Sanctuary - The Province: Local series kicks off Vidfest

From The Vancouver Province:

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/etoday/story.html?id=4098241a-6e79-4fa8-9f54-afa054fecd17&k=40909

(Please follow the link for the complete article.)

Local series kicks off Vidfest

Four hours of Sanctuary on deck



Glen Schaefer, The Province

Published: Thursday, September 20, 2007

That Sunset Boulevard line, where the aging actress laments that the pictures got small, seems prophetic more than 50 years later.

An explosion of digital media -- including video games, digital animation and web-based visual content -- is what propels Vidfest, Vancouver's annual industry conference for creators and producers of the bits that go into those and other digital media. Vidfest has teamed with the Vancouver International Film Festival this year for an event that precedes next week's start of the larger festival. Vidfest runs from Saturday to next Tuesday at the Vancouver International Film Centre.

The event includes international business matchmaking, trend-spotting sessions, a recruiting fair, creative seminars -- and glimpses of the digital picture so far.

A highlight will be a marathon four-hour screening of the Vancouver-made, web-based sci-fi series Sanctuary. Conceived by Martin Wood and Damian Kindler, who were part of the braintrust behind the Vancouver-produced Stargate: SG -1, the web series stars Stargate alum Amanda Tapping as a seemingly immortal doctor who cares for a menagerie of creatures -- werewolves, mermaids, spooky little boys -- while battling across time with Jack the Ripper. The actors did their work on bare sets, with digital backgrounds added later, and the series was offered by subscription on the web. The story is pulpy comic-book stuff, and the production's digital seams show every once in a while, but it's an early step toward what could be a new model for delivering small-screen stories. The Sanctuary screening starts at 6 p.m. Sunday.

**snippage**

Info at http://www.vidfest.com