The high-definition explosion many have been bracing for may well be a reality within the next 18 months, and pioneers such as stock footage veteran Paula Lumbard are ready for it.

John Holosko considers himself lucky. The Toronto-based director of photography explains why as he lights the infirmary inside the Tulip spaceship of Starhunter 2300.

Kodak Canada has unveiled Vision2, its latest high-speed color negative film stock, which stands to be a boon for TV series and low-budget feature production as well as low-light shooting in general.

The ad industry let loose their pocketbooks again this year at the 15th Big Night Out in support of the Bereaved Families of Ontario held at the York Event theatre on Nov. 14. It was a sold-out event with more than 750 people in attendance. In one of its most successful years to date, the event helped raise more than $100,000 from live and silent auctions as well as a fashion show hosted by FashionTelevision celeb Jeanne Beker.

In the summer of 2001, in the midst of completing their first feature, the Steve DiMarco-helmed Hurt, Charlotte Bernard Entertainment partners Joel Awerbuck and Bob Banack took it upon themselves to shoot a campaign of spec spots for Rogers Communications and agency MacLaren McCann.
While it might seem an odd move to shift gears so early in the life of a fledgling prodco trying to build momentum in the feature film business, it was, in fact, part of the company’s growth strategy right from the start.
The partners, coming from backgrounds as varied as documentary production and investment banking, did a lot of research before jumping into the game. After looking at a few domestic and U.S.-based companies, they decided to diversify their company’s revenue sources early in the planning stages.

If you get the top talents in one field working under the same roof toward the same goals, business is bound to follow. Toybox and Manta Digital Sound and Picture, both part of Command Post and Transfer Corporation, have lost three of the country’s top colorists to Canada’s first transfer-only boutique, Notch, which opened in Toronto Oct. 25.
Gary Chuntz and Elaine Ford, formerly with Toybox, and Bill Ferwerda, formerly with Manta DSP, are now principals and part-owners at Notch. According to Chuntz, both rooms at their new facility have been booked solid since day one and will be full well into January.

When Toronto’s The Animation House closed in April, founder Bob Fortier swore he’d have another animation studio up and running within six months, and he has done it at AXYZ Edit.
Fortier joined AXYZ as a creative consultant and set up Monkey Business, a 2D animation division at the Toronto editing house. ‘I’m back in business, so to speak,’ says Fortier. ‘AXYZ is just a great place to be. All of the technical and creative support is here; it’s worked out great.’
Fortier has already completed a Kellogg spot and has two more projects for Kraft Foods currently in production, a Post Sugar Crisp spot and an Alphabits spot through Ogilvy & Mather.

Vancouver: Talking geese and gay romantic comedies have the kind of audience appeal that can rescue Canada’s woebegone domestic box office, predicts the man charged with expanding the national cinema’s share of ticket sales.
‘In the past, we may have allowed ourselves to become too preoccupied with auteur filmmaking,’ admits Richard Stursberg, executive director of Telefilm Canada, speaking on the theme of audience development Nov. 13 to members of Vancouver’s branch of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. ‘That resulted in a period when Canadian films won a lot of prizes but not much commercial success. Now, we need to support a range of genres with more comedies, more family movies and kids pictures, more thrillers and more romances.’

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters and Bell ExpressVu have inked an agreement to distribute 20 additional local private TV stations on the DTH service. The proposal, filed with the CRTC on Nov. 12, also calls for Bell ExpressVu to divert 2% of its gross annual revenues, currently about $12 million, from the Canadian Television Fund to an independently administered fund specifically for local and regional programming.
CAB president and CEO Glenn O’Farrell says local TV stations are under a lot of pressure from the proliferation of news, pay and specialty services, digital channels and other new services on the eligibility list. O’Farrell says the agreement follows the precedent set by the CRTC which allows cable companies to divert 2.4% of gross revenues to local cable community channels.

Billy Barnes is a perfectly normal kid…that is until two aliens erupt into his life through the family toilet. In a time when presales are hard to come by, the far-out premise behind Decode Entertainment’s hybrid live-action/CGI children’s series draws on universal themes and characters, which have already secured The Blobheads extensive distribution deals worldwide, including Nickelodeon International’s largest multi-territory deal to date.

Sparks Productions in Toronto has added Laura St. Amour to its team as artist representative, a new position the prodco created using the management design of a record company as a reference point. Sparks seeks to distinguish its directors in a saturated marketplace by focusing on developing directors’ reels. Amour will guide the directing roster as well as advise agency producers of how best to approach Sparks’ lineup. One of her aims at the company will be to help directors build and design effective reels.

Andrew Tolomizenko is corporate counsel for a large

Vancouver: The bottom-line impact of budget cuts at British Columbia Film – which opted out of television production funding earlier this year – is starkly outlined in the society’s report for fiscal 2002/03, just released.
Compared to the year before when there were 46 B.C. productions sharing production funding of $3.5 million, fiscal 2002/03 lists only eight projects – all features – sharing $1.3 million. By title, that’s an 83% drop in volume and, by investment dollar, it’s a 63% drop.
Even the lucky features, which were funded through a special feature film fund granted by the previous provincial government, are down 27% by title and 11% by investment in the current year.

There’s not enough money to go around at the Canadian Television Fund, and applicants to the fall round of both its Equity Investment Program and Licence Fee Program have been warned that the programs have been ‘oversubscribed’ by some $23.2 million.

Paul Gross could soon be back on TV. The former Due South star, seen most recently in the Alliance Atlantis curling comedy Men with Brooms, is currently in development with writer John Krizanc on a new show for CTV.