It’s spring and post-production minds are busting out all over with a typically all-encompassing range of projects; the weird, the wonderful and the invisible.

Some of the industry’s best and brightest shared the gritty details of recent post-production and effects efforts and they appear to have all the bases covered. The time-tested classics were there – aliens, explosions, adrenaline-addled acts of derring-do, rendered in new and inventive ways – as well as the classics-to-be – caged musicians, peripatetic tattoos and, naturellement, talking dogs.

Also in this report:

Krech transports tattoo, factory p. 16

First pal/widescreen series goes to the dogs at Supersuite p. 17

TOPIX’s retros scenes are for kids p. 18

CGI ante up at Cinar Studios p. 19

A chilling number of poltergeist effects at Northwest p. 20

All-CG aliens land at John Gajdecki p. 21

Buzz lands Yo-Yo Ma in jail p. 22

Eyes strives for best of both worlds p. 24

Network: Ole! p. 25

James Bond was daring, suave and sophisticated, but he was never a woman. He may have grabbed blondes, brunettes and redheads, but it’s doubtful that he ever grabbed air on a snowboard.

A Bond-esque spot for Airwalk through San Diego agency Lambesis and l.a.’s Pelorus Pictures has Vancouver’s Rainmaker Imaging pulling out all the gadgets. Two newcomers to the company, visual effects supervisor Lee Wilson (RoboCop: The Series) and supervising compositing artist Gary Walker (an emigrant from l.a.’s Digital Domain and the lead digital compositor behind Apollo 13), have pulled in one of the company’s highest-end commercials. John Glen, veteran of four 007 flicks, is directing and Alan Hume, who shot Return of the Jedi, is the dop.

The snow-slicing heroine of the spot, while escaping from a doomed, highly combustible fortress occupied by the bad guys, takes a flying leap off a mountain top amid laser fire, only to land deftly on the skid of a hovering helicopter and pull herself in. Beat that, secret agent boy.

Originally approached with the idea of doing some studio blue screen of the helicopter’s skid, Wilson, who had some serious chopper work under his belt on RoboCop: The Series, suggested building a cg model instead. ‘Cause the real thing would be, you know, kinda dangerous.

For instance, at the height and angle Ms. Snowboarder flies off the mountain, she’d hit the blades well before hitting the skid. Not nice. Instead, using Lightwaves 3D, they’ve created a 3D computer-generated model of the original which they can maneuver at will.

On the compositing side, Walker will be using Flame for all the landscape compositing (like fitting in the exploding fortress model, built and blown up by John Gajdecki Visual Effects, Toronto). As well, he’ll add in some laser fire for good measure.

Also at Rainmaker, Walker’s being kept busy on another, much tamer yet just as engaging, project.

For Bliss, a feature being produced by Pacific Motion Pictures of Vancouver for Triumph, Walker’s hoping people won’t even notice his work, work which he calls ‘enhancement’ to what the director has already shot.

One of those ‘enhancements’ involves using Flame to create a reflection on the eyeball of the heroine at critical moments in the movie. Digital scans of the images are composited to bring the imagery together and correct tracking, lighting and color.

And while there’s something to be said for using compositing as a tool to create and change mood, it’s also a great help when the director makes a boo-boo.

In a scene where the heroine watches a car park across the street from inside a restaurant, her pov of the car was shot from outside the restaurant and so the shots didn’t jibe. Walker was able to take the pov and move it inside by compositing in window reflections of her and everything else happening in the restaurant. To add to the complication, it was a tracking shot so the created reflections had to track along.

But that’s all in a day’s work for Walker. If you can instantly put an exploding fortress where there wasn’t one before, digging out a harried director is child’s play.