Vancouver: The seismic activity in the West Coast television broadcasting scene continues to rumble as the Vancouver-Victoria market nears an unprecedented shift of local ownership Sept. 1…

Montreal: Galafilm president Arnie Gelbart unveiled a $16-million production slate at last month’s Banff Television Festival, topped by several high-profile drama projects including a new Lea Pool movie and coproductions with partners in Ontario and Alberta. The company has also announced…

Post-production and its powers are personified in this column. We’ll cover new techniques, technologies and the creative personnel and companies giving them vibrant visual life….

Corus Entertainment’s plans to include Scream, a horror channel, on its slate of new digi-channels set to launch this September, has re-awakened calls for vigilance over television violence….

Toronto stop-motion animation company Quack Quack Animation has been freelancing for other production houses since 1994, but Quack Quack animator/director Philip Marcus says the time has come for the shop to take on commercial and long-form projects on its own.
Marcus, who has worked in stop-motion professionally for 15 years, acknowledges that while there may be few competitors in the stop-motion medium, there are also few stop-motion or claymation spots being produced. This doesn’t seem to faze him, however.

Maybe it’s because Loopmedia might have the brightest space among Toronto animation shops, or maybe it’s because there is a daycare in its downtown office building, but Loop’s latest spots are lighthearted and target a juvenile demographic.
The commercials also reflect the predominance of mixed-media spots over those done as pure animation.
The first of these is a 30-second ad for Nabisco Corn Nuts done through Toronto agency Harrod & Mirlin/FCB. The zany spot, directed by Spy Films’ Wade Sherman, is set in a classroom, where a student yearning for a crunchy snack starts chomping madly on his pencil. His poor judgment leads to an untimely demise, then a bag of Corn Nuts slams into the picture, landing on a scattered pile of the snack. In addition to creating a 3D-animated rendition of the bag, Loop also provided the animated pencil shards that fly out of the voracious boy’s mouth.

Shots & Chasers tracks who shot what during the previous month. Production companies are invited to fax information for this column as frequently as possible to Dave Lazar or Dustin Dinoff at (416) 408-0870. The next deadline for submissions is Wednesday,…

Vancouver: Lions Gate Entertainment, which has released positive fourth-quarter financial results, is not considering purchase bids by Artisan Entertainment, contrary to other published reports….

Canadian broadcasters and broadcast designers reaffirmed their excellence at the Promax&BDA 2001 conference June 20-23 in Miami Beach, taking home numerous awards in various categories. …

Frank Falcone is founder and partner at guru animation studio, a Toronto computer-based character animation shop. He welcomes your thoughts at frank@gurustudio.com…

The following is part three of Playback’s three-part overview of major Canadian announcements by broadcasters during Fall Launch week, June 4-8, in Toronto….

The Atlantic Film Festival, this year running Sept. 14-22 in Halifax, has confirmed that Canada, Spain and Latin America will be the focus of its Strategic Partners conference. …