* Lions Gate Entertainment, based in Vancouver and Marina Del Rey, CA, has expanded chief administrative officer Jim Keegan’s role to include the duties of CFO. Current CFO Marni Wieshofer will move to the new position of executive VP, corporate development. As part of Keegan’s 13 years of entertainment sector experience, he was previously CFO of Artisan Entertainment and Trimark Holdings.

Montreal-based animator Christopher Hinton takes away two of the top prizes at this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival (Oct. 2-6), making him one of the most decorated animators internationally of 2002.

Vancouver: Attendance was up 18% at Vancouver International Film Festival’s 17th annual Film and Television Trade Forum, which ran Sept. 25-28 including the popular New Filmmaker’s Day.

‘I’d never shot on high-definition before,’ says Montreal cinematographer Eric Cayla of the Media Principia feature The Baroness and the Pig. ‘I would have been more than happy to shoot on 35mm, but when I was approached to shoot in HD, it added something new to the project and I liked the challenge.’

Montreal: The National Film Board has a plan to develop more meaningful professional experiences for young animation filmmakers, primarily through shorter-term projects.

In its new 14,000-square-foot Flash studio, Vancouver’s Studio B Productions is producing 52 11-minute episodes of Yakkity Yak for Teletoon entirely in-house. Using traditional animation, the labor-intensive animating process would usually be done overseas to cut costs, but creating the children’s TV series with Flash allows Studio B to keep work in Canada.

Animation maverick John Kricfalusi, creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show and The Ripping Friends, has worked in the business since 1980. He launched his independent studio, Spumco, in Los Angeles in 1989, and this fall opened Spumco Canada in his hometown of Ottawa.

Just weeks into fall and already it’s been a very busy season for Minds Eye Pictures of Regina. The prolific Western Canada prodco celebrated the official opening of the Canada-Saskatchewan Soundstage, is moving its head office, hosted an international industry conference, is shooting a $4.3-million feature and recently sold another to Universal Studios in the U.S.
Universal will take The Unsaid, a $22-million psychological thriller starring Andy Garcia and coproduced with New Legend Media out of L.A. and Montreal. to English-speaking territories worldwide plus Japan.
‘Universal hasn’t given a date or told us how they’re going to release it, but we’re just very thrilled to be able to say that Universal Studios did a negative pickup on The Unsaid,’ says Minds Eye president and CEO Kevin DeWalt.

Vancouver: Vancouver native Alex Vendler, cinematographer for the British documentary Kurt and Courtney, returns home for The Delicate Art of Parking, a drama/mockumentary by Anagram Pictures, makers of Mile Zero.
As the feature debut for director Trent Carlson (who directed the 1997 short film Groomed), The Delicate Art of Parking is about an idealistic parking enforcement officer whose devotion to his job is challenged by a motor vehicle accident that leaves his mentor in a coma.
At press time, only actor Dov Tiefenbach (Between Strangers, Flower and Garnet), who plays a documentary filmmaker trailing the hero, was signed on.
The $1.3-million budget – through Telefilm Canada, British Columbia Film, Movie Central and The Movie Network – allows for 20 days of production beginning Oct. 28.

What happens when an independent contractor turns out to be an employee in disguise? Or maybe not an employee, but something like an employee?
A recent Ontario court decision suggests that in some circumstances the law will impose ’employment-like’ rules even where the parties are independent contractors.
Independent contractor relationships are popular throughout the film and television production and broadcast industries. The attraction of the independent contractor relationship, of course, is that it is not an employment relationship and that it is not subject to legislation and case law governing employees.
For example, the engagor doesn’t have to pay employee benefits and withhold and remit the amounts required under employment and income tax legislation. The contractor’s pay is not reduced by source deductions and the contractor can deduct business expenses when calculating income tax.
And it’s a flexible arrangement when the parties want to limit their commitment to a certain time period or a specific project.

It seems Leslie Nielsen (Men with Brooms) just can’t get enough of Ottawa animation house Amberwood Entertainment. And vice versa. The 76-year-old comic – narrator of both Katie & Orbie and the preschooler series Pumper Pups – is set to make his debut as a cartoon character in Zeroman, a superhero spoof Amberwood is currently developing with Teletoon.
‘I think it’s going to be highly saleable in Europe,’ says Amberwood president Sheldon Wiseman. ‘Leslie is very popular over there.’
The traditional 2D animated comedy, aimed at a very broad family audience, will star the voice and caricatured image of Nielsen as a bumbling, super-powered crime fighter. Producers Wiseman and Mark Edwards are working with RoboRoach scribe Dan Smith on this one and, if they get the go-ahead from Teletoon, will go into production in January, aiming to air in March 2004. Each ep is expected to cost about $460,000.

‘Young people today have come a long way from watching Popeye,’ says Roger Monk. ‘They are used to watching pretty fantastic motion pictures in the theatre, so when you see a basic stereo production it becomes pretty bland. They expect it to have big sounds and things flying around the room. Saturday morning cartoons have jumped realms.’

Digital special F/X are a given in this day and age. That’s why Richard J. Anobile, for one, can’t understand why more productions don’t go the step further and do all their picture post-production in the digital domain. The associate producer on Cypher (formerly Company Man), the US$7.5-million Pandora thriller directed by Vincenzo Natali and starring Jeremy Northam (Gosford Park) and Lucy Liu (Charlie’s Angels), recently pushed for the movie to be posted at Toronto’s Command Post/TOYBOX using the shop’s Cinema HD process.

Chris Miller is one of the audio crew at Thillaye Productions, a Toronto studio that has done sound design work for more than 15 years, specializing in large-format 2D and 3D films, features, documentaries and special installations. It is headed by Peter Thillaye, who has worked on more than 25 IMAX films.

With more productions becoming aware of the benefits of posting film-originated material on video, there arises the challenge of ensuring a proper transfer back to film for release prints. That’s where media services provider Sonic Foundry comes in.