CBC
Make The Season Kind
THE CHALLENGE
In late 2024, Off Screen Romance teamed up with the CBC for a holiday campaign that was basically a Canadian celebrity all-star game. The mission? Wrangle the schedules, quirks, and wish lists of 21 national treasures – from Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short to Sandra Oh, Eugene Levy, Jay Baruchel, Howie Mandel, and Shania Twain – and turn it all into three 30s, one big 60, and a bottomless pit of social content. Six shoot days, countless moving parts, and just enough holiday magic to keep it all humming. Honestly… how could we ever say no?
the process
Partnering with the CBC’s creative crew, Director Jesse Blight and OSR execs Dana Klyszejko, David Stulberg, and Joshua Chaiton pulled off a cross-country (and cross-border) production sprint from Los Angeles to Toronto, Niagara Falls, and all the way to St. John’s, Newfoundland. The vision? A slick, single-shot sequence gliding from celeb to celeb, all while keeping things modular enough to fuel an endless buffet of social edits. Along the way, the team juggled a laundry list of VIP perks – from glam squads and custom styling to location demands, union rules, agent approvals, security, and travel – all to deliver a campaign that was fast, flawless, and dripping with playful, star-powered charm.
To really deliver that cross-country feel, we leveraged a number of solutions that ranged from traditional, on-location shooting, to dressed-studios in LA, to Virtual Production alongside our good friends at SP Studios in Toronto. Traditional art direction and set design met virtual,Unreal and AI solutions to create a colourful, varied and familiar-comfortable aesthetic throughout each vignette – adding to the famous personalities within.
CBC’s “Make the Season Kind” campaign didn’t just sparkle on screen – it raised a jaw-dropping $7.8 million for food banks nationwide. At OSR, we’re beyond proud (and a little misty-eyed) to have been part of it. Sure, trading goofy laughs with Martin Short, swapping sharp banter with Catherine O’Hara, and teaming up with some of Canada’s most iconic and gracious stars was pure gold – or should we say a real GEM (wink, CBC). But the real magic was being invited into a project with such heart and impact. Huge love to the CBC crew, plus every agent, actor, singer, athlete, comedian, editor, colourist, producer, travel agent, location scout, Unreal Artist, and rockstar crew member who made this campaign shine.
