Toronto producers Elliott Halpern and Jack Rabinovitch have parted ways with Associated Producers and opened a new production company, Ace Pictures. Under their new banner, Halpern, a two-time Emmy and five-time Gemini winner, and partner Rabinovitch will be exploring long-form fiction in addition to a full slate of documentaries. During their tenure with Associated the pair was known largely for their documentary efforts like The Plague Monkeys (which Halpern produced, wrote and directed).

Mark Hajek is senior editor at Stealing Time Editing. He has over a decade in the business cutting commercial spots and documentaries. His favorite equipment includes the Avid Media Composer and the HAL 9000.

Montreal: Muse Entertainment is fine-tuning its production strategies, expanding its relationship with Toronto producer Bernie Zukerman with prospects for more production in Montreal and an entry into feature film coproduction in the year ahead.

In the new year, Canadian animation companies must face a contracting economy, an uncertain broadcast landscape, an ever-globalizing marketplace and opportunities opened up by troubled competitors. With all this in mind, tooncos are preparing their strategies for the NATPE 2002 conference in Las Vegas, Jan. 21-24.

Vancouver: The animation landscape has its share of mutants – you know, the unsuspecting Joe transformed into something more powerful by forces known or unknown.

This year’s Genie nominees for achievement in cinematography include a flick about a chick who turns into a werewolf, another about two girls discovering themselves (in the biblical sense) at boarding school, an East Coast yarn about the mythical sea, another that takes us to the depths of the Indian Ocean, and a period piece encompassing seven periods.

Key players in the Canadian post biz have recently spent major dollars building a high-definition-enabled infrastructure, acquiring systems such as the da Vinci 2K color corrector and Quantel’s iQ. But while this cutting-edge gear no doubt impresses visiting clients, is there enough HD work at present to justify these costly investments?

Vancouver and Toronto F/X company GVFX added more than 300 shots to the imaginary world of Babylon 5 when it took on the role of sole visual effects creator on the forthcoming 90-minute TV movie Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers. The SCI FI Channel/Warner Bros. International production, a spin-off of the series Babylon 5, was shot in Vancouver in May and June 2001.

Economic troubles that have curtailed Hollywood production have had a negative impact on the post-production software manufacturers. Their chief customers – animation and F/X houses – have seen less work coming through their doors, and the hard times have meant these shops have invested in few new systems lately. But some manufacturers see the silver lining in the current storm clouds.

Launched a year ago by 3D animation and F/X house TOPIX and president and F/X supervisor Dennis Berardi, Toronto-based Mr. X is racking up an impressive list of clients. The feature film and music video shop is hard at work on Cube 2: Hypercube, the Lions Gate Films sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 sci-fi surprise hit; Serendipity Point Films’ highly anticipated Ararat, writer/director Atom Egoyan’s forthcoming epic about the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923; and Men with Brooms, a curling comedy, also from Serendipity.

Montreal: A wide coalition of industry and government interests, including Canada’s largest cable companies, are supporting a Bell ExpressVu appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada against Can-Am Satellites, a small B.C. seller of DTH satellite decoders that receive U.S. signals. SCC hearings started Dec. 4 and a normal course decision is anticipated in the next few months.
Black-market DTH sales in Canada are booming.
ExpressVu estimates there are 600,000 pirated decoders in Canada, with the vast majority, as many as 500,000, in the black-market domain. Grey-market sales are fast disappearing as Canadian consumers balk at paying in U.S. dollars.
The appeal, following three recent provincial appeal court decisions unfavorable to ExpressVu, has important charter and commercial implications.

Vancouver: The Canadian service production industry expects the U.S. Commerce Department to dismiss a petition asking for countervailing duties on U.S.-based runaway production by Dec. 24.
‘It’s more rhetoric than reality,’ says Tom Adair, executive director of the BC Council of Film Unions, referring to the high-profile campaign by the L.A.-based Film and Television Action Committee objecting to Canada’s tax-incentive programs. ‘The countervailing duty is not strongly supported [in the U.S.].’
The whole issue, he adds, is overblown. ‘The nature of the business and the money is mobile,’ says Adair. ‘In Vancouver, we took the dregs of production – syndicated television and cable, stuff the L.A. industry wouldn’t accommodate. Who knew it would be the fastest growing segment of the industry today?’

Montreal: The long-awaited nominations came through Dec. 6 as Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps named Richard Stursberg the new executive director of Telefilm Canada and Charles Belanger as its chair. The appointments are for a five-year term. Former Canadian Television Fund chair Stursberg starts Jan. 1, 2002. Belanger takes over in February.
Stursberg was present at a Telefilm seminar on future orientations held Dec. 9-11 in Mont Tremblant, QC. More than 100 participants representing all sectors of the industry attended the timely confab. ‘It was great,’ he says. ‘I got a chance to meet a lot of people and hear their views.’

Montreal: The Dec. 10 federal budget renews government’s $100-million contribution to the Canadian Television Fund for fiscal 2002/03. CTF’s budget this year is in the order of $230 million, including $80 million to $85 million from cable and satellite program distributors. The secured funding means revised CTF guidelines for next year will apply, but the industry would still like to see CTF’s planning capacity increased with a multi-year commitment.
Chapter 4 of Finance Minister Paul Martin’s budget document announces, ‘In addition, incremental funding to the CBC and the Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund has been extended for one more year.’
The additional provision for CBC in 2002/03 matches this year’s extra money, $60 million.

While Corus Entertainment’s uprooting of WTN to Toronto and laying off its entire Winnipeg staff has caused an uproar among many of its female casualties, the CRTC is less concerned with the location of the service than it is with WTN carrying out its mandate under the new structure.
The commission tends not to mandate the location of a broadcast service, unless, as in the case of Salter Street’s Independent Film Channel Canada, the licence is approved based in part on its location.
In the case of WTN, the service’s location was hardly brought up in the proceedings or the decision, with the exception of the commission encouraging ‘Corus to maintain and build on WTN’s orientation as a Western-based service.’