Everything about Featured, eh?

I’ve been a fan of the U.S. space program since I was a kid. In 1981, I watched as the Space Shuttle Columbia blasted off on April 12. I was transfixed. I don’t know when I first learned of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and the moon landing, but it was likely before Columbia. Regardless, I thought I pretty much knew everything there was to know about Apollo 11â€”through books, movies and documentariesâ€”until I watched Make It to the Moon.

Debuting Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on Discovery, this Canadian production unearthed a treasure trove of information. While 600 million people watched the first astronauts land on the moon on July 20, 1969, four teams contracted by NASA played crucial roles in the historical moment were unknown to most.

“What people know about the Apollo program is the mission control and astronaut story,” says Maria Knight, Make It to the Moon producer and director. “What people don’t realize is how many people were involved to get this off the ground. President Kennedy really did harness the entire technological power of the U.S. in order to pull this off.” Narrated by Golden Globe-nominated Canadian actor Stephan James, the two-part project truly is an international affair, jetting to Australia to interview former employees of the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, most famous for receiving and relaying the television images of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.

Virtually every piece for the mission was built from scratch, with four organizations embracing the challenge: Honeysuckle Creek; the Grumman Aircraft Corporation designed and built the first-ever lunar lander; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created groundbreaking navigational software and shrunk a computer the size of a semi-trailer to one-cubic-foot so it could fit onboard the lunar module; and the International Latex Company, best known for its Playtex bras and girdles, stitched a new kind of space suit by hand.

After eOne did the legwork, contacting former workers at the four companies, Knight and her team sat down and interviewed them. Though it’s 50 years later, their eyes light up with excitement recalling the rush to complete the project and ensure the U.S. was the first country to conquer the moon.

“Most of these people got jobs in the Apollo program straight out of college and I think the average age of the program was mid-20s,” Knight says. “Can you imagine graduating from university and, in the case of Don Eyles, [ending up] writing the code for the lunar lander?

“Technology is so fast-moving for us right now and there is sort of a blasÃ© feel about it,” Knight continues. “We want to show how extraordinary this accomplishment was and bring a bit of awe into what these people accomplished.”

Make It to the Moon airs Sunday, July 14, at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT on Discovery.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

Amazing Race Canada, Featured

The Amazing Race Canada: Getting revved up in Revelstoke, B.C.

July 9, 2019 Greg David 2 Comments

In last week’s Season 7 debut, returning competitors Jet and Dave showed that even veteran Racers can make a rooke mistake on The Amazing Race Canada, when neglecting to grab a map led to their elimination.

This time aroundâ€”and in a special timeslotâ€”the remaining teams began Leg 2 in British Columbia, and headed to Revelstoke. Dave and Irinaâ€”who finished first last week, claimed two Express Passes and talked a surprising amount of trash about their competitorsâ€”were the first to depart for the two-hour-plus drive through the mountains. Along the way, teams were instructed to keep an eye out for a clue signifying the last spike. Athletes Sarah and Sam were the next to drive out of town, followed by sisters Meaghan and Marie, sisters Lauren and Joanne, friends Trish and Amy, married couple Anthony and James, couple Aarthy and Thinesh, Nikki and Aisha and Gilles and Sean.

It was at the site of the last spike that Racers learned the Leg’s Road Block: someone would be driving a motorbike course. Marie, Dave, Joanne, Sam, James and Trish all hit the course around the same time, with different levels of success. The best part? When those not doing the Road Block realized Jet and Dave weren’t around. But back to the bikes, where Marie took a major header over her handlebars. She was OK, but the replay of the crash showed how violent it was. Marie and Dave were a little slow the first time around, but were under the two-minute mark on their second try and completed the task. Nicki and Aisha were caught, literally, on the other side of the mountain and had to backtrack. Sean, who was oh-so-confident he would breeze through (he rides a bike to work every day, he confided to Sam), fell over two feet into the course.

In the Detour, teams had to choose between Plant (planting 40 tree seedlings at the correct depth and distance) or Paddle (take to the water in tethered kayaks and collect flags). Those choosing to plant included Dave and Irina, Anthony and James, Trish and Amy, Nicki and Aisha, and Lauren and Joanne. Those opting to paddle were Meaghan and Marie (who just happen to be expert, competitive paddlers), Gilles and Sean, Sarah and Sam, and Aarthy and Thinesh.

Dave and Irina were just two trees away from completing their task when they realized they hadn’t used the included rope to measure off the planting distances. They would have to do it all again. Meaghan and Marie had no issues and left the Detour in top spot.

Next up was the Revelstoke Railway Museum, where duos worked together to create a model train laid out in a specific way. This was a detail-oriented task, and Meaghan was distracted by other teams’ arriving. Teams like Aarthy and Thinesh who came, saw and whipped off the challenge in their first try. Dave and Irina were next, followed by Gilles and Sean, Sarah and Sam, Meaghan and Marie and Anthony and James. Lauren and Joanne, meanwhile, were still planting trees and arguing.

The Leg’s Pit Stop was located at the Revelstoke Mountain Resort, where teams took a gondola ride to the top to search for Jon. It was, shockingly, Aarthy and Thinesh who turned a seventh-place start into a first-place finish and a trip to Madrid and an Express Pass. Dave and Irina were next (and Irina showed poor gamesmanship, in my opinion), followed by Gilles and Sean, Sarah and Sam, Meaghan and Marie, and Anthony and James. Aisha and Nicki headed in the wrong direction leaving an opportunity for Lauren and Joanne to make up ground.

And, in the end, that’s exactly what happened as the sisters beat out out the best friends to the mat; Aisha and Nicki were eliminated from the Race. What did you think of this Leg? Were you expecting it to be a non-elimination? Let me know in the comments below.

Here’s how the teams finished this Leg of the Race:

Aarthy and Thinesh
Dave and Irina
Gilles and Sean
Sarah and Sam
Meaghan and Marie
Anthony and James
Trish and Amy
Lauren and Joanne
Aisha and Nicki (eliminated)

The Amazing Race Canada airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

Featured, Industry News

Sean Hayden breaks down the mystery behind making music for TV

July 8, 2019 Greg David

Sean Hayden has been playing music all of his life. But it took a Craigslist posting for him to turn it into a career. The Vancouver native asked a friend how he’d gotten into composing. The friend’s advice? Look for another composer who needed help. A day later, he spotted exactly that on Craigslist.

Now, Hayden is putting music to television ads for Interac, Nissan, Bell, The Keg and Blue Ant Media’s upcoming animated series, Gary and his Demons.

We spoke to Sean Hayden about composing and collaborating with others.

You literally fell into this job because of Craigslist. Are you still pinching yourself?
Sean Hayden: Yeah. It’s bizarre that that happened. A bit of a Twilight Zone moment.

Give me a little bit about your background, Sean. Has music always been a part of your life?
SH: Yeah. For me, music was something I just knew I wanted to do when I was seven or eight years old. My dad is a pilot and when he was three years old, he was the same way when it came to piloting, which is crazy at that young an age.

He just knew he wanted to be a pilot. For me, it wasn’t necessarily composing. It was just about wanting to do music. I don’t know the exact path I’d end up being in music then at seven or eight years old. I just knew I wanted it to be just what I did for the rest of my life. I had a fortunate upbringing where I was in a place and circumstances where I could focus a lot on music most of the time. I still had a normal childhood, obviously. I was from the West Coast in Vancouver, so I grew up doing a lot of mountain biking and snowboarding and stuff like that. But when I wasn’t doing that, I was playing music.

Did you play in bands in high school? Was there a Vancouver club scene that you played in?
SH: In high school, where I grew up was in an area called White Rock in Surrey. Every day from Grade 8 until 12, I was doing both jazz band and concert band. I was doing music basically for most of those years for at least two hours a day. That was huge. And then we had what we called combo groups outside of the normal school hours through there. Then I played in some garage rock bands just for fun on the side as well. It was just always there for me. it was a little incubator. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.

I got a copy of your reel and went through it. When Peter Dinklage pops up on screen it’s like, ‘Wow, OK, that’s a pretty cool gig.’ You’ve worked on ads for Ford, for Nissan, for Shreddies, for Mitsubishi. When it comes to an ad … let’s use the Cisco ad with Peter Dinklage as an example. Are you given a script? Are you then told we’re looking for a certain vibe? Where do you start to even come up with the atmospheric building and tempo music for an ad like that one?
SH: Right. Yeah, a lot of times they comeâ€”they being a director or the agency or both. They can sometimes be very specific about what they want. They have a very set idea in mind. Other times it’s really open. In that case, they were actually really open with the Peter Dinklage one. They did have some things in mind. They wanted a sense … some of the words if I recall correctly that they used was they wanted a sense of technology to be somehow incorporated in the music and a bit of a futuristic sound. Not necessarily the main thing, but it is a spot about technology moving forward, so they wanted that to be incorporated in the music. They wanted to hear something that was grand in scale and somewhat cinematic, which cinematic really is … it’s just a word that tends to be used pretty often and a clichÃ© but something that sounds quite grand and large, although, it doesn’t have to be. A lot of times we’ll talk about what’s the main emotion you’re supposed to feel and what are we trying to suggest to the viewer, what things do we need to help out the picture. These are all things we’ll try to address.

But going back to the Peter Dinklage spot, what I did was I just tried to takeâ€”which is one of my favourite things to doâ€”is to take familiar sounds, things like a violin, for example, and just try to mutate it so that you know that it’s an organic sound but there’s something that’s been done to it that’s just manipulated in such a way that it’s different sounding. That could be the way that the actual instrument’s being played or how it’s being processed or both. So I love the combination of things that are fairly synthetic or organic sounds that are made to sound synthetic or vice versa.

Actors and actresses have to say words in a script. The settings are decided. The setting is a castle or it’s inside a car. But when it comes to composing you very much … you got maybe some keywords and some themes but other than that it’s wide open for you, isn’t it?
SH: It can be. It actually can be. Sometimes what I’m doing is trying to convince a director to go in a direction that might be a little bit different than what they’re thinking. Sometimes they’ll be like, ‘Well, we like something like this.’ And you look at it and it’s your first time seeing all this and you go, ‘I know why you think that but I think there’s something that we can maybe do that’s more exploratory and fits your film or your advertisement a lot better.’

Let’s talk about Gary and his Demons. Are there any major differences when it comes to composing an ad or an animated series?
SH: I think one thing with animation is when you’re working on it a lot of times it’s being animated at the same time, in conjunction while you’re working on the picture. You’re working in what we call animatics, which are the sketches. You might not have the full movement or the full idea of what the end product is going to look like. You try to flush out those details as best you can.

I was doing this episode and writing music for it. For whatever reason, I thought the entire time that this episode was taking place during the day. Then when we got the picture in with all the colouring and everything, the background scenery, it was all placed at night. So the music suddenly was like, ‘Oh, does this feel right now?’ Those little things are sometimes TV fails that you try to flush out, but you forget about and then those are some challenges with the show there. But that’s also what makes it really fun. The other thing about animation, especially with Gary and his Demons, is to try to make the music to be as legit as possible. What I mean by that is not making it cartoony because it’s an adult cartoon.

As an artist, are you always thinking about music? Are you able to turn your brain off?
SH: I do have daily habits are kind of funny. Most people listen to music when they go to the gym. I don’t. I’m doing it every day so much, a minimum of eight hours a day. So for me, going to the gym and not having music is nice. I’ve gotten better at turning off over the years. But sometimes there’ll be some music playing in the background and then I’m having a conversation with somebody that I just catch myself having a moment when I’m just not listening, and analyzing the music in the background or something. So those moments happen all the time.

Check out more of Sean Hayden’s work on his website.

Amazing Race Canada, Featured

Comments and queries for the week of July 5

July 5, 2019 Greg David

My mouth dropped open in disbelief when Jon eliminated Jet and Dave, OMG. I thought for sure itâ€™d be a non-Elimination Leg. I was super stoked they were back, and canâ€™t believe theyâ€™re done. THE most entertaining and funny duo to enter the entire series IMO. (Yes I voted for them lol.) Sad, but hereâ€™s hoping the saying third timeâ€™s a charm rings true. Maybe in Season 10, maybe. â€”Tunie

I know that I learned things from watching this show. Look where you want to go, know your limits and drive within them, how to do proper shoulder checks, how to know where your wheels are, how to steer when you are skidding, and be a polite driver. Thank you, Canada’s Worst Driver. â€”J

Come be a surrogate host for an American version. The hosts here suck, they are so busy playing to their fan clubs that the show lacks your sense of humour or ability to properly host a show. Maybe if you canâ€™t do that you can teach other hosts how to properly make a show work. What it really comes down to is you were the show. Without your talent to present, it wouldnâ€™t have lasted. â€”Ed

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? Email greg.david@tv-eh.com or via Twitter @tv_eh.

Burden of Truth, Featured

Burden of Truth: Kristin Kreuk reflects on her past and looks to the future

July 4, 2019 Greg David 2 Comments

Kristin Kreuk has, literally, grown up on television. The Vancouver native, who landed roles on both the Canadian teen drama Edgemont and The WB/The CW superhero series Smallville in 2001, has seen steady work since.

Her current role? Playing Joanna Hanley on CBC’s Burden of Truth, where she also serves as an executive producer.Â With Season 3 of the CBC legal drama in production for a winter return, we sat down with Kreuk during the Banff World Media Festival, where she received the Canadian Award of Distinction.

How do you view it when it comes to women being represented either in front of the screen or behind the scenes? Obviously, there’s an issue. Do you feel as though it’s getting better?
Kristin Kreuk: Absolutely. Are we there yet? No. We’re not. I’ve said this many times, but prior to, I think I’ve worked with two female directors on my seven and a bit years on Smallville. Maybe one more than that. So going from that to, I worked with a few more on Beauty and the Beast, and with Burden, we don’t get a lot of directors but for our first two seasons it was like 50:50. Now it’s not, but a part of the reason why it’s not is that so many women are hired across the board until mid-2020. So that’s great. It just means that there are spaces now for the young ones to come up and fill that void. And they need to be supported to do that. And given the chances.

But yeah, I think that it is changing. And in Canada, I feel like we may be a little further ahead and I don’t know for 100 per cent because I haven’t worked in the States for a while, but from what I hear anecdotally you can still end up in a writers’ room in the U.S. and it isn’t even close to par. It’s very much weighted towards male voices. So I know that they’re working on it too.

It feels as though, to me, this has been a natural evolution for you, to move towards being an executive producer. Has it been a conscious decision?
KK: It was a conscious decision for me. I was just joking with these guys. I have been saying for years that I’m done with acting. I want to produce. And I’m moving in that direction. And so it was a decision I made because A, some of this is very practical. I have no other skill sets. I’ve been doing this since I was 17 years old. I understand, I’m going into my 19th season as lead on a television series, which is so insane to me. So I have all this experience with storytelling and I’ve seen how you start a story and I can kind of imagine where it’s going to go and how it might fail or what might happen to it. So all of that lends itself to moving into a more creative producing role.

It’s still hard for me to make the transition. I think that it will be a process over time to the point where I can take on a show more on my own and not have other producers that I need. I will always have people, I think because I’m not a money person and just it’s not my skill set yet. Maybe it will be one day. As of now, I don’t feel like I have the entire skillset required to do the job, but I think that I’m getting closer and closer.

Directing? Does that interest you at all?
KK: You know what, it doesn’t. And I wish it freaking did. I wish that’s what I wanted to do. I think I’m a visual person. I think I’m just uncomfortable handling a set. I think that it’s a very specific environment that I just don’t… And it’s not even out of fear. I just don’t want to do that. I don’t think. I mean, never say never, I suppose. But I have friends who are like, ‘Yeah, I want to direct,’ and they’re former actors who are moving into other fields. Women especially want to move out of acting because as you get older, sadly, you sort of age out a little. Which we can also change when we’re in positions of power. But yeah, I wish, I wish, wish. Directing, I wish, directing.

It was interesting watching those Season 1 and Season 2 clips again this morning because, specifically the Season 2 clips that I made note of, where the camera was in tight. I feel like that’s different from season one.
KK: It’s new. We made a conscious decision to change the look of the show between Season 1 and Season 2. And then Thom Best, who was our Season 2 director of photography, and director Grant Harvey got together and kind of pitched a whole look. And they were like, ‘We want to get more intimate close-ups of the characters,’ which we had certainly not done and I’m always like, ‘Blah, I don’t want to be that close.’ But it really was effective. Really effective.

Not only that, they shift compositionally. So they changed the compositional palette of the show and the colour palette, too. The whole thing is a little more cinematic versus season one, which was also beautiful, but much more like small-town and warm and glowy and I think that the shift was really great for the story that we were telling for season two.

You mentioned Edgemont so I have to ask you about that. It’s on Encore+. Have you gone and looked at any old episodes?
KK: God, no. I can’t do it.

Isn’t that incredible that this show that you made is now available on YouTube for people to stream any time they want?
KK: It is so bizarre to me that Edgemont was and continues to be popular. It was so popular. Not just in Canada. In France, it was massively popular. I would get recognized for Edgemont in France. So funny. And I was on Smallville simultaneously. I did both those jobs at the same time. And I think that it’s great. It’s such a fun small little show and we did five seasons of that show. And it was great. I loved it. I mean, I hated it at first because I had no idea what I was doing and I felt so uncomfortable, but I grew to love it.

What would you have told your younger self?
KK: I would’ve told myself to take classes. I would’ve told myself to make an effort to develop a deep relationship with acting because I didn’t have one and I didn’t understand it. I had only done theatre. So when I started acting, I didn’t know how to be smaller. And then when I did smaller, I lost all of my feelings. And so it was this weird thing and instead of just going like, ‘I’m uncomfortable and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just going to go and work really, really, really hard.’ I got scared. And I was like, ‘I’m not doing this any more.’ And it turned out that I just kept doing it and I never really gave myself the time to develop a craft. And I did it all on set. Which is fine, I guess, in the end, but it put me through a lot of discomfort of being like, ‘God, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck, I suck.’

There are just so many things I would’ve told myself. Also, ‘Don’t stress so much,’ is great too. I think the big lesson, too, is getting over the hump of caring too deeply about what people think of you in a negative sense, because when we started on Smallville, there were no social media. Thank God. But there were forums on the Internet and, I forget, there’s actually a technical term for it, but when you’re drawn to reading the worst things you can about yourself.

It was just something that I was compelled to do. It was almost like I was trying to numb myself to this thing. But why did I care what these people thought? If they thought my eyes were too far apart or they thought that I looked too young or they thought whatever. Or that I was this or that. I’m like, ‘Why was I obsessed over this?’

Season 3 of Burden of Truth returns in winter 2020 to CBC.

Feature image courtesy of Kristian Bogner. Other images courtesy of CBC.