The other good news is that I believe the first new episode that
will be shown starting July 11 is actually three new episodes, all
packaged together–Shout 1, Shout 2, and How Soon Is Now. (That means
there will be some small elements of How Soon Is Now that won’t make
quite the sense that they would if it were shown in its regular
order, later in the season, but still it’s great that the U.S.
viewers will see all these episodes.) I’m hoping that any editing
will be minor!
p.s. we’re still on hiatus, but start shooting again tomorrow

-We are just finished shooting a scene in the school foyer (Manny
catches Craig’s eye, but Ashley has his heart!) and are about to
shoot the final six seconds of the opening sequence. I chatted with
Shane Kippel (Spinner) because there are posts on the TV Tome site
from someone claiming to be Shane. He confirmed that it is not him
(must say it was pretty clear it wasn’t, particularly when the person
didn’t even know how old Shane was!). In answer to a question, we do
what is called “unit publicity” photo shoots on set for one day every
episode (featuring a scene or scenes from that episode), and then
once a year we do “gallery” photos which are the ones that have the
actors generally against a plain background, in different groupings
and sometimes solo. We’re doing this year’s gallery shoot next week.
And in answer to another question, yes Terri, Nadia and Kendra are
all coming back…

-Linda (other producer) and I are out on the west coast for a couple
of days–meanwhile (perhaps even as I type this message) LittleOzzy
is visiting the Degrassi set! We’re trying to figure out if we can
offer a limited number of set tours to others who might be
interested, particularly those visiting Toronto from distant
locations… Yesterday we had to stop shooting early because the
extreme heat was causing some difficulties (we were shooting in a
garage on the backlot for the “garage band” scene… but today
apparently it’s much cooler so hopefully we’ll will pick up the
scenes we lost yesterday…

-Here are the tentative titles for the first half of the third season
(but these often will change and aren’t final until we actually go to
air!)

301/302 “Father Figure”
303 “U Got The Look”
304 “Pride”
305 “Why?”
306 “Gangsta Gangsta”
307 “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”
308 “Control”
309 “Against All Odds”
310 “Wild Boys”
311/312 “Holiday” Note–this is a Christmas Special. It was during a
conversation with CTV in March that we suddenly thought it would be a
great idea to do a Christmas special episode–the challenge being
that we would be shooting the episode in August when there wouldn’t
be any snow! So… since the forecast called for the final snowstorm
of the season a day or so later, we quickly got a crew together,
called up all the actors we could find on short notice, and shot a
bunch of exterior scenes in the snow–of course, we only had a very
rough idea of what the script would be, so we gambled that the scenes
would actually fit into the final script–which we are still in the
process of writing–you will all be the judge whether the gamble pays
off!!