ATVF faculty and support staff are all recognized industry professionals with varied and extensive backgrounds.
Bios in alpha order
Rick Andersen - Audio Production & Post-Production
Rick is a Double Platinum Recording and Mix Engineer with extensive sound knowledge acquired in world class studios such as McClear Place, Metalworks, Cherry Beach Studios, and CBC. Film projects include: Audio Post Supervisor/Sound Designer on “The Spreading Ground” starring Dennis Hopper and Frederick Forrest; Dialogue Edit on “Wrong Number” starring Eric Roberts; Voice-Over Engineer on various commercials. Recorded and mixed music for the television documentary “The Race is On” (won Gemini award for “Best 1 Hour Television Sports Program”). Music albums include; P.R.O-Pavlo/Rik Emmett/Oscar Lopez (2010 Juno Nomination “Best Instrumental album of the year category), Johannes Linstead (Billboard - Top Latin Albums), Rush, Triumph, Leahy, Kim Mitchell, Saga, and Kardinal Offishall. He owns and operates “Signal Productions”, an independent audio production studio.
Professor at Sheridan College since 2000, co-designed and equipped ATVF audio facility; current Sound Technologist for Animation, Media Arts and ATVF programs.
Graduate of Fanshawe College, Recording Engineering Program
Stephen Barden M.P.S.E. - Fundamentals of Sound Design
Supervising sound editor, sound designer and vice president of “Sound Dogs”, one of Canada's busiest and most successful independent sound editing and design facilities Barden’s work can be heard in such films as “Cube”, “Requiem For A Dream”, “The Aristocrats”, “The Fountain” and “Resident Evil: Afterlife”. He has also contributed to television series including “Due South” and “Departures”, and many other Canadian, American and foreign films for which he has been nominated and won several Genie, Gemini, DGC and M.P.S.E. awards.
Professor at Sheridan College since 1999.
Graduate of Sheridan College Media Arts Program
David Barlow - Producing
As a TV producer/writer, David Barlow has received three Gemini nominations for Best Dramatic Series and has twice won the Gemini for Best Comedy Series. He also has been awarded a Gemini for Best Writing, Dramatic Series and the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s Margaret Collier Award for his contribution to the Canadian television industry. Barlow’s long-form producing credits range from a documentary on baseball to a drama featuring Canadian peacekeepers to a comedy about the creation of the board game Trivial Pursuit.
Professor at Sheridan College since 2000, Teacher of Screenwriting workshops across Canada, in Singapore and Dublin
M.A. Northwestern University
Tim Bider - Production & Digital Design
As Production Designer, Tim has created the look for a wide range of projects from 18th century French Indian Wars to sci-fi to offbeat comedy. His design credits include contemporary TV series and TV movies for CBS, CBC, CTV, Alliance, Life Time, Hallmark, Disney and Fox. He is also an award-winning Art Director of TV commercials for such clients Bell, Nike, and VISA. He has been nominated for, and won, many awards, most recently the 2009 DGC AWARD for Best Production Design for “The Summit”.
Professor at Sheridan College since 2008
B.F.A. Fine Arts/ Art history, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Bernard Bourret - Production Management
Produced over 375 hours of long-form and series drama for broadcasters and studios such as HBO, Lifetime, SRC, Viacom, Paramount, CTV, Global TV, The N, Pro-Sieben, M6, Freemantle, YTV, and TVO. Head of production for Vérité Films; VP of Production for Blueprint Entertainment (now E-1); Executive in charge of international productions /co-productions for Motion International in Montreal.
Fluent in French and in English. Member of the Directors Guild of Canada and of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.
B.A.A. in Motion Picture Studies at Ryerson University. Producer’s Program at Norman Jewison's Canadian Film Centre.
Bernard teaches the ATVF Production Mangement course.
Charles Braive - Assistant Director
Charles is a Line Producer with experience since 1971 that ranges from theatrical features, television movies & series, international co-productions, commercials, documentaries and IMAX features. He has worked for Serendipity Point, Alliance Atlantis, Pebblehut, Sony Pictures, Equinox, CBC and NFB, among others.
His location experience includes: every Canadian province, 15 American states, France, Spain, Mexico and the Caribbean.
His corporate experience includes nine years as Executive Producer at two of Canada’s largest advertising agencies, Foote Cone & Belding and Saatchi & Saatchi. He was involved in TV/radio productions for major national clients such as Toyota, Tim Horton, Sears, Molson, Labatt, McDonalds and Kraft.
Professor at Sheridan College since 2008
Jean Desormeaux - Program Coordinator, ATVF Primer, Documentary, Producing
Jean has produced or co-produced for most of the major American and Canadian television broadcasters including feature films (“Atlantic City”, “Johnny Mnemonic”) and episodic television series (“Due South”, “ENG”, “North of Sixty”). He is a recipient of Gemini and Air Canada Awards.
Program Co-ordinator of the Advanced TV and Film Program, Professor at Sheridan College since 2002
B.A. in Communications, Concordia; BCL, LLB McGill University; M.F.A. York University
Vladimir Kabelik - Documentary
Vladimir’s primary interests are films reflecting themes of human values, ethics and dignity. In Toronto he has produced documentaries for CBC, TV Ontario, OMNI and VISION TV. Other credits include the Saskatchewan Communications Network, Access Alberta, Knowledge Network and Turner Vision in the US. He came to Canada as a political refugee in 1982. Prior to that he was employed as a motion picture director and writer by Kratky film studios and also worked for Czechoslovak Television and Czech Radio.
His most recent documentary, “So Far From Home”, about journalists in exile, has been nominated for several awards, including a Gemini for best documentary writing and a Golden Sheaf Award for best documentary.
Professor at Sheridan College since 1984, Vladimir was the founder of the Advanced TV and Film Program in 2000
M.A., FAMU (Academy of Film and Television Arts) in Prague, Czechoslovakia
Randall Kapuscinski - Technology
Randall’s educational and professional background is a blend of technical and creative elements. He worked in the defense industry in western Canada where his focus was on integrating object-oriented programming approaches with advanced numerical techniques to create commercial software tools for engineers. He was later recruited as a consultant by PureEdge, where he designed and implemented customized workflow solutions for Fortune 500 companies and large government organizations. In 2003, Randall enrolled in the Advanced TV and Film program at Sheridan and studied Camera and Lighting under Richard Leiterman.
Technologist at Sheridan College since 2004
B.A.Sc. Waterloo (Mech. Eng.), ATVF (Sheridan)
Didier Kennel - Editing
As an editor, Didier has worked in news, documentary, and corporate videos. He has worked with CNN (Africa), National Geographics, CBS, Discovery channel, CBC, BBC, Global, Life, Prime, TSN and TVO. One of his documentaries “Children of Asia” won a silver medal at The New York Film Festival.
Professor at Sheridan College since 1990, Avid Certified Instructor since 1994, Didier has trained editors in North America, Europe, South America and Asia. In 2008 he received the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) Award of Excellence for his outstanding contribution to teaching, leadership and learning.
Graduate of Sheridan College, Media Arts
Sherry Lawr - Career Design, ATVF Primer, Producing
Sherry Lawr has worked as a producer in the Canadian television industry for more than 20 years, specializing in news and current affairs production. She now teaches her craft at Sheridan in both the undergraduate and postgraduate Journalism programs. As the former co-ordinator of the Media Arts program, she oversaw the internship placement of hundreds of Media Arts students in their first jobs in the industry and is ideally qualified to teach the ATVF Career Design program.
Professor at Sheridan since 1998
Graduate of Ryerson University
Maureen McKeon - Screenwriting
Maureen McKeon is a Gemini-nominated screenwriter with an active professional career as a writer and story-editor, most recently as Story Consultant for Leah McLaren's "Abroad", produced by CBC, Captive Entertainment, and Working Title Television in England. Maureen has worked as a writer-producer for all the major Canadian networks as well as for production companies in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Quebec on such Gemini-nominated and winning productions as "Traders", "Bliss" and "The Associates".
Professor at Sheridan since 2005, has also taught at Banff Centre for the Arts
M.A. (Drama) University of Toronto, Postgraduate Certificate (Film and TV) University of Bristol