The television medium can learn from its own history when mapping out its digital future.

Whether it makes you bolt for the vomitorium or head for moral high ground, horror is big business for the entertainment industry.

From saving the environment to cyber-carpentry, the game projects that have made it to the final four in Telefilm Canada’s Great Canadian Video Game Competition are anything but average. In a risk-averse industry that tends to crank out games based on proven models, the judges were looking for something new.

Almost six years after it was pitched in the wake of Sept. 11, The Border has gone to camera for CBC’s midseason slate. The series, a high-action drama that follows Canadian agents on the front line of immigration policing, has a lot of things ‘blowing up and high production values,’ according to executive producer Peter Raymont, ‘but it has a conscience,’ too.

Don’t lump Critical Incident, a new pilot by Pink Sky Entertainment for CTV, in with other cop dramas. It’s anything but, according to exec producer Anne Marie La Traverse.

Filmmaker Léa Pool (Lost and Delirious) is making the coming-of-age movie Ma mère est chez le coiffeur (My Mother Is at the Hairdresser’s). The $4.3-million feature, which began shooting in Montreal July 16 and wraps Aug. 31, involves an adolescent girl who experiences a bittersweet summer when her mother goes away to work.

Vancouver post shop Rainmaker is redeveloping the ’90s animated series ReBoot as a trilogy of feature-length films, with the help of the social networking site Zeros 2 Heroes.

Shaftesbury Films is partway through its first 13 x 60 run of The Murdoch Mysteries, with Yannick Bisson (Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye) taking over the lead for Peter Outerbridge as the titular 19th century detective. Hélène Joy (Durham County), Jonny Harris (Hatching, Matching and Dispatching) and British import Thomas Craig (Coronation Street) have also joined the regular cast – working under series directors Don McBrearty (Terry), Shawn Alex Thompson (Billable Hours) and Farhad Mann (Painkiller Jane).

Four blocks from the set of Repo! The Genetic Opera, the like-minded Repossession Mambo is set to start work in October for Universal Pictures. Mambo – a sci-fi thriller about the dangers of paying for organ transplants on credit – is booked at Toronto’s Showline Studios into the new year, with Jude Law and Forest Whitaker teamed with first-time director Miguel Sapochnik.

Voice production is complete on the animated feature Stardust, due on Teletoon this December from PVP Animation. Dawn Ford (For Better or For Worse), Eleanor Noble (Splinter Cell) and Rick Jones (Heavy Metal 2000) lead the cast as three friends looking for the magical powder that powers Santa’s sleigh, working with producer François Trudel and creative director Wade Konowalchuk (Tripping the Rift).

Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams will be in Toronto through the fall for New Line Cinema, shooting The Time Traveler’s Wife. The erstwhile Hulk will star as a librarian who, rather than turn green, spontaneously slips into the past and present when under stress. This puts a strain on his relationship with his wife, played by McAdams (The Wedding Crashers). Robert Schwentke (Flightplan) directs, under producers that include Brad Pitt (A Mighty Heart) and Brad Grey (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford).

TV producers must deliver shows to broadcasters in high-definition these days, but the decision to shoot on celluloid or HD still depends on the individual production.

Director Richie Mehta was so determined to get his passion project made that he was willing to go all the way to India to shoot his debut feature using a prosumer camera that he could fit in the palm of his hand. But that was before he met cinematographer Mitch Ness, whose experience with high-def opened his eyes to the possibilities of the medium.

Deborah Osborne is a post-production manager and consultant with 25 years experience on features, TV series and live-to-air programming. She has conducted seminars for numerous TV and film organizations, festivals, unions and guilds, and designed and taught a post-production supervision course at Humber College in Toronto. Osborne relocated to Calgary two years ago and is currently working as post-production manager for Joe Media Group.

What’s the hottest HD camera? How hot is HD in the market?