central character in a screwball, character-driven social comedy about a group of women obsessed with Geraldine’s appearance on a TV game show called Bring Home the Bacon.

Montreal: Successful DVD and videocassette distributor Imavision is actively looking for product for the North American market, says CEO Gabor Kertesz.

Vancouver: Keystone Entertainment, producer of a menagerie of animal features such as Air Bud and the upcoming snowboarding chimp feature MXP: Most Extreme Primate, is hoping for some cost savings on its new feature Spymate by previewing eight action sequences with ‘animatics’ – or animated storyboards.
A new-ish trend in production, animatics was used in Panic Room by director David Fincher to turn static storyboards into full-motion previews of how the action and camera would move through various scenes.

CWIP expands beyond the West

A French munitions ship exploded in Halifax Harbour on Dec. 6, 1917, initiating a chain reaction of catastrophic events, which many say took the city 80 years to recover from. The shock wave from the explosion, followed by a tidal wave, bulldozed the north end of Halifax. Then a massive fire swept through what was left of the city, and later that day, the worst snowstorm in decades descended on Halifax, making rescue efforts almost impossible.
This is the story that will be told through Shattered City, the two-part miniseries coproduced by Halifax-based Salter Street Films and Toronto’s Tapestry Pictures for CBC.