It's not the crews, it's the money. Flashpoint looks that way because they shoot on 35 MM film, take adequate time to light, and spend money on Helicopter aerial shots and other essential items for the 2nd unit.

Most Canadian shows shoot on Super 16. That limits their look, but it's way cheaper. HD has its own problems with look. The lowcost RED cameras will perhaps let us see if there's a change coming to that look. There are also things like more money for stunt action, so you can do a credible stunt instead of something invented. But for the large part it's not a case of proficiency of crew. Even big studio films that shoot here hire mostly Canadian crews. Once you get beyond a certain level of proficiency, how a show looks and feels really does come down to a function of do they have enough money to realize the vision? Most Canadian shows really don't. Flashpoint does.

I don't know why it won't let me post a comment -- I've tried to explain the answer to SADSACK above, but it won't let me post it. It keeps deleting it. I tried.

Similarly Jaime, I think you've hit upon a generational thing without realizing it.

See for the first generation of people who grew up watching TV news, or who were already adults then, news footage WAS filmed. Hence, "film at 11." But around the time we were coming of age and starting to become aware of the news, the switch to lower cost videotape in the field was complete because they finally had cameras that were reliable and portable enough. So we equate "real" with "videotape" in a way that an earlier (and probably later) generation doesn't.

In our heads, live = the look of videotape, but if you watched the Vietnam war in your living room, that was film.

And we've come full circle. It's truly odd, and a little maddening. I bought my parents an HDTV last year and they've got the cable HDTV channels, and they rarely bother to watch the program on them. On the weekend I asked my mother "why" and she said that the HDTV channels gave her a headache, because they were "almost TOO lifelike." She doesn't like how sharp they are. They don't look real to her.

You just can't win sometimes. :)