It's a busy production season around Winnipeg, and Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr. haven't even arrived yet.

For starters, Buffalo Gal Pictures is busy with three service productions in various stages of development, including the feature romantic comedy Chilled in Miami (Zellweger and Connick Jr.), which shoots Jan. 7 to Feb. 28, with small-town Manitoba standing in for the backwaters of Minnesota. L.A.'s Gold Circle Films produces.

Buffalo Gal is also coproducing the Canadian feature High Life, the TV series Less Than Kind, and it has minority participation in the international miniseries Rough (see story p. 18).

Buffalo Gal's Phyllis Laing and Toronto-based Breakthrough Films and Television's Ira Levy are coproducing Less Than Kind, a $7-million comedy series (13 x 30) for Citytv. Senior story editor and creative producer Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall), producer Peter Meyboom (The Newsroom), writer Garry Campbell (Mad TV) and star Maury Chaykin are attached.

Less Than Kind is about 15-year-old Sheldon Blecher (Jesse Camacho) whose life basically sucks. He's overweight, has a self-destructive driving-instructor father (Chaykin), a pyromaniac mother (Wendell Meldrum) - and he lives in Winnipeg.

The Nov. 7 to Feb. 5 shoot will mix locations and studio. Co-creators and writers are Chris Sheasgreen and Marvin Kaye.

High Life, meanwhile, is a $3-million feature that shoots for four weeks starting Nov. 14. Buffalo Gal's Liz Jarvis says the "very funny and very touching" story is about four morphine addicts trying to pull a bank heist. The film is coproduced with Toronto's Triptych Media and local director Gary Yates' Lucky Pictures.

Farpoint having a House Party

Farpoint Films, coproducing with Brendon Sawatzky of Inferno Pictures, begins 25 shoot days this winter for six half-hours of House Party for The Comedy Network. Farpoint producer Kyle Bornais says each episode in the $2.9-million series takes place at the same party, but each takes a different partier's perspective.

Farpoint is also just finishing production on 11 half-hours plus a one-hour of Warriors TKO, a doc-style series developed by subsidiary Micro Bus Pictures and owned by APTN.

Warriors follows four fighters from two different gyms training to fight each other. Shooting began in August and wraps with the final fight Nov. 3.

Produced by Bornais and by Rebecca Morris for APTN, the series has a tease launch on Boxing Day, with the balance of episodes airing next spring.

High on Ballet

Indie producer Vonnie von Helmolt (Ballet Girls) continues her study of Royal Winnipeg Ballet School students with Ballet High, a $500,000 90-minute doc for Bravo! coproduced by Merit Motion Pictures.

It follows the school's graduating class - featuring some of the female students from Girls, but focusing on the male dancers - as they tour rural Manitoba, handling roadie chores along with their dancing.

Ballet High began shooting Oct. 18 and ends in April at a "large competition in New York" where troupes audition prospects.