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:

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

TOPIX’s retros scenes are for kids p. 18

Airwalk extravaganza at Rainmaker 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

‘We’re hot,’ says Dan Krech of his Toronto-based post facility Dan Krech Productions; a bold assertion but backed by a spate of Canadian, u.s. and international projects.

Having just completed work on Norman Jewison’s Bogus, dkp has been capitalizing on last year’s production alliance with l.a.’s OPEN Films, and Krech says the facility plans to become even more of a global player.

dkp just completed a spot for Ford Brazil through Young & Rubicam du Brasil for which the facility undertook the Hurculean task of lifting a Ford auto plant from its foundations and taking it on a cross-continent air and sea voyage to Brazil.

dkp photographed the exteriors of the Oakville, Ont. Ford plant as the prototype and Toronto’s Laird McMurray Services constructed three different scale models of the factory, which were composited into live-action scenes shot in Miami and directed by Gene Johnson of The Film Machine.

The Miami shoot, which included plates of workmen and tugboats and helicopters all busy, ostensibly, helping with the move, was followed by a two-day shoot of the models with blue screen at dkp’s studios in Toronto.

Models were composited into the live shots with Krech’s Infinity Optics system, with the help of dkp’s Brian Howald and technical directors Michael Morey and Terry Dale. Dust and dirt were added with a particle system in Prisms software.

Krech says the spot took four weeks to complete, and while a year ago post would have taken weeks, it was completed in two days. Krech says he considered using mostly cg images for the spot but decided live action was preferable to capture the imperfections, with post used mainly to enhance the live action. A cg helicopter was standing by but wasn’t needed.

dkp is also gearing up for another u.s. project, a commercial for u.s. burger chain Carl’s Jr. for l.a.’s Mendelsohn/Zien Advertising starring nba attitude-meister Dennis Rodman and one of his bodily adornments.

The spot features a saucy tattoo coming to life on Rodman’s arm and traveling along his body in search of the huge, drippy burger the fierce forward is inhaling.

Krech says the spot posed a number of tricky technical obstacles, including accounting for skin texture underneath the restless tattoo, and that dkp won the Carl’s Jr. job with a creative technical approach to solving those problems using multiple layers of computer animation. The spot is expected to be completed in June.