In one of the Sleepwalkers episodes to air on nbc and wic stations last fall, Vancouver’s Northwest Imaging & fx had the opportunity to showcase the post-production skills it has absorbed through its service work on countless other u.s.-based series.

In the episode called ‘Night Terrors,’ about a boy who has nightmares about the death of his sister, Northwest completed one of its most sophisticated effects sequences since it began business in the early ’80s.

The 12-second sequence shows a menacing character standing atop a lake which freezes over.

The sequence required a wide shot of the lake and hillside as a background. Northwest created a matte painting, which depicted the finished look of a frozen lake. Technicians then used 3D dissolve elements to fill in the details between the original and finished shot to show the ice crystals encroaching from the hillside.

After shooting an actor playing the sinister Smiley Man against a green screen, the character was superimposed over the lake image.

In a separate shot, a computerized motion-control camera was used to take a couple of identical passes over a mannequin’s pant leg, on which wax was painted to simulate moving ice crystals. Yet another shot morphed the actor’s head into a mannequin’s head which, similar to the pant leg, was ‘frozen’ by painted wax.

As the shots are edited together, the elements show the character quickly freeze and shatter, which as a visual metaphor is the end of the child’s dream-state trauma.

The shattering effect was created by painting a four-by-six-foot sheet of glass white and fracturing it with the use of an explosive device. The shards were filmed against a black backdrop. Into the white elements was dropped one image and into the black elements was dropped another image, making for a unique dissolve.

‘It sounds simple, but it took a lot of r&d,’ says Paul Cox, an Australian imported by Northwest who handled Sleepwalkers’ visual effects under the direction of Elan Soltes of Columbia/TriStar. The sequence used Softimage software, an Inferno compositor, a Henry compositor and a motion-control camera.

‘We’re challenged to find a way to achieve the effects in a financially viable way and still manage some panache,’ he says. The strategy of using effects for television, he explains further, is a constant struggle between budget and storytelling.

The freezing sequence for Sleepwalkers cost about $7,000 of an effects budget that might range anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 per episode.

Northwest completed work on eight episodes of the series about researchers who enter dreams to solve problems, but Sleepwalkers was canceled shortly after it debuted in November.

Whether or not Sleepwalkers was a hit with audiences, from a local point of view it was a success story, as almost all of the effects work was done at Northwest rather than an l.a. shop.

After more than a decade of developing the infrastructure to offer turnkey service work for u.s. producers, Vancouver can now deliver completed shows ready to air at an attractive cost, which is an important consideration when effects-laden shows cost so much to begin with.

Companies like Northwest offer u.s. producers attractive dollar exchanges and, in general, less expensive facility costs. And the skill of the technicians is equal to anything producers can buy elsewhere. So the trend among u.s. series working in front of Vancouver cameras and crews is to keep the post-production in town.

Says supervisor Soltes, who has worked with Northwest for five years: ‘It’s easier being here close to production. I make no apologies for working in Vancouver. With the exchange rate, I can get more done without compromising quality. And the fact that Vancouver is in the same time zone as l.a. is also a plus.’

By all accounts, Vancouver’s skill in creating visual, creature and special effects has grown exponentially in the past several years as technology and talent have come together in a critical mass.

David Dewar, post-production supervisor for syndicated series Dead Man’s Gun (Showtime in the u.s.) has used Vancouver’s half-dozen effects houses, saying that while each company has its own strength, all the work necessary for effects post-production can now be done in Vancouver.

‘It took a long time to build trust,’ says Dewar, commenting on the trend for u.s. and syndicated series to leave more of the visual effects work in Vancouver rather than shipping it south to l.a. The substantial investment of confidence by mgm for its series The Outer Limits, Poltergeist and Stargate has kick-started a lot of effects houses, Dewar adds, allowing them to build the professional connections with the producers who return to work in Vancouver.

For Dead Man’s Gun, an anthology western series set in the 1890s about a magical pistol, the use of visual effects is not necessarily to add to the image of the show but to make more out of less, says Dewar. Dead Man’s Gun is produced by Vancouver-based Vidatron Entertainment.

‘With 19 episodes all shot in and around Vancouver, there are only so many places we can go for locations that fit the period,’ says Dewar. ‘So we do a lot of effects you are not supposed to see.’

For example, a set called Island Town in suburban Maple Ridge was constructed by the show and has been used frequently by Dead Man’s Gun.

The largest post house in Vancouver, Rainmaker Digital, was commissioned to freshen up the set via computer effects for another episode and, in a way, transport it from a Pacific Northwest to a Midwest look. Through the use of collage and matte paintings, reshaping and coloring in the computer, and the compositing of live action on top, the show has a new set that looks significantly different than it did in the original footage, saving the show tens of thousands of dollars in set construction costs.

‘We are always looking at ways of using visual effects to answer the skyrocketing production costs,’ says Dewar.

Other Dead Man’s Gun effects are more traditional, he adds. Vancouver-based boutique house Image Engine added a sun reflection, or glint, on the actual Dead Man’s Gun prop, which gave the production crew a reprieve from trying to get the effect in-camera. And Rainmaker was used to reshape a live-action image used to composite ‘into’ a crystal ball for a fortune teller.

Bullish on the abilities of Vancouver effects companies, Dewar is negotiating with effects houses to supply the heavy volume of special effects for the next Vidatron coproduced series called First Wave, a show inspired by Nostradamus’ prediction of alien invasion which begins production in the spring.

‘First Wave will have a very different look than people expect,’ says Dewar. ‘And we will be keeping the [effects] in town.’

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*In this report:

Post/SFX showcase:

Collideascope injects hip B2

Gajdecki: body parts R us B4

Big Bang graduates from Dog’s World to Lost World B4

Lost Boy’s extraterrestrial experience B6

Spin in the series race B7

Animation shops to watch:

Bardel gets Dreamworks nod B10

Dynomight’s Net direction B11

Sargent York kids’ 3-pack B12

Canuck evolves from studio flicks to in-house picks B13

Red Giant spawns series B14

Canadian prodcos plotting boffo toonflick projects B15

Animation House, Lightbox both hit 15 B16, B21

B.C. post shops winning more of the U.S. visual effects B18