Talking to Palmer Jarvis DDB associate creative directors Dave Chiavegato and Rich Pryce-Jones is like doing lemonade with Robin Williams on a particularly manic day. From the hilariously irreverent to the smooth professionalism of seasoned pros, Chiavegato and Pryce-Jones are sure to keep you on your toes.
‘Rich is responsible for all the great work,’ Chiavegato begins, working his dry wit. ‘He carries the entire team. I just want to start out by saying that.’ Pryce-Jones, clearly adept at going with Chiavegato’s flow, responds by declaring himself ‘an incompetent jackass.’

Gino Cantalini, Labatt’s director of partner brands (Budweiser, Bud Light and Carlsberg), has tremendous respect for Palmer Jarvis DDB’s associate creative director team of Dave Chiavegato and Rich Pryce-Jones. ‘They are probably one of our biggest competitive advantages right now on…

Sullivan Entertainment may have closed shop on Wind at my Back but it continues to forge ahead into the feature film arena with three new in-house productions: Anne: The Animated Movie, Timothy Findley’s Famous Last Words and New Haven, based on Isobelle Carmody’s novel The Gathering.
Sullivan’s new feature film division will produce and finance the projects.

Montreal: Cineflix has a new deal with the Women’s Television Network for e-love (working title), 26 half-hour episodes billed as the first global Internet dating series. ‘It’s different from a blind date [concept] in that the people we’re following are already committed [online] – or in ‘e-love,’ ‘ says producer Glen Salzman.
Once the online ties are in place, the show tracks the intrepid dating pairs as they prepare to meet in the flesh, complete with a summary epilogue.

Avion Films’ executive producer Paola Lazzeri has worked with a lot of creative teams in her career. However, she takes particular pleasure in discussing Chiavegato and Pryce-Jones….

Vancouver: Fresh from their Academy Award parties late last month, previous Oscar winners Al Pacino, Hilary Swank and Robin Williams will be in Vancouver April 19 to June 20 to shoot the Warner Bros.-distributed Insomnia (Alcon Entertainment).
This is a psychological thriller with serious Hollywood muscle behind it. Not only does its cast boast the big hardware, but Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney and Charlie Schlissel (Red Planet) are executive producers.
Three Kings alumni Paul Witt and Ed McDonnell reunite as producers with the team of Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson from Dude, Where’s My Car? (Quit snickering, Dude was closing in on $47 million in domestic box office last month.)
Chris Nolan (of Sundance winner Memento) directs.

Bryant Fulton & Shee may not be the biggest agency in Vancouver, but it is certainly respected as one of the best. Two of the reasons for this may well be its cocreative directors, Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk. As a creative team, art director Francilia and copywriter Scherk have won a mantelful of awards in their five years together. Ruling over the BFS creative roost with humor and a strict work ethic, the two epitomize the notion of a creative team.

When Shaw Communications went in search of a new agency last spring, the ‘smart, funny’ creative and ‘button-down’ sensibilities of Bryant Fulton & Shee cocreative directors Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk brought the cableco to a screeching halt….

In the not-so-distant past, dot-coms and broadcasters proclaimed all manner of Web and interactive innovations that would usher in the home computer as a broadcast delivery device to enhance and even challenge traditional forms. In recent months, however, pie in the sky has fallen to earth with a splat.
The struggle of Internet-based companies, be they content or service providers, has been well documented. Toronto’s ExtendMedia seemed to represent the convergence vanguard, helping to develop the interactive programs Drop the Beat and Dish It Out, produced by Alliance Atlantis Communications (the former with Back Alley Film Productions). But the iTV company recently slashed staff to 55 from 160 in a four-month span, closing its New York and Los Angeles offices.
‘The interactive entertainment sector hasn’t emerged as quickly as we thought it would,’ ExtendMedia PR manager Caroline Verboon explained at the time of the cuts.

Lisa Francilia and Dan Scherk, cocreative directors at Bryant Fulton & Shee, have etched themselves on the Vancouver commercial market with quality spots most production and post houses are anxious to work on. …

The PNMD Communications creative duo of copywriter Stephane Charier and VP, creative director, art director Martin Beauvais is big in Quebec. How big? Well, at Christmas they were in direct competition with the Beatles. If the Beatles are bigger than Jesus (thank-you, Mr. Lennon), then what exactly does that make these ad guys?
The competition with John, Paul, George and Ringo was over a CD Beauvais and Charier championed over the holidays last year. As an extension of their ongoing campaign for Quebec’s milk producers, Le Federation des Producteurs de Lait du Quebec, a CD featuring the music used in their popular ads was battling it out with the lads’ greatest hits album for top spot on the Quebec music charts.

International distributors know the strength of their companies and their future balance sheets depend on the quality and quantity of content in their program libraries. Broadcasters looking to strengthen audience loyalty on-air know they have to bring viewers along on multi-platform experiences – specifically, from the tube to the Net or vice versa. But since broadcasters can only distribute online programming for which they hold the rights, they look to in-house catalogues as an important (and thrifty) way to extend their on-air branded content online.
While you might expect an educational broadcaster to leverage in-house shows online, TVOntario has gone one step better. It plans not only to reconfigure its ‘rich archive’ of Saturday Night at the Movies interviews for the pleasure of webbies, it will also package the SNAM interviews with other material to create an online, for-credit film studies course.