CONTINUUM - WRITERS GUILD OF CANADA: CANADIAN SCREENWRITER MAGAZINE FALL 2012 - WINTER 2013- CREATOR SIMON BARRY INTERVIEW
Canadian Screenwriter is published three times a year and is available from the Writers Guild of Canada office, at selected bookstores across Canada and by subscription.
Continuum Writers Create Winning Hybrid
by Diane Wild
Survey the Canadian television landscape today and you’ll find successful police procedurals and sci-fi/fantasy as far as the eye can see. Is there something in the water? We do do it well. And if you take those two genre successes, splice them together, you get the hybrid Continuum, the Simon Barry-led cop show that has time travel at its conceptual centre.
So it might be something of a surprise that the concept wasn’t geared specifically for the well-primed Canadian market. Creator Simon Barry conceived of Continuum during his “annual pitchfest” in Los Angeles, where he’d worked steadily for over 10 years on unproduced pilots. Distracted by other projects, he set Continuum aside until his director friend Pat Williams called him in a panic for ideas to pitch before taking a meeting with Shaw.
That pitch led to a development process that led to a series order, and the UK-born, Vancouver-raised Barry found himself working in the Canadian industry for the first time. He joked that his single experience might not be representative of this country’s development process: “I don’t want to paint the whole country with the same brush, but it would be nice to assume everyone is as talented and intelligent and supportive as the folks at Showcase.” Wouldn’t it though?
While Continuum is set and shot in Vancouver, Barry says he doesn’t approach projects from a Canadian market standpoint. Continuum’s storytelling, he says, doesn’t hinge on the location. “That’s maybe a good lesson for anyone: you should be developing every show for the world market. I don’t think it makes sense to develop a limited market show in the regional sense...”
For the complete article, please see the print edition of Canadian Screenwriter
Continuum airs Monday at 8/7C on Syfy. CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE EPISODE TRAILER FOR 'WASTING TIME' AIRING JANUARY 28, 2013.
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