The Secret Language of Girls, a one-hour ‘documentary with a sense of humor’ from Copie Zero Television and Media in Montreal, is premised on the idea that ‘Women have a way of communicating with each other that doesn’t involve men, that…

Demon in the Freezer, a Documart pitch planned as a commercial one-hour with a budget of $350,000 from Dugald Maudsley’s Toronto-based company Infield Fly Productions and Atlantic Television in the U.S., has its origins in another project….

Montreal: The APFTQ producers association says it fully supports Super Ecran’s licence renewal despite a request by the pay-TV movie channel to untie its regulated Canadian program obligations as a fixed percentage of subscriber revenues, normally 20%….

Out of the Fire from Bishari Film Productions of Toronto triumphed at the Golden Sheaf Awards, taking the best of festival award as well as the prize for best documentary history. The project’s director, Shelley Saywell, won a Golden Sheaf for…

Montreal: At its June 4 annual general meeting, the 125-member APFTQ re-elected feature film producer and Cinemaginaire president Denise Robert as its chair and elected television producer and Zone 3 VP Vincent Leduc as vice-chair. Luc Wiseman, president of Avanti Cine…

With Teen People and Cosmo Girl on the racks, cinemas full of American Pie-like romps and Britney Spears on seemingly every channel, it can feel like teenagers have taken over the world. But it was not always thus….

* Vancouver’s Mainframe Entertainment has shuffled its senior management again and named toy company executive Lou Novak as chief executive officer. Ian Pearson, the creative spark behind the company’s breakthrough series ReBoot, moves from CEO after two years to the new…

Scott Harper, producer of Sunday Night, being pitched at Banff’s Documart, says he could do either a commercial hour or a 1 x 90 on the $2 million- to $3 million-budgeted project….

As fate would have it, the trip we at Deluxe were hoping to take to NAB2001 (April 21-26 in Las Vegas) slipped out of our grip due to unforeseen last-minute duties on the home front. This was particularly disappointing since this year’s trade show offered a significant amount of information pertinent in identifying the missing pieces of the digital puzzle as well as the network options now available to those who work in post-production sound.
These technological developments – and the way we integrate them in our studios – will go a long way in maximizing the efficiency of our facilities. The key, of course, is to complement the technology that already exists.
Luckily, Sean Cowan, senior technical engineer at Manta Digital Sound and Picture and intergalactic overlord, managed to slip undetected through the force field to attend NAB and explore the ever-expanding universe of digital media.

Move over, David Cronenberg, Anne Murray, Bobby Orr and you other occupants of Canucks’ Corner, and make room for the likes of F.C.P. Henroteau and Edward Samuels Rogers. The little-known inventors of the TV camera and the AC radio tube, respectively, are potential candidates for a piece of real estate on a new strip called the Canadian Technology Walk of Fame.
The CTWOF, a joint venture of not-for-profit tech organization GigaThon, York Heritage Properties and the City of Toronto, will announce its first 10 inductees at a public ceremony in September in tech-heavy Liberty Village (Liberty St. between Fraser St. and Jefferson St.). Each September another 10 notables will be selected, and the Walk will extend into other industry centres in Toronto and across Canada. To add an apropos high-tech feel, the sidewalk displays will feature a glass-etched plaque illuminated by fiber optic lighting.

Beachcombers – a Canadian institution of almost two decades standing – will find a new life if producer Nick Orchard of Vancouver’s Soapbox Productions has his way. Soapbox’s pitch in the Banff Market Simulation for the New Beachcombers (budgeted at $500,000…

Hawk, a teen drama series (13 x 30) to be pitched at Banff’s Market Simulation ‘is like the concept of Are You Afraid of the Dark?,’ says producer Darlene Mulligan of Chikak Communications, Winnipeg. …

Guest columnist Kathy Barthel fills in this issue while Samantha Yaffe is away on her honeymoon.
Filming is underway in Toronto on the Alliance Atlantis Communications TV movie The Jenifer Estess Project (working title), a two-hour, event movie for CBS. The US$5-million film tells the true story of a young New York theatre producer Jenifer Estess (Laura San Giocomo – Just Shoot Me), who contracts Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and with the help of her sisters Valerie (Jane Kaczmarek – Malcolm in the Middle) and Meredith (Annabella Sciorra – The Sopranos), begins a foundation to speed research for a cure.
But it’s not a typical ‘disease-of-the-week movie, ‘ according to Ed Gernon, executive vice-president, movies and miniseries, Alliance Atlantis Television Production. ‘The film takes the disease-of-the-week formula and flips it on its ear,’ he says. ‘This is a lady with a ribald sense of humor and [it’s also] a strange kind of love story. This movie is about a woman who discovers love in the twilight of her life.’

A man sneezes and what pours forth from him looks like tiny marines rarin’ to take a beach on …

There’s a hippo in the bathtub at Halifax’s Cage Digital, but this one won’t be slipping down the drain out of sight of Canadian children. Cage president and CEO Jan-Peter De Souza assures they’ll know all about The Hippo Tub Co. come fall.
The Hippo Tub Co., a 3D animated kids show to air on CBC, coproduced by Cage and Evening Sky of L.A., is based on the popular children’s album by Canadian crooner Anne Murray.