* Veteran broadcasting executive Len Cochrane has been appointed to replace John Riley as the new president of Teletoon.

Nelvana cofounder and animation maverick Clive Smith surprised the industry last week with his resignation from the toon studio he helped build with Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert.

Montreal: The Reseau TVA crime drama Fortier (Aetios Productions) edged out four high-profile competitors to win this year’s Prix Gemeaux for best dramatic series. Scripted and produced by the prolific Fabienne Larouche, Fortier was nominated in a record 15 categories, coming away with three Gemeaux, including best supporting actor wins for Francois Papineau and Michele-Barbara Pelletier.

Vancouver: Late last month, Vancouver’s City Council unanimously passed a proposal to create space dedicated to Vancouver’s domestic production community – thanks in large part to the efforts of the Vancouver International Film Festival Society and the city’s cultural planning department.
The 13,700-square-foot Vancouver International Film Centre on Seymour Street (across the alley from the new Scotiabank Dance Centre) will feature a 170-seat multimedia screening room that will be able to accommodate a variety of formats.
‘The whole spirit of the facility is forward-looking,’ says Vancouver International Film Festival director Alan Franey. ‘We want to become known as a space for independent Canadian production and art cinema.’

Toronto production house Breakthrough Films and Television continues to produce television content at a breakneck rate. Currently in development are 26 half-hours of the reality documentary series Kids World Sports for Global, PBS and Clear Channel out of New York.
Kids World Sports follows the stories of child athletes from around the world. One episode could include a kickboxer from China, a baseball player in Cuba and a soccer team from Croatia.

In 1999, Jakub Pistecky’s three-and-a-half-minute short, Little Milos, won the International Student Animation Festival of Ottawa’s (SAFO) ASIFA-Canada prize for best Canadian film. Two years later, Pistecki is ensconced in what he calls the ‘grungy’ California studios of Industrial Light & Magic.

‘It doesn’t matter how expensive your pencil is, if you don’t know how to draw,’ says Steve Dovas, professor and animation co-ordinator at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He is quoting veteran animator Chuck Jones (Bugs Bunny, The Grinch), whose comments are particularly apt today – a time when basic drawing skills are back in vogue, taking priority over the high-tech computer expertise that peppered the animation industry throughout the ’90s, says Dovas.

Michel Lemire is executive VP, creative affairs, CineGroupe, heading up the company’s animation studio in Montreal. A graduate of the animation program at Sheridan College in Oakville, ON, Lemire began his career 20 years ago as an animator and key assistant on such well-known projects as Heavy Metal the Movie, The Flintstones and Scooby Doo.

Earlier this year, the Canadian post-production industry, heavily reliant on Hollywood business, was dealt a severe blow by strike threats from the Writers Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. U.S. producers, anxious in the face of looming walkouts, moved up their production schedules, and by summer few cameras were rolling. The effect was serious enough that several shops had to lay off staff.

This year’s Gemini nominees for best overall sound in a dramatic program or series range from a police drama with homegrown sounds to a period piece shot in Montreal but set in 1940s Germany.

Daniel Pellerin is the Genie and Gemini Award winning director of mixing services at Deluxe Post Production Sound in Toronto. In this article he discusses the merit of mixing in 5.1 surround.

The first time Ottawa-born, L.A.-based composer Ron Sures tried to watch footage from the Big Motion Pictures MOW Blessed Stranger: After Flight 111, he had to turn it off after five minutes.

Judi Babcock is manager of post services at Delta, BC’s Big Red Barn Post, an editing shop that specializes in episodic TV, documentaries and independent features. In this article, she weighs the pros and cons of performing offline on location with portable editing systems.

There’s another player on the Toronto spot landscape. The Players Film Company president Philip Mellows reveals that an as-yet-unnamed satellite of his Toronto commercial house is set to launch in October.
Although the roster has not been announced, a September deal with Montreal’s Voodoo Arts for reciprocal representation of the companies’ directors in the two markets offers a first glimpse at the new shop’s lineup of directors.
Voodoo will work to market Players directors such as Philip Kates, Bradley Walsh, Adam Massey, Jordan Toms and Steve Surjik in Montreal, while Players will make room for Voodoo helmers Jim Donovan, Bernard Nadeau and Francis Leclerc in Toronto.

Some would argue that a hard-hitting game like football deserves a hard-hitting ad campaign.
That’s just what the Canadian Football League got from Toronto’s Bensimon Byrne D’Arcy and Spy Films. The pool of eight ads (one for each CFL market) is the brainchild of art director Jamie Way (now repped as a director by Generator Films) and BBD creative director/writer Glen Hunt. Ironically, where Hunt’s high-profile ads, ‘Rant’ and ‘No Doot Aboot It,’ apparently united the country in patriotism, the new CFL campaign pits many of Canada’s cities against one another in the true spirit of the game.