- The ProjectWelcome to Heroes of the North, an award winning, unique transmedia experience set in an universe of Canadian superheroes.
The story of the first season is told through 20 live action webisodes, 14 comic books, a diary, a photo book, video games (coming soon!), characters tech sheets, characters facebook pages, universe related websites, etc.
Each elements contributes a building block to a bigger and better comprehension of the events and actors in the story. We hope you enjoy your exploration of the Heroes of the North Universe!Don't just take our word for it. Read what others have to say:"It is like the Avengers meets the Watchmen, with a uniquely dark Canadian twist."- 2011 Toronto Fan Expo attendee
"It's a wildly ambitious project telling a creative story in new and interesting ways. This one is well worth a look!""Everything about this series breathes success: the costumes, scripting, directing, editing, acting, marketing... Everything is absolutely out of this world in terms of production value and execution.""Movie Seals have managed to craft a show that not only looks beautiful, but is packed with action, has great dialogue and an interesting story.""Heroes of the North frappe fort!""Possibly the best thing to come out of Canada since Ryan Reynolds!... Thank you Canada!""De l'action en perspective!""Heroes of the North are The new Canadian Pantheon."- Anubix Sanguis
- The SubjectWHY CANADIAN SUPERHEROES?

Canada is not known for its superheroes.
For a little while there, a very short while in the 1940's, we had Johnny Canuck and Nelvana of the Northern Lights (the first female - and inuit! - superhero, a full 8 months BEFORE Wonder Woman made her appearance on the scene) and a few others.
In modern times, besides Marvel's Alpha Flight and independent comics creators like Richard Comely (Captain Canuck) or Mark Shainblum (Northguard), and Ty Templeton's recent Northern Guard, there has not been a lot of them.
And to our knowledge, besides Wolverine and Deadpool, none of them have ever been made into live action. We tried ourselves for years to get Northguard off the ground, without success.
In fact, we tried for years to get several superheroes concept off the ground. Our own and others, like Northguard. We were told frequently that superheroes was not a Canadian concept. That they did not understand it. And so on.
In 1992, we managed to shoot a small action pilot called The Hunter which starred Alison Armitage (Acapulco HEAT), Kim Patton (SPACE), Jane Heitmeyer (Earth: FInal Conflict) and Larry Day (The Punisher: War Zone). Unfortunately, the film ended up butchered by the production company but it was nevertheless successful enough to attract money and foreign distribution interest. But mismanagement prevailed and it never saw the light of day. You can feast your eyes on it here. This is the production company version, not ours. Eventually we will probably put the rough cut online, because it makes a lot more sense despite its unfinished state.
Now, the new technologies have allowed us to be able to shoot our own superhero story without any constraints, other than budget limitations.
So we decided to do it and we did it as a transmedia storyline that includes comic books, videogames, novellas, webisodes of course and a few other medias.
These new mediums allow us to tell portions of the story too expensive for us to do live action or to explore new ways of telling the story. - The StoryOur story is set in an alternate universe that parallels our own but where Canada (and other countries) has superheroes.

The story began during World War II as Hitler mandated Doctor Joseph Mengele to better the aryan race, leading to horrible experiments, mainly on twins, in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
During his experiments, Mengele stumbled upon a process that allowed him to revive the recently deceased.
Seizing the obvious advantage in the midst of a global war, Hitler ordered the creation of an army of these beings, which became known by the Allies as Zombots.In 1942, at a secret facility known only as the New Brunswick Laboratory, a group of volunteers were subjected to a wave of experimentations in an Allies effort to find a suitable solution to the looming Zombot menace.
Unfortunately, the treatments had serious side effects, and most of the volunteers died in agony or became insane, which led the special unit to be labelled Section 8.
Due to the high loss rate and some public outcry, the second wave was aborted mid-treatment and the project was officially halted at the end of 1943, all files shelved.
Only one volunteer survived the process, his official identity erased, he was issued a codename, The Canadian Shield, and he was assigned to the 1st Special Forces unit also known as the Devil’s Brigade and his exploits became known throughout the Axis.
He disappeared in 1944 along with a small platoon of second wave volunteers while investigating a suspected Zombot research laboratory in Germany.Flash forward today where the Canadian Government has a division called the CDO (Canadian Defense Organization), which has agents assigned to various parts of the country, a lot of them with enhanced abilities and weapons.
A new threat is emerging in Medusa, a tentacular terrorist organization that has hidden cells all over the world.
There is a flurry of Medusa related activities in Montreal, Quebec, and the fear is that an almost 100 years old Dr. Mengele might just be behind it.
The Eastern Division (E.D.O.) of the C.D.O. tasks the Canadian (Ottawa’s hero) and Nordik (a Eastern Arctic based hero) to recruit a team of individuals who are direct descendants of former Section 8 volunteers.During the recruitment process, they run afoul of each other, street bums and mafiosis, several Medusa Agents, Madame Doom, a former model disgruntled with the profession who has direct dealings with Medusa and other Quebec based villains, including a new terrorist separatist group, Les Nouveaux Felquistes. - The ProductionHeroes of the North came to be in the late afternoon of a superb spring day in Montreal. Producer Christian Viel was cooking burgers on the roof of our production office at the time with Anderson Bradshaw (8 Ball).

They were talking about their current frustration in finding funding projects. Projects they would actually like to do. The discussion came towards past failed attempts at making a superhero movie. And then the flash came: technology would permit us, at its current level, to pull it off for cheap, as long as the shows were not too long and the web series format appeared to be the ideal medium for it.
They started talking characters, coming up with names while Andy started sketching some looks and designs. Realizing they would not have the time to write most of the stories, they put an ad in Craig list to recruits writers and the rest followed suit.
Three main writers were originally selected and a few others were hired to complete other stories that came up later in the development process.When originally conceived, Heroes of the North was supposed to be ten episodes.
The original episode plan was as follows:
Episode One: Genesis (currently episode 6 and a portion of episode 7).
Episode Two: Brothers in Arms (Episode 8)
Episode Three: Kiss of Death (Episode 7)
Episode Four: Cold Turkey (Episode 10)
Episode Five: Crimson (Episode 12)
Episode Six:Fashion Statement (Episode 13)
Episode Seven: Enter the Zombots! (Episode 14)
Episode Eight: Secret Lives (Episode 9)
Episode Nine: Wardrobe Malfunction (Episode 15)
Episode Ten: Brave New World
What sounded like a great plan soon changed. As we discussed the stories, we decided to add the five origins stories to supplement the storyline, as we were afraid that people would need more background to care about totally new characters.
Initially, those origins were designed to play in between the first ten episodes. That plan obviously changed as we moved ahead. We thought it would be better to show the Origins first. It was not our best move.When we contacted Polymorphe to help us with some of the costumes, they showed us a stunning piece they had done for something else and designed for Marie-Claude Bourbonnais. See picture on the right. Photo and Design credits are on the picture.
The look was killer, the model had a definite Gen13 look and we know a good thing when we see it. We immediately got in touch with Marie-Claude to offer her a role in the series and as soon as she said yes (it took some convincing), we got to work on writing an additional episode, which was labeled Episode 11 and got the title of Hornet's Nest. We did not even have to do a character design for that one. The look was settled real fast.
That brought the total episodes to be shot to sixteen.By that point, we had our cast all lined up - we had been auditioning since the spring. We had all our costumes and actors. We were finally ready to go! But we were quickly running out of weather!
The first sixteen episodes of "Heroes of the North" were mostly shot in November '09 in the Montreal area, on a fifteen days schedule. The World War II portion of Episode One was shot on a nice October afternoon three weeks before, in one full day that started at 4 AM and finished at sunset.
Latex being a heat exchanger, meaning that it takes your body heat and sends it away, basically making you colder than if you were naked, shooting outside in the first cold days of November proved to be most challenging for our valiant actors...
As we started putting together the show, we realized that some things were perhaps not clear enough or that some characters needed more room to breath (like Masquerade). So we started writing a few more shows. Episode 11 (All that Masquerade) was born that way.After running a successful contest on Facebook in order to find a name for one of our upcoming Heroes, we decided we should shoot an episode with her in Season One. Episode 17, Pacifica was born.
At that point, we figured we might as well go all out and make 20 episodes. Episode 16 was born out of many coincidences we cannot reveal without spoiling the show and Episode 18 (Past and Present) came to be a mean to tie everything together in one organic story.
The bulk of the shooting was done on two, sometimes three Panasonic HVX-200A. We made copious use of the Fig rig but most of the show was done handheld with sporadic use of a tripod. All the shows are cut on Final Cut Pro 7 in 720p 24fps HD. - The WritersTHE WRITERS:Ryan Barnett: is a Montreal-based writer and illustrator who despises it when people write their own bios in the third person. I began my writing career as an editorial cartoonist and staff writer for University of Ottawa's English language newspaper, The Fulcrum.

In February 2010, I published my first children's book, A Bad Uncle's Big Book of Impossible Dilemmas. In between writing and illustrating books and screenwriting, I also work as an entertainment journalist. I'm currently a regular contributor to AskMen and Lucid Media.
I am now working on my follow up book to Bad Uncle, which is currently titled What My Father Doesn't Know Could Fill This Book.Michel Brouillette: A well known underground stand-up comedian in Montreal, Michel also writes for the hit francophone TV show Ma Maison RONA (3 time winner for Best Reality TV Show at Les Gémeaux).
He has been involved with the screenwriting of episodes of Kikitronics, a teenage superhero TV show. Slowly breaking away from the comedy scene, Michel is now focusing on his acting and writing career. Michel also plays the Canadian Shield on Heroes of the North.Yann Brouillette: After extensive studies in both Canada and Europe, Yann Brouillette completed an organic chemistry Ph. D. thesis in 2008.
During this time, he published a dozen scientific articles in internationally renowned peer reviewed journals. Adding fiction to science, Mr Brouillette also wrote scripts for several short films and web series.
After an in-depth Canadian superhero discussion with Movies Seals’ president Christian Viel, Yann joined the enthusiastic team of Heroes of the North as a screenwriter.
Eight webisodes later, he tackled the writing of fourteen comic books for the same project.
Jim Burke: Jim Burke is originally from Manchester, England and is now resident in Montreal. He has written several plays for the stage, including a spoof skinhead musical and an award-winning adaptation of Moby Dick. He has also written scripts for BBC Radio 4 and BBC televison.
Kole McCrae: I am a professional writer and have been published hundreds of times. Most of my work is in magazines, newspapers and blogs.
The previous paragraph makes me sound full of myself.Greg Parker: COMING SOON!Sergio Rico: COMING SOON!Christian Viel: COMING SOON! - The CastTHE CAST:Larry Vinette (The Canadian): A world renowned body builder and trainer, the 2005 & 2006 Pro World Champion has been in the training business for over 15 years, and training himself for over 20. His competition career started in 1994 when he won the overall title and best choreography at his very first competition ever. He is one of the few bodybuilder sin the world to have pro status in three different organizations. He has his own segment on the Television fitness show “En Forme Magazine” on the RDS Sport Channel, a column on the Fame Fitness and Lifestyle magazine, a regular feature in Robert Kennedy’s REPS magazine and he is also an accomplished stuntman.
Edith Labelle (Fleur-de-Lys): Edith has been modeling since 2002 for various fashion houses and designers throughout Quebec. Early on in her career, Edith was approached by the now defunct TKO Championship Fighting, a MMA organization based out of Montréal, to be a ring-card girl. Enthralled by combat sports and eager to perform on a bigger stage, Edith applied to the UFC as a ring-card girl becoming the first Canadian woman to occupy the title. She made her first appearance in the now internationally recognized octagon in November 2007. Through her association with the UFC, Edith has appeared as a gaming character in the recently released video game “UFC 2009 – Undisputed”. Sought after by major magazines such as Men’s Fitness, Grappling Magazine and Fight Magazine, as well as being a model and spokesperson for health and other dietary supplements, Edith has a become a favorite “pin-up girl” for fitness enthusiasts and fans of combat sports everywhere. Edith left the UFC in July 2009 with the hopes of pursuing her dream of becoming a film and/or television actress

Anderson Bradshaw (8 Ball):
A trained soldier who has spent eleven years in the Canadian military with tours of duty in the Middle East and the Balkans. Upon his retirement from the military, Anderson got involved as a stuntman and actor and has never looked back since, landing numerous roles, typically as the usual suspect, hood or gangster. Some of his recent achievements include "Gothika" starring Halle Berry, "Taking Lives" opposite Angelina Jolie, "Lucky Number Slevin" as Morgan Freeman's son, "Battlefield: Earth" with John Travolta and "Steal", directed by France’s Gérard Pirès. He also acts regularly as a military adviser and consultant for film productions and recently completed Stunt Coordinator duties for "Banshee". Another facet of Anderson multi-talented nature is his passion for costume design, primarily within the sci-fi genre. He has created custom suits and sets for many futuristic and sci-fi productions, including Heroes of the North.Vanessa Blouin (Nordik): Vanessa has been in the modeling industry for the last five years. You may have seen her in many magazines or advertising like Hawaiian Tropic, bikini.com, Performance & Sound and many more. She recently took dramatic classes and entered the world of acting. She's been in plenty of movies and a lot of music videos, including A vos marques, Party and several other local productions.
John Fallon (Black Terror): Canadian-born John Fallon always knew that he wanted to be in the arts from an early age, with his grand collection of movies, his unique artistic renderings, his many writings and his lauded performances in theatre school productions. After spending two years at Montmorency College learning the technical aspects of filmmaking, and another three years perfecting his craft as an actor through John Abbott College’s professional theater program (from which he graduated with honors), he was on his way. John continued his trend of successful multi- tasking by writing several screenplays, acting in various TV and movie roles, including Saw II, Death Race and 100 Feet, opposite Famke Jansen, while operating one of the most successful horror movie review websites on the Net called “Arrow In The Head” through which he interviewed many entertainment personalities. Four hundred reviews and millions of site visitors later, John was accepted into the horror community with open arms, by many of its most respected inhabitants. John Fallon’s goals are simple yet ambitious; he wants to succeed in everything that is movies be it from an acting, screenwriting, producing, journalistic or directing standpoint.
Michel Brouillette (Canadian Shield): Michel Brouillette is a well known underground stand-up comedian in Quebec. After hosting comedy shows in Montreal, and shadow writing for Marie- Lise Pilote since 2007, Michel is now focusing on his acting career. He played in three independent films from the Imported Productions and appeared in a variety of comedic projects (Stage, Web, Television). He is now honored to play the role of the Canadian Shield, ancestor of the Canadian, in the upcoming action packed series Heroes of the North.
Alexandra Ordolis (Pacifica): COMING SOON!
Christian Sciortino (Acadia): COMING SOON!
Pia Metni (Masquerade): Pia Metni started her acting career as a model at the age of eight. Her numerous enriching screen experiences led her to study with Louise Boisvert, renowned theatre actress in Paris and joined The Lee Strasberg Institute in New York and Los Angeles for their one year program. Continually seeking to grow stronger as an actress, she recently joined forces with Epic Talent Agency in Montreal. Heroes of the North is her first web-series and she is proud to be a part of it.Anne-Marie Losique (Madame Doom): Losique studied theater at La Sorbonne in Paris. She first became famous as the host of Box-Office, a cinema television magazine. Later ventures showed her potential as a cunning businesswoman, now producing a vast array of trendy television shows through IDI seen across Quebec and Canada.Bianca Beauchamp (Crimson): Bianca Beauchamp was born in Montreal, Quebec to a French Canadian father and an Italian mother. Beauchamp has become successful in latex fetish modeling, appearing on the covers of numerous publications. Beauchamp also writes a column for Bizarre and, in January 2007, became the first model to have appeared on its cover for six issues. Her photos have also been in several Playboy Special Editions and on the cover of Book of Lingerie. She has also been on the cover of Playboy's Girls of Canada calendar twice. Her film, Bianca Beauchamp: All Access, a reality-documentary directed and edited by her partner Martin Perreault. The 85 minute film was Premiered at Fantasia Film Festival in July 2007 and issued as a 2-disc Special Edition DVD in September 2007. A sequel came out last year.Marie-Claude Bourbonnais (Hornet): Born and raised in a small village of Kamouraska, Marie-Claude Bourbonnais finished her designer studies near the city of Québec. It’s only at the end of 2007 that this shy young woman creates turmoil by associating herself to Marto Napoli, a controversial radio host for Radio X2 Rock 100.9. In the space of a few months, she becomes a local celebrity and is soon solicited to participate in a national publicity campaign. Follows a modeling career and an encounter with Gil Perron, photographer with whom she produces pictures that are quickly recuperated by the medias and create a virtual buzz on the web. The Heroes of the North saga is her first opportunity to create a character in front of a camera. - The Crew




















