Hosting Supernatural Investigator

I'm hosting a 17-part half-hour documentary series for Canada's Vision TV entitled Supernatural Investigator. It premieres Tuesday, January 27, 2009, at 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and runs every week until Tuesday, May 19, 2009.

Each week, a different investigator take an open-minded but skeptical look at an intriguing case -- such as the supposed abduction by aliens of Betty and Barney Hill, the mysterious death of Harry Houdini, and the US government's clandestine research into remote viewing.

I was thrilled when the producers asked me to audition for this, and even more thrilled when I got the job -- to my astonishment, beating out some very significant names ... ;)

I spent this past weekend recording my hosting segments (the introduction and farewell for each show). It was two grueling days, but the resulting footage looks fabulous. No static cameras for these guys! We had lots of dolly shots and dramatic lighting.

Director Maurey Loeffler was terrific at making this non-actor feel comfortable, director of photography Kiarash Sadigh gave us an amazing look aided by Blain Thrush and Bart Bialasik, Greg Carson came up with an awesome set, Jason Brown made the lighting look fabulous, William Lam looked after continuity, and Leo Franco was always there as production assistant when we needed him.

Producer/production manager Paul Nandrajog was on top of every detail, Derek Oxley rocked as our sound man, Menaka Mallikage did a great job with the scripts and on teleprompter, and Olga Kirnos was fantastic about attending to my makeup throughout both days.

Five different documentary-production companies across Canada produced the episodes, and the packaging (and my hosting) is being produced by Toronto's Front, whose president, Jeff Rustia, brought the whole thing wonderfully together. Joan Jenkinson from Vision TV was terrifically encouraging as she sat in on the first day of our shoot -- and, of course, Carolyn Clink looked after all sorts of details on the SFWRITER.COM Inc. side of things.

I have a day left to do in a recording studio, laying down narration tracks; three of the 17 episodes have a narrator -- moi.

It's shaping up to be a terrific series, and I'm very proud to be part of it.

See this entry for a link to more photographs from the shoot.

(For anyone who keeps track of such things, this actually wasn't my first TV hosting job. Back in January 2000, Gill Deacon and I cohosted a terrific two-hour documentary for Discovery Channel Canada, entitled Inventing the Future: 2000 Years of Discovery, and these will be my 246th through 262nd television appearances.)

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site