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Awards, Coroner, Featured, Jann

Coroner and Jann capture WGC Screenwriting Awards

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From a media release:

In an awards presentation unlike any other for the Writers Guild of Canada, host Gavin Crawford announced the winners of the 24th annual WGC Screenwriting Awards via the Guild’s YouTube channel this evening. Winners of 2020’s top prizes include Jann Arden & Jennica Harper (JANN), Noelle Carbone (Coroner), Laura Phillips (Sweetness in the Belly) and Nance Ackerman & Ariella Pahlke & Teresa MacInnes (Conviction). Congratulations to 2020’s talented winners and nominees.

WGC special awards were also presented, with the WGC Showrunner Award going to Dennis Heaton, the Sondra Kelly Award to Cynthia Knight, and Nathalie Younglai receiving the Alex Barris Mentorship Award. 

In light of the cancellation of the 2020 physical awards ceremony due to COVID-19, this year’s winners will also be celebrated at the 25th Annual WGC Screenwriting Awards, which are set for April 26, 2021, at Toronto’s Koerner Hall.

2020 WGC SCREENWRITING AWARDS WINNERS 

CHILDREN’S 

Hotel Transylvania: The Series, “Better Know Your Mavis” | Written by Mark Steinberg 

COMEDY SERIES 

JANN, “The Big House” | Story by Jann Arden & Jennica Harper, Teleplay by Jennica Harper 

DOCUMENTARY 

Conviction | Written by Nance Ackerman & Ariella Pahlke & Teresa MacInnes 

DRAMA SERIES 

Coroner, “All’s Well” | Written by Noelle Carbone 

FEATURE FILM 

Sweetness in the Belly | Written by Laura Phillips 

MOW & MINISERIES 

Thicker Than Water | Written by David Elver & Andrea Stevens 

PRESCHOOL 

Dino Dana, “Dino Prints” | Written by J.J. Johnson & Christin Simms & Amish Patel 

SHORTS & WEBSERIES 

Save Me, “Birdie’s End” | Written by Fabrizio Filippo 

TWEENS & TEENS 

Creeped Out, “The Takedown” | Written by Emma Campbell 

SONDRA KELLY AWARD 

Cynthia Knight

ALEX BARRIS MENTORSHIP AWARD 

Nathalie Younglai

WGC SHOWRUNNER AWARD 

Dennis Heaton

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Featured, Murdoch Mysteries

Comments and queries for the week of April 24

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Murdoch Mysteries is by far, the best series my husband and I have ever watched! It’s what is helping us through our quarantine time, providing great entertainment! Yannick is brilliant as Murdoch and is my favourite! Looking forward to many more seasons! —Char

I am a 74-year-old from Ohio. I can’t say how much I love Murdoch Mysteries. I watch the show over and over again waiting on the next season. I can’t get it on the TV, so I have to wait and watch the new shows when they come on Hulu. I like that it is a clean, no sex, no cussing show. Also, I would love for the old episodes of Sue Thomas F. B. Eye to come on Hulu. Thank you for Murdoch Mysteries. —Elizabeth

I became a Murdoch fan about five years ago. First saw the show as The Artful Detective and have been following the show since. Because I reside south of the Canadian border, it was tough getting the show on TV, so I had to rent DVDs until I discovered AcornTV. I like the entire cast and will miss the show after I finish the final three episodes of Season 13. Great job CBC. —Leo

I am an 83-year-old lady from the UK and want to say Murdoch Mysteries has been a life saver to watch during lockdown/isolation because of COVID-19. Icame to the series late but am so grateful to all involved over the years to produce such an intelligent and interesting program. Long may it continue! —Sylvia

I’m a 73-yr-old Ohio Buckeye. Been watching Murdoch for years on the Ovation Channel. Just a tremendous cast and talented writers! Please keep this gem in production! —Jennie

I am an American, and I love all of Yannick Bisson’s movies that we are able to see here. I think his acting is superb! I wish we were able to see all of his work, but we only have the Murdoch Mysteries. I love his work! And I am a 72-year-old African American! —Marva

Got a question or comment about Canadian TV? Email greg.david@ami.ca or via Twitter @tv_eh.

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Cardinal, Featured

Cardinal director Nathan Morlando on Season 4: “It was super, super physically intense”

It’s no secret that I love Cardinal‘s winter settings most. The cold and snow are another character, keeping Algonquin Bay’s citizens inside and cut off from each other. That distancing adds to the isolation and gives an added level of dread to the crimes that are happening.

And while it sure looks good and contributes to the story, the extreme climate played havoc during Season 4 of Cardinal. As co-showrunner and season director Nathan Morlando told us, it was a challenge to bring unforgettable scenes to life.

Morlando, who wrote and directed the feature film Citizen Gangster and directed Mean Dreams, gave us a behind-the-scenes peek at the process.

What was it like to come into Cardinal where the world had already been built?
Nathan Morlando: Fantastic, actually because it had been so strongly established. The only negative, and it’s a very temporary negative, is the stress and anxiety you feel initially by inheriting such a successful show. So before it gets really, really, really going, there’s always that voice in your mind, ‘Are you going to be the one who’s going to screw this up?’ But once the machine gets going, like after the first half-hour of shooting, the voice was gone because there was no time for it.

The positive was to inherit such a great show. And to have been invited to follow on the heels of everyone else that preceded me was really amazing. The Cardinal crew themselves were very loyal, passionate; they are super fans of the show. They care so much and they work so hard. This year we spent the first month in February, which was North Bay’s coldest recorded month in their history. Outdoors it was super, super physically intense and psychologically intense because of that. But the crew was just an extraordinary team. And because they are so loyal to Billy, Karine, to the show, to [producers] Julia [Sereny] and Jennifer [Kawaja], there was never a complaint, there was never, ‘We can’t do this.’

Wow!
NM: For the last episode, we spent a week in the woods. And before we shot that last episode, we had the biggest snowfall in North Bay’s history, it was four feet of snow. And suddenly, the paths and how we thought we were going to shoot this thing and move our trucks, we couldn’t conceivably move in the forest. We had an emergency production meeting two weeks before, whether or not it was even feasible to get in there, to get in and out.

Part of our crew spent days, day and night, flattening paths so that we could actually move in the woods. Steve Cosens, the cinematographer, and I had to go into the woods two weeks before to imagine the movement of all these various scenes. Then we had to imagine where our camera was going to move because. So we had to create the actors’ paths and the camera’s paths two weeks in advance.

Aside from all that planning, what about your cameras? They’ve got to get cold to a point where the shutters won’t close.
NM: Yeah, exactly. For the first couple of weeks, because of these cameras [and temperatures], the camera crew had to get on set earlier and stay sometimes four hours after to heat the lenses because the lenses would fog. They had to work extremely long hours to make that happen. So yeah, there were a lot of equipment challenges. We were using a drone, we were really concerned that the drone would crash in the cold. Fortunately, it didn’t.

My favourite seasons of Cardinal have been the winter seasons. I think it really plays well into the feeling, that isolation that you feel, that you’re supposed to feel.
NM: For sure. And the outer environment, so winter, is actually a character this year, which I really loved. And that’s really, that’s the slow mystery actually, is the character of the environment.

What was it like to work with Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse?
NM: They were amazing, as actors and as people, truly. And the crew worked the way they did because they were committed to Billy and Karine. The crew would do anything for Billy and Karine, and that isn’t always the case … that is not often the case. And the crew feels that way about them because of the way Billy and Karine treat people. This is what’s special about them: there is no hierarchy in their perception. Billy and Karine are friends with everyone and they respect everyone. They care for everyone and they make sure everyone is doing well. They’re real team players and team leaders. We were able to do what we did because of the leadership from Billy and Karine. I was very indebted to that and to the crew for feeling that way.

Cardinal airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on CTV.

Images courtesy of Bell Media.

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Featured, Reality, Lifestyle & Documentary

Take a four-hour tour with TVO’s Tripping the Rideau Canal

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Honestly, the timing couldn’t be more perfect. With Canadians—and the world—being encouraged to stay inside as much as possible, Tripping the Rideau Canal comes along to fill a goodly chunk of time for those abiding by the rules and hunkering down.

Debuting Friday at 7 p.m. on TVO (and available to stream on TVO.org) the four-hour documentary—yes, you read that right—plops viewers into a seat in a 1948 mahogany Shepard runabout and takes them on a real-time ride on a 27-kilometre stretch of the canal into Ottawa. The doc is the brainchild of executive producer, writer and director Mitch Azaria, whose Good Earth Productions has made series like Canada: A Magnificient Journey, Great Canadian Parks and Great Canadian Lakes.

And if four hours aboard a boat seems boring, it’s not. Tripping the Rideau Canal is equal parts boat ride and history lesson, as facts about the canal and the area surrounding it flit on-screen every few minutes.

We chatted with Mitch Azaria about the show’s seeds and the challenges he faced filming a four-hour, non-stop production.

I’ve driven parallel to the Rideau Canal for years, so this really opened my eyes to it. How did you end up doing this for TVO?
Mitch Azaria: Ironically I’d actually made a doc about the Rideau Canal a long time ago, but it was so long ago that I’d forgotten about it. I went to Ottawa University, so I always thought that the Rideau Canal went from Carleton University to downtown. I didn’t realize that it’s over 200 kilometres long, it goes from Kingston to Ottawa, when it was built or why. I didn’t know any of that.

We were talking with TVO and they kept saying, ‘We’d like to do something that’s in real-time and we don’t have commercials so we can just put something on for a really long time.’ And we thought, ‘What broadcaster says that to an independent producer? It’s the greatest thing you can do.’ We figured out pretty quickly it would have to be some kind of journey where the viewer feels like they’re taking a trip. It couldn’t be static, it would have to be in motion. We had a list of 10 places in Ontario that we thought would be interesting and that ranged from train trips to highway trips to boat trips. We’d got it down to the Welland Canal and the Rideau Canal and we went with a small camera, shot footage of both and presented it to TVO. We knew already that we liked the Rideau Canal, but we didn’t want to influence them. And they picked the Rideau Canal too. So there we were.

It’s very relaxing and part of the fun is the history lesson.
MA: It’s the oldest continuously operated canal in North America. There’s a lot of interesting parts about the history, but what I find the coolest is that you get to a lock. The men and women that are working the lock, they’re Parks Canada people, because the Rideau Canal is under Parks Canada.

The cranks that they’re turning and the operation that they’re running is the same one that’s been in operation for almost 200 years. The actual handle that they’re hand cranking, everything other than the doors, all the metal works, all the internal work, even the stones that the canals are made out of. Because it’s UNESCO World Heritage Site, they have to go and get the stones from the quarries that are now 150 years closed. They have to go and find those old quarries and take the stone out of those old quarries, so they match the stone that was put there 200 years ago.

Let’s talk about some logistics. I guess it was natural for you to start at the dam at the beginning rather than further up the chain?
MA: John Morrison was the director, and he and I spent a crazy amount of time on the canal trying to figure out all of these things, including a starting point that would be exactly four hours from the end. We weren’t smart enough to figure out anything more than, let’s go four hours back and start.

What about motor noise? Was that ever going to be an issue?
MA: It was going to be a real issue, and we had two sound men that all they did was try and figure out how to avoid that. So, they had everything pointed forward and they had figured out a way to keep everything in front of us.

What are some issues you came across during filming?
MA: We thought we asked every question and every technical issue to make sure that we could run for four hours. And one of the things that came up as we’re running and sort of live, we’re shooting, is the boat operator said, ‘Geez, we’re probably going to have to stop a few times because of these weeds.’ And we went, ‘What do you mean weeds?’ We thought we asked every question. Can the batteries last long enough? Will the camera run long enough? Are the cards long enough that we’re recording on? Do we have enough gas? That’s the one question. So yeah, there were a couple of little hitches that we didn’t count on, but that’s the way it goes.

Get some extra behind-the-scenes footage on filming on the show’s website.

Tripping the Rideau Canal airs Friday at 7 p.m. on TVO.

Images courtesy of the TVO original, Tripping the Rideau Canal

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Featured, Schitt's Creek

Schitt’s Creek says goodbye with tear-filled Best Wishes, Warmest Regards

“It’s a double cry night.”

That’s the promise delivered by Amy Segal, describing Tuesday’s series finale of Schitt’s Creek at 8 p.m., on CBC and the one-hour documentary that follows it, Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: A Schitt’s Creek Farewell, at 8:30 p.m. Segal knows of what she speaks since she’s been working on Schitt’s Creek from Day 1, having produced and directed all 52 scripted webisodes, as well as Behind the Episodes. 

Segal, who got her start on CTV’s etalk before segueing to The Hills Aftershow, met and became friends with Schitt’s Creek co-creator Daniel Levy. Now, with the final episode of six seasons upon us, we spoke to Segal about her experiences working on Schitt’s Creek, and what fans can expect when they tune in to Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: A Schitt’s Creek Farewell.

What are the unique challenges that you run into when you’re filming the Behind the Episodes segments?
Amy Segal: The Behind the Episodes were fun. We ended up shooting them all day, and by the end, we were exhausted. But they talked for a solid 20 to 30 minutes for each show, and I had to pare it down two and a half, three minutes. I know, it’s difficult, but it’s fun. I always have a good time.

Are you making notes while they’re talking and saying, ‘OK, I think this might make for a good soundbite or short conversation.’ Or do you wait until you’re in the editing suite after? How does that work?
AS: I’m always listening and I’m asking them questions and leading the conversation a little bit. I definitely take notes, but I think it comes down to see how it flows in the edit. I edit everything myself, so it’s sort of picking and choosing what I like and having to get rid of things that I do like because it’s too long. But I’m just really making sure that I know I have content before we finish wrapping up. I definitely take notes and I go in with, so I know what parts I want to highlight.

What were some of the logistics behind filming Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: A Schitt’s Creek Farewell? How much filming did you do for that?
AS: So much. I originally wanted to do the 44-minute version, and then an actual documentary length version. I’m hoping that will maybe find its way somewhere, eventually, because like I do with the behind the episodes, I had to cut so much gold and it crushed me. You want to get in the important things, but it doesn’t leave a lot of room for longer moments and pauses, and that was hard for me to get over.

It’s a celebration of the show and the fans and the cultural impact that the show has had. So there was a lot to say, and at the same time, I really wanted to show what it was like to make a final season of a show. Because it’s not easy. We started in the writer’s room in Los Angeles, in their incubation room in November 2018. And then we shot for almost a year and a half.

Who floated that idea of there being a farewell documentary?
AS: It was Dan and I. It’s always been my dream to make a documentary and we were talking and I said, ‘What if we do something for the last season?’ Because we were fans of Girls and they did a miniature, not really a documentary, but like a little clip show kind of thing. Originally, the intention was a look back, interviewing the cast and just their favourite moments, highlights, whatever. And then it ended up turning into a much bigger beast, a celebration of the show and just seeing the process of it.

You’ve been with the show since Day 1. How does it feel to be for this all to be ending on Tuesday?
AS: Oh gosh. It’s devastating. It’s a huge part of all of our lives. And it’s weird because now is the time we usually go back to set and start prepping for the next season. And it is sad. The last shows started airing, and I’ve been so preoccupied with making this that I haven’t really had a moment to think. But now that it’s winding up, it’s kind of a surreal moment. But, yeah, very sad.

I’ve been a fan of Schitt’s Creek from the very beginning and have been getting a lump in my throat as we get closer to the end and to the wedding. What’s the cultural impact from your standpoint that Schitt’s Creek has had on us?
AS: That was another reason I wanted to make the documentary. In Canada, we’re so removed from Hollywood and that world and the first four seasons were just like any other television show that we’ve worked on. The fan base just started to get really into it. Dan would show me messages that he had gotten from fans and people even messaged me, which is so nice.

The fans are just so lovely and there were so many stories that were so positive and beautiful … kids coming out to their parents … and then I met fans on the tour … their parents have embraced them because they watched Johnny and Moira embrace David.

Amy, can you pretty much guarantee that if you’re a fan of the show, that someone like myself is going to cry after watching this special?
AS: You will 110% be bawling at the end. A good, therapeutic cry. You’ll cry at the end of the episode as well. It’s a double cry night.

Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: A Schitt’s Creek Farewell airs Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. on CBC.

Images courtesy of CBC.

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