Camera and gear suppliers in the major centres report a varied shooting season so far, but a few blockbuster Hollywood projects in B.C. are keeping them busy.

There is a little show from Montreal that, if you are in English Canada, you may not be aware of.

The days of fat margins for Canadian systems and software dealers are over. The reason: tight economic times exacerbated by dwindling production funds, as seen in recent cuts to the Canadian Television Fund. And when the film and TV production market suffers, the decline trickles down to post-production houses and, from there, to the companies that supply them.

Before embarking on the second season of Star Academie, MTL Video will be busy with other TV projects, including Ciao Bella, Cirrus Communications’ high-definition comedy/drama that will be shot in English and French for CBC/SRC.

Manitoba appears to be riding a winning wave of late. In addition to scoring the Jennifer Lopez/Richard Gere film Shall We Dance? (in the wake of the film’s producers bailing on Toronto due to SARS anxiety), Carole Vivier, CEO of Manitoba Film & Sound, has announced a new media fund for the province and a new base budget of $1 million per year to help finance indigenous film and recording projects.

Montreal: In the new CineGroupe Images TV movie Student Seduction, Elizabeth Berkley (Showgirls, Any Given Sunday) plays Christie, a young, happily married teacher unjustly accused of sexual harassment.

It’s been several years since we heard anything from Kenny Hotz and Spencer Rice, the upstart filmmakers who made a splash at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival with their feature doc Pitch. But the pair is back in the game this summer, hard at work on the reality-ish Kenny vs. Spenny for CBC.

VisionTV has embarked on a joint venture with Toronto’s Ellis Entertainment to produce Canadian programs destined for international distribution. The announcement came on April 29 at the Hot Docs festival, where Vision president and CEO Bill Roberts and Ellis Entertainment president Stephen Ellis introduced the new company, VisionTV International.

Vancouver: With its boffo box office, mutant thriller X2: X-Men United has blown away that niggling West Coast production doubt that you can make a cheap feature in Vancouver, but not one that makes bundles of money.
On May 13, North American box office for 20th Century Fox’s X2 was US$153 million after opening May 2. That doesn’t include the rest of the world, either. Its opening weekend worldwide was more than US$155 million.

After a series of fiscals that reported steady growth in Atlantic Canada, production revenues varied in 2002/03, with only the smallest province, Prince Edward Island, seeing a considerable jump.

Not even six months in and it’s already been a year of extreme ups and downs for Halifax production mainstay Salter Street Films and Michael Donovan, its chairman and CEO.

Answering the need for post infrastructure development in Prince Edward Island, Halifax audio and video post house Salter Street Digital has opened a new mixing theater in Charlottetown’s Atlantic Technology Centre.

Peter D’Entremont, president and founder of Halifax prodco Triad Films, has launched crossroads film consulting, a service company that sees D’Entremont and his team taking on a silent-partner role on documentary productions, offering strategic creative and business advice.

These are tough times for the advertising industry, and nearly everyone is feeling the squeeze. Budgets are shrinking, agencies are writing more ‘high-concept/low-budget’ material and production companies are routinely doing favors just to win jobs. One would think that a production consultant involved in the process would be a good thing, and many (especially on the client end) would suggest they are. However, many producers, and even some on the agency side, wholeheartedly disagree.

Paul Kenyon saw sales drop 45% in April compared to revenue in the same month last year. That’s bad news, not just for the president of Toronto-based Absolute Location Support Services, but also for the production community on the whole.
With 326 probable or suspected SARS cases in Canada and 23 deaths in Toronto, the tourism, restaurant and retail industries all fell dramatically in April. Much of this was fueled by a travel advisory imposed by the World Health Organization and a hyped-up frenzy created by U.S. media.
But few businesses suffered a drop-off like that of the commercial production industry.