The volume of sci-fi programming shot in Vancouver has been keeping local post-production and F/X shops such as Rainmaker Digital Pictures buzzing. Sometimes rival shops even end up sharing the load.
‘Different visual effects supervisors work different ways,’ explains Brian Moylan, director of digital imaging at Rainmaker. ‘Some divide [the work] among several shops, and others are adamant that an entire episode gets done at one shop. It’s [dependent on] the amount of effects work you have to get done.’

Go east, young men. …

Patrick Batrynchuk is director of digital media services at Bullet Digital Post, a Toronto shop that specializes in offline & online editorial, compositing and F/X….

Launched in 1993, BIG BANG FX/Animation, an affiliate of MIJO Corporation, has a wide array of technology in its spacious Old Montreal offices. Its compositing environment includes the Discreet Inferno, Flame, Flint, Effect and Combustion systems, Adobe AfterEffects, Softimage|Eddie and Avid…

Watching Elvis and Richard Nixon do a duet on My Way at the White House is not an experience enjoyed by many people, but Lisa Shamata counts it as one of the fringe benefits of her job.
For the unit publicist – in the above case working on the movie Elvis Meets Nixon for Dufferin Gate – the energy of being on set is one of the best parts of the job. Shamata has a preference for unit publicity and puts heavy emphasis on being part of the on-set team rather than an outsider whose needs disrupt filming.

Canadian agents tend to be closer to their clients than their American counterparts. By its nature, agents say, the Canadian system lends itself to a somewhat more intimate client-agent relationship than that experienced south of the border. Agents point out their fee of 15% (compared to the standard American agent’s 10%) is in part compensation for their duties, which are more managerial than their U.S. counterparts.
‘Most Canadian agents would consider themselves both agents and managers to their clients, which is why we take 15% as opposed to Americans who take only 10% and have managers who take another 10%,’ says Paul Hemrend, on-camera and theatre agent at ETM in Toronto. ‘We have jobs that fall within both those categories.’

Nicole Demerse…

Fred Einesman …

Yani Gellman…

Amongst the lineup of documentaries White Pine Pictures has coming down the pipe, company principal Peter Raymont is in development with what he describes as the ‘love of my life project.’
The Quest, a six-part, one-hour series that visits spiritual sites around the world, ones like Ayres Rock that predate organized religion, is an HDTV project presold to TVOntario and NHK in Japan.
To be produced and partly directed by Raymont, the series is budgeted at $600,000/hour, slightly more expensive than it would be if it were shot conventionally. ‘But because it’s an innovative medium, it’s more likely to get funded,’ says Raymont who was recently in Banff negotiating a deal with A&E to help complete the series financing. ‘Everyone’s looking for a good HDTV project,’ he confirms.

Vancouver: Indicative of the migration of disillusioned Los Angelinos to the Lower Mainland, actress/singer/dancer Nia Peeples has taken up residency in West Vancouver, signed a business deal with Peace Arch Entertainment.
Peeples, whose stuntman husband is Saskatchewan-born, got her landed immigrant status last year (well before all the SAG strike fears, we should note), but only cleared her schedule enough to move in this month. She is best known for her work on the series Fame and most recently Walker, Texas Ranger.
At the Banff Television Festival, meanwhile, Peace Arch exec VP Kent Wingerak and Peeples pitched her one-hour dramedy Educating Annie, which Peeples created and has nurtured for four years. Peeples will star in the Northern Exposure-meets-Ally McBeal-inspired series about a high-powered L.A. attorney who flees the rolling blackouts of California and finds an odd sanctuary in B.C.’s Rocky Mountains.

Nothing like a frenzied week of pitching fall TV skeds to tight-fisted media buyers to bring network competitive white noise to a Waco-esque fever pitch.
If they made a verite doc about ‘The Canadian Television Press Tour,’ our version of the Upfront Markets/May Screenings, they could call it Five Bloody Days in June.
Leading up to Fall Launch Week, domestic network executives have commented repeatedly, ‘By our Canadianness shall ye know us.’

The chief executive of cable giant Shaw Communications ‘glibly’ rubbed the industry’s raw nerve as he opened the Canadian Cable Television Association conference by predicting half of the digital specialty channels launching in the fall will fail.
Jim Shaw, CEO, Shaw Communications and CCTA chairman, told a ballroom full of cable and specialty channel execs that programming and marketing costs would sink 50% of the new services, and ‘maybe we shouldn’t launch any.’
Shaw’s remarks, made in the conference’s opening panel session – fittingly titled Digital Too Damn Many Channels – came as word was emerging that in French Canada, neither TVA nor Astral will launch any of their wholly owned French-track, Category 2 digi-specialties this time round. Even the launch of Perfecto, a 50-50 Astral-Chum Category 1 service, is not confirmed for this fall.

Rockwood, Ont.: It’s the last weekend of the 25-day shoot for Red Green’s Duct Tape Forever, a feature film out of S&S Productions, Toronto, producer of cult hit TV series the New Red Green Show. Despite the drizzle, the weather has been smooth throughout production, with indoor shots fortuitously planned for this misty Friday.
Executive produced by David Smith, Duct Tape Forever follows the gang at Possum Lodge as they try to save their treasured meeting place by raising $10,000 to pay for repairs to a limousine damaged outside the lodge. To raise the money, the lodge brothers enter a duct-tape sculpting competition where the third prize is $10,000, and ‘go for the bronze’ with an oversized duct-tape goose.

Montreal: The heart of the Banff Television Festival is its up-front market for content and financing, the comparatively easy access to all orders of international commissioning editors and a general business and social environment aimed at fostering national and international coproduction.
The official opening ceremonies for the festival’s 22nd edition, June 10-15, take place Monday, June 11 with the scheduled participation of Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, Telefim Canada chairman Laurier LaPierre, CTV president and COO Trina McQueen and Banff Television Foundation president and CEO Pat Ferns.
International coproduction continues to evolve. Ferns says dramatic coproductions may be becoming more difficult as domestic programming strengthens its hold on primetime schedules. ‘But I think in factual programming, children’s and in formats the world is becoming more and more international, and Banff has played its part in all of that.