As the dust settles on the two top networks’ upfronts, CTV looks to have made stronger fall schedule acquisitions than Global, but it will be hard-pressed to maximize its schedule because of a number of shows airing out of simulcast and the loss of the Citytv stations, which it was forced to sell by the CRTC.

The Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design has an edge when it comes to turning out digital media minds, if the recent Canadian New Media Awards are any indication. Three students from the Vancouver school swept the nominations in the event’s Emerging Innovator of the Year category, with Jason DaSilva ultimately taking home the prize.

What’s the magic formula that feeds and nurtures the Quebec feature film industry to hit after hit – and has for the past decade? The latest example of its seemingly inexhaustible surge came the Canada Day weekend, when Alain DesRochers’ thriller Nitro opened to $1.2 million on 124 screens in its home province.

If your life were to end at 3 p.m. tomorrow, what would you regret not doing? That’s the question producers of CBC’s new No Opportunity Wasted asked the thousands of people from across the country who applied to face their fears on national television.

Amaze Film + Television (Saint Ralph) has started shooting its next feature, Finn on the Fly, a family comedy about a Frisbee-playing dog who is turned into a human by a science experiment gone awry. It is filming in Regina and Moose Jaw, SK until early August, starring Matthew Knight (The Dresden Files), Ana Gasteyer (Mean Girls) and Ryan Belleville (Life on a Stick).

Sturla Gunnarsson (Beowulf & Grendel) starts work this month on Flight 182, a documentary about the Air India terrorist bombing that killed 329 in 1985. Gunnarsson says that only now, after the many inquiries into the bombing, can the full story be told. The two-hour doc, produced by 52 Media and Eurasia Motion Pictures, is set to air early next year on CBC.

The headline-grabbing scandals of many of today’s young celebrities are the inspiration for a new feature set to shoot in Alberta. Cat’s Cradle, produced by Skyline Motion Pictures of Edmonton, is the story of a young, wholesome pop star named Cat who becomes a notorious pop tart.

The surreal tale of Nemo, a Canada/France/Belgium/Germany coproduction about the only mortal alive in Earth’s future, has started the European leg of its shoot and will make a three-week stop in Montreal this fall.

YTV has ordered 26 half-hours of RollBots, a new 3D action cartoon from Ottawa’s Amberwood Entertainment and creator Michael Milligan, looking to draw children aged six to 11.

ABC Family Channel and U.S.-based Von Zerneck/Sertner Films (Reversible Errors) is shooting the MOW The Circuit in Halifax, with local producer Elizabeth Guildford (Outlander) attached.

Director Zack Snyder (300) will be in Vancouver this fall for Warner Bros., shooting Watchmen, the long-rumored adaptation of the 1980s graphic novel from DC Comics. Thought by many to be un-filmable, the 12-part book by Alan Moore (From Hell) follows a team of former superheroes living in a dystopian near-future America. It is tentatively set to start in September at Canadian Motion Picture Park, reaching theaters sometime in 2008. Casting is underway.

Darwin’s survival-of-the-fittest theory is gripping Canada’s post-production service sector.

The decline of the American dollar hasn’t prevented major studio pictures from using top-notch Canadian post-production shops for visual effects. Some of those shops have used proprietary software in addition to such Canadian-born staples as Autodesk Maya, Flame and 3ds Max, as well as eyeon Fusion to create eye-popping visuals for some of the most-anticipated movies on screens this summer.

The Canadian dollar is not going as far as it used to, but that hasn’t stopped L.A.-based compositing and visual effects boutique Gray Matter FX from opening an office in Vancouver.

At first glance it may seem that the success of Apple’s Final Cut Pro nonlinear editing software has prompted a return of Adobe’s own Premiere application to the Mac platform, after more than a six-year absence.