Montreal is definitely hot property in film production terms this summer. The hectic shooting season started in mid-March – last year it was late April – and by the early part of this month high-end suppliers, especially of digital editing and film-to-tape transfer services, were looking at a serious time crunch as production slates continue to roll out.

As Sonolab director of client services Eric Beausejour puts it: ‘The outlook for ’96 is kick-ass busy.’

DHD Postimage president David Donald says the rumor mill in Hollywood is pegging Montreal for a huge summer in features.

And again, the main crunch could be in film-to-tape transfers.

Hybride Technologies president Pierre Raymond says the cyclical character of the business has caused overload problems for the past 10 years.

By fall, the squeeze could be nasty.

Cinar Studios vp Francois Deschamps says he has many series on the go so he has booked transfer time well ahead hoping to avoid ‘being stuck.’ He says there’s a shortage of colorists in Montreal, a situation complicated by attempts to hire the competition’s best technicians.

Supersuite has contracted a senior colorist from Florida and its transfer suite will be up 24 hours a day. Supersuite gm Francois Garcia says the shortage of qualified colorists is an international problem.

‘It’s got to the point now where facilities are raiding each other. If I’m raided, I have to raid back. So we are training people right now.’

The bottleneck comes when one of the leading suppliers buys an expensive transfer unit, forcing the others to follow suit. Suppliers rightly fear this will lead to a buyer’s market in the now-shortened off-season, pushing prices down even further.

‘A new URSA Gold or bts telecine, the top-of-the-line model, costs us$1.2 million and you still don’t have a color corrector,’ says Garcia.

‘All the major suppliers made the mistake of not keeping prices high enough in the past,’ says Claude Brien, director of the AstralTech Video Post-Production Centre. ‘Let’s face it, in terms of film transfer and editing, the prices in Montreal are probably 40% lower than in Toronto.

Centre de Montage Electronique gm Claude Fournier says the high-end post industry in Montreal has been burnt with low-ball pricing: ‘After three or four years there’s no money left to reinvest.’