The basement at Toronto’s Soho Post and Graphics is about to get significantly more interesting when it becomes home this summer to a new digital film input and output facility.

Soho Digital Film, set to open in September, will be a fully equipped service facility for scanning film to digital files, outputting to film, and transferring video to film.

The shop will be based around the Oxberry Cinescan 6400-20 efx scanner for film to digital scanning and the Solitaire Cine iii output device with Oxberry flx camera head. The Oxberry Cinescan effects scanner has 3072 x 2048 pixel resolution and 12 bit per color range with full immersion wet gate for scratch removal.

The facility, a sister company to Soho Post and Graphics, owned by Glenex Industries, will be headed by Glenex special projects manager Brian Hunt.

Hunt, formerly technical director at Colorization and technical co-ordinator on Disney’s The Goofy Movie, says Soho Digital will be unique in the city for solely offering digital film equipment on a service basis. Rates will be in the range of $3 to $4 for scanning depending on resolution and $2 to $3 per frame for output to film.

Hunt says the service will be aimed initially at Toronto post and effects shops and will ultimately target markets across North America.

The new operation will not offer creative services; Hunt says it will not compete with the post facilities that will be potential clients. Projects brought to the facility, he says, will benefit from a full calibration through all aspects of the process, including film developing. TI