There has been much talk lately about the production slowdown in Canada, which has made it increasingly important for Canuck F/X shops to keep the U.S. projects shooting here posting here as well. Current volumes at four F/X houses indicate that they have been successful in getting the word out down south.

New technologies such as HD, in conjunction with more sophisticated color correctors, are making skilled colorists even hotter commodities as some directors and directors of photography begin to favor post-production solutions over in-camera approaches.

Dennis Berardi is president/VFX supervisor and Aaron Weintraub is VFX supervisor/compositor at Mr. X, a Toronto-based studio that provides animation and visual effects for feature films and television.

Faced with a loss of service work, animation houses across the country are exploring new ways to stay in the black, such as developing in-house content or branching out to the side industries of teaching and video games.

The National Film Board has copped all three nominations for best animated short at the 23rd Annual Genie Awards. From left: The Hungry Squid by Oscar winner John Weldon and producer Marcy Page; Glasses from Brian Duchscherer and Page; and La Pirouette/Pirouette from Tali Prevost and producers Pierre Hebert and Marcel Jean.

France and the U.K. continue to be our top coproduction partners in the animation sector, while participation by Chinese studios, including significant financial participation, continues to grow.

Toronto animation house Cuppa Coffee says it has turned down a sale offer of US$38 million from a consortium between a Japanese broadcaster and a U.S. network. The deal, put forward in the summer, reportedly included the cost of opening a new Cuppa studio in Tokyo catering to the Asian market and came with certain performance clauses.

Big Idea for DKP

Vancouver: Producer and festival programmer Michael Ghent is exploring the potential of a new public-private partnership for B.C. documentary filmmakers.
DocWatch, a proposal by the B.C. branch of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, suggests B.C. documentary producers can do more to build their audiences if they pool their financial resources for publicity. For example, if 15 documentary productions ante up $5,000 each toward publicity and hand it over to DocWatch, that’s $75,000. With matching funds or sponsorship from British Columbia Film, Telefilm Canada and other funders, the publicity kitty could grow to $187,000, says Ghent.

Measha Brueggergosman – Spirit in Her Voice, from Bill Kendrick’s Prince Edward Island-based Island Images, focuses on the 24-year-old Fredericton-born singer who is on the cusp of becoming a major voice in classical music. The performing arts documentary combines live performances with doc coverage of Brueggergosman’s art and life. Kendrick produces and directs the $700,000 production, which will air on CBC’s Opening Night in fall 2003.

Atom Egoyan and Alliance Atlantis have a Foolproof plan, and recently joined efforts to produce the new caper pic by William Phillips, the rising-star filmmaker who turned heads a little over a year ago with his oddball debut Treed Murray.
Egoyan, who shares exec producer credit with Alliance Atlantis Entertainment Group CEO Peter Sussman, says he was impressed by Phillips’ previous work and thinks Foolproof could be the young writer/director’s ‘breakthrough project.’ Seaton McLean and Bill House also produce.

It’s been about a year since Fred Fuchs (The Godfather Part 3, Dracula) left the top job at American Zoetrope and relocated, with his Canadian-born wife, from San Francisco to Toronto. The noted producer has since hooked up with a variety of Canuck companies and will likely see his first north-of-the-border film, Bleeding by B.C.-based Crescent Entertainment, go to camera later this month.

Montreal: Muse Entertainment Enterprises, Barbara Samuels of Mindless Entertainment and Australia’s largest independent TV drama production company, Beyond Simpson Le Mesurier, are developing Answered By Fire. The four-hour miniseries chronicles the experiences of Canadian and Australian police officers serving as UN peacekeepers in East Timor and the young Timorese woman they befriend. The $7-milllion coproduction (about 40% Canadian) is set against the lead-up to East Timor’s referendum on independence in 1999 and its bloody aftermath.

Canadian film representatives, at press time, were set to descend on the federal Ministry of Finance in Ottawa for a series of meetings pitching the ‘urgent’ need for expanded tax incentives to preserve jobs and investment.
David McLean, owner of Vancouver Film Studios, members of the Directors Guild of Canada and the CFTPA each booked meetings between Dec. 12 and Dec. 18 to discuss strategies to repair dwindling service production volumes in Canada.

Lack of information about CBC’s new documentary unit is rattling the cages of independent filmmakers, who fear the country’s leading doc producer is quietly stepping back from third-party productions.
Doc makers learned earlier this year that CBC had formed CineNorth, an in-house documentary unit headed by veteran producer Mark Starowicz, and worry that the group stands to put a dent in their bottom line by snapping up deals with Witness, Life & Times and other network shows. Many are further concerned by what they deem CineNorth’s ‘secretive’ behavior.