The busy post scene in Quebec (see story p. VI-10) may get shaken up with the Videotron takeover of CFCF Inc.

Centre de Montage Electronique gm Claude Fournier expresses a widely held view: ‘We are still in competition (with cfcf-owned Supersuite) and I think it should stay that way. There are clients for both. As far as I can see, until (the sale of) cfcf is settled, nothing will be settled.’

At this point, no one is sure Champlain Productions (R.S. Video, Supersuite) will be included in the sale.

‘My market in the future will be editing coproductions in pal,’ says Brien. ‘That is the only assured financing. With concentration in the broadcast market, we can’t be sure independent producers will be free to come to us.’

Against this backdrop, here’s an overview of what’s happening at Montreal’s main post houses.

Supersuite

Supersuite’s $1.5 million investment in an online Digital Betacam suite is paying off big. The company has shocked the industry by scoring 90% of the high-end tv work.

Supersuite has the post assignment on Telefiction’s 10-07, Cite-Amerique’s Marguerite Volant – one of the largest 35mm projects (in footage terms) ever in Canada – Sovimage’s Lobby, the Modus TV/Neofilms series Ces Enfants d’Ailleurs, and 26 half-hours of Punch International’s Dog’s World.

It also has L’Enfant des Appalaches, the sda/Ellipse Fiction mow and ‘several more series that are looming,’ says a delighted Francois Garcia, Supersuite gm.

At press time, there were two big summer tv series still up for grabs – Prisma’s Urgence and sda’s Omerta 2.

Dog’s World is being shot on Super 16mm film and transferred directly in 16 X 9 aspect ratio to 625-line PAL Digital Betacam. ‘I believe this is a first in Canada,’ says Garcia.

Supersuite’s transfer suite houses a Rank Cintel ursa.

‘What has really changed,’ says Garcia ‘is that every part of the work we do is unsupervised.’ It means a cinematographer has to be present for two or three hours instead of two or three days.’

Supersuite hopes to get more commercial work in Toronto this year.

Hybride Technologies

Hybride Technologies was ‘Quebec’s first all-digital (4:4:4:4). house,’ says president Pierre Raymond.

‘Hybride is more a production house than a service house. We are the only house with a full-time art director. We’re a bit like (Toronto-based) TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation, but self-contained in terms of editing.’

Hybride divisions include digital editing, 2D image processing (Flame, Flint) 3D graphics (Wavefront, Softimage) and a Rank Cintel 4:2:2 transfer division.

The house uses a D/FX Composium system for editing, paint and picture manipulation.

Hybride does its own engineering ‘and has the unique feature of both parallel and series options in the same suite.

The company produces tv station graphics and special f/x for features like Highlander iii and Habitat.

‘We strictly want to do high-end work,’ says Raymond.

On Hybride’s marketing goals, Raymond says, ‘We voluntarily have excluded the Toronto market. There exists too many historical reasonsconcerning competition to be able to do good things together. What most interests us are the East and West Coast markets, the u.s. West Coast, andEurope.’

Raymond says being in the same market as software manufacturers like Softimage and Discreet Logic is actually ‘a great disadvantage because (eventually they) will steal our best elements after we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on training. And we can’t compete when they become multinationals.’

Buzz

Buzz Image Group is making a push in the u.s. where, says director Jean-Raymond Bourque, ‘We’ve made a breakthrough in Los Angeles’ (where Santa Monica-based Buzz f/x is serving tv and feature film clients) and the company is laying groundwork in Detroit, Chicago and New York.

Executive producer Mario Doucet says Buzz has a fully integrated D1 suite in addition to a serious lineup of 12 Softimage licences and sgi workstations as well as nine nt installations using Windows. Compositing work is done on three Flint units.

Buzz also houses a scarce Oxberry image scanner/printer for feature film effects.

Recent work at Buzz includes Jackals, Karmina, a 100-minute 3D package for Jonny Quest and Hanna- Barbera and The Sound of Carceri, a Rhombus Media/Francois Girard performance special featuring cellist Yo Yo Ma.

In a key expansion move, Buzz plans to establish high-speed transmission lines for direct communication with clients.

Metaphore

Montage Metaphore’s Stephane Lestage says all four of the editing house’s suites are busy this season with work on Margeurite Volant (Michel Arcand), Call of the Wild, and 10-07 (Glenn Berman and Denis Papillon). Plus Metaphore recently took home a prestigious Eddy Award (American Cinema Editor) for its work on the Telescene miniseries Hiroshima.

Lestage says most of the technical houses are getting out of offline editing.

Metaphore has two AVID 800 suites with four-track sound and realtime effects, and two AVID 8000 model suites featuring the Media Composer and film option.

Montreal’s leading offline houses include Metaphore, Bureau de Post (Alain Baril), Montage edl (Francois Gill, Vidal Beique) and Creation Montage (Gaetan Huot).

Sonolab

Sonolab covers a wide range of audio-visual post needs for features, tv series and commercials.

It recently opened a Lexicon Opus Suite with sound recording, editing, mixing and design capability. ‘It’s a whole in one digital workstation,’ says director of client services Eric Beausejour.

Sonolab has also refurbished its tv mixing suite (Studio 119).

Investment in ’95 was in the $500,000 range and Beausejour says Sonolab is looking for u.s. clients for sound work.

Telepoint

Telepoint, one of Montreal’s enduring picture and sound post houses, recently completed work on the latest Michel Brault film, which was shot on a small dv consumer camera and edited using Adobe Premiere software. Telepoint president Daniel Arie says the same unit is used for both online and offline edits. ‘It’s the new trend now to do online on computers.’

The (pvr) digitizing system is a board made in Toronto by a Canadian company called Digital Processing System.

Says Arie: ‘Every three or four weeks we (pick up) a new software release update from pvr posted on their bbs. And every time the upgrade improves the system dramatically.’

Telepoint also posted on Andre Galdu’s cinema anthology La Conquete du Grand Ecran and Les Compagnons du St-Laurent, a film from Jean-Claude Labrecque and Verseau International.

Audio Telepoint (Alice Wright and Louis Dupuis) has four sound editing rooms – an Opus Suite used primarily for dialogue, an avid suite, a Sonics Solutions suite (Mac-based) and a sequential room with 24-tracks.

‘We mix on 24-track two-inch tape,’ says Arie. ‘Most of the sound still houses prefer this.’

DHD Postimage

dhd expanded into its current facilities in 1989.

Its latest assignment is producing all the digital effects, cgi and compositing for Laserhawk, a feature film coproduction between Greenlight Kingsborough Pictures and Everest Entertainment of Vancouver.

President David Donald says future motion picture work includes Hemoglobin and Replicants.

‘About 95% of our business is now coming from the u.s. and Asia, about 5% from Montreal,’ he says.

The house is equipped with SGI Onyx platforms using Softimage and Alias software, a Flame unit, avid editors and ‘the new digital wire-removal software.’

dhd will open a custom film scanning and printing facility, probably by the end of the summer, says Donald.

dhd (Hollywood) has a sales and production office in Los Angeles. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Greenlight Communications.

Studio Centre-Ville

Studio Centre-Ville is a one-stop tv production and post-production center with two studios.

It has two online editing suites and an offline D-Vision suite, a computer-animation service (mainly 2D) based on a Macintosh platform (Max the Cat is produced there) and a 24-track digital and analog sound post-production department.

gm Michel Bilodeau says Centre-Ville also has a Sonic Solutions console with ‘NoNoise’ for archival projects and cd mastering.

Says Bilodeau: ‘Our clientele is about 70% from the Coscient Group and sda (its owner). This market is kind of small so our financial health depends on work from outside. The market is still tough in tv.’

He says tv producers are opting for more portable shooting and less studio time.

Studio Marko

Studio Marko president Jean-Claude Tremblay says the company expanded its profile in 1992 when it entered the feature film audio post sector with Marko Film. Its main business remains audio post for radio and tv commercials.

Tremblay, who is also Initiative Quebec president, estimates the sound post market in Montreal is worth $10 million a year including commercials.

CME

Centre de Montage Electronique has a popular Flame suite managed by Denis Mondion ‘and five artists.’

The shop’s Inferno unit is used for visual effects on feature films. gm Claude Fournier says Inferno special f/x work includes Frankenstein and Me, Sci-Fighters and Night of the Demon III. Mondion also did the effects on Are You Afraid of the Dark?

The bread-winning Flame unit is mainly used for commercials, editing, color correction and matting. The unit can control 125 dve simultaneously with cme taking about 80% of the high-end commercial transfer work in Montreal, says Fournier.

cme’s Rank 4:2:2 transfer unit has a da Vinci Renaissance color corrector for transfer to Digital Betacam, D1, D2 and one-inch tape.

Fournier says he’s waiting for an okay from management on a purchase of a Digital Betacam setup.

AstralTech

Claude Brien, director of the AstralTech Video Post-Production Centre, says clients increasingly prefer to edit digitally. So in order to service productions on analog tape, Astral has purchased a series of converters.

The house has dropped its offline suites to focus on technical services, says Brien.

AstralTech has a full digital editing suite (Digital Betacam, D1 on pal and ntsc) with an Abekas 8100 switcher, Grass Valley editor and dve components.

Says Brien: ‘We are the only place in Montreal with a Rank ursa (transfer unit) and the Time Logic controller and the Aaton Key Link system.’

This season, Astral serviced all three Cinemaginaire features, the Rene Daalder coproduction feature Hysteria and rushes on Allegro’s Jackals and Brien says he’s hoping to secure one or two major tv series.

In July, Astral will open a 2D computerized animation and colorizing suite.

The setup includes sgi workstations and a usanimation software package.

Cinar Studios

Cinar Studios is an audio and video post-production facility with picture editing done on Lightworks and Heavyworks multicamera units. The studio currently houses two online video suites, including a digital suite with Abekas A8100 and a A57 Plus dve unit.

SGI Indigo Extreme workstations are used for Softimage Eddie compositing and Alias 3D animation.

In sound, Studio 1 is a 48-track voice recording studio also used for music recording and as a mixing suite with a 60-input Solid State Logic control.

‘The mixing is still analog at Cinar with Dolby sr even if the editing is digital,’ says vp Francois Deschamps.

Cinar has six sound editing suites with 10 processors (Dyaxis II system).

The studio is handling sound post on Robert Lepage’s Le Polygraphe, which was picture edited on its Lightworks. The final mix will be done at Marko.

Cinar is in the midst of a major expansion.

‘We are buildingan additional six audio editing rooms, a second foley and dubbing studio, and a new mixing studio,’ says Deschamps at a cost of $2-3 million.

‘The editing (suites) should be ready by mid-September. Mixing by later in the fall,’ he says.