While Canada continues to act as a mecca for film and tv production, the sophistication and size of the post and effects industry has grown commensurately, offering an ever more comprehensive complement of gear and services.

The industry has grown in volume to an estimated quarter billion dollar business in 1997 and in profile – foreign producers now come seeking the talents of Canadian shops without the benefit of shooting in close proximity. The industry has evolved beyond back-end, fix-it-in-post expertise and Canadian shops have become major players in high-profile, front-end work, with imaging experts assuming a larger role in the production as well as the post process.

On the following pages, some of the bright lights of the Canadian post, animation and effects industry discuss some recent projects, where they came from and why.

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If your production needs a shot of hip and cool then there’s a post effects and music shop in Halifax that’s one-stop shopping.

When the CBC Halifax production of kids’ consumer show Street Cents needed an updated and redesigned set, feel and theme last season, the producers handed the job to Collideascope.

Company president Steven J.P. Comeau and partner Michael Andreas Kettner gave Street Cents a decidedly more aggressive look, and when the show needed some updated music and graphics for this season, Collideascope was once again given the job.

Street Cents senior producer Gavin McGarry approached Comeau with an existing 2D logo and asked him to create a 3D flying logo transition effect to be used as an opening and as a bumper between show segments. Collideascope was also asked to create a new opening musical theme.

Comeau says McGarry had a rough idea of what the show wanted, but because there wasn’t a lot of time (Collideascope got the gig on a Wednesday and had it turned around by the following Thursday), McGarry just asked for ‘something cool that had a bit of motion and gave a sense of action or slickness’ and left the rest up to Comeau.

Because of the time frame involved, most of Collideascope’s production artists were busy, so Comeau says he ‘just hunkered down and did the job myself.’

The first task was deciding what was going to be negative and positive space and creating a 3D logo around that. Comeau then took the two different elements of the logo and smacked them together while adding a practical flame effect.

Stock footage of an actual flame was used to do the fire-wipe transitions.

For the effect, the logo was split up into a set of cross hairs, the main logo plate and some rings, and these elements interact to create a hit-like effect which is wiped off by the flame.

‘We took the raw 3D elements plus the flame, keyed the flame over the logo and exported a still,’ explains Comeau. ‘Then we went into Photoshop and hand-painted the mattes and stills and brought it all back into After Effects to apply a little softening and an ntsc filter and then just spat it out on the Avid.’

The 3D elements for the effect were done on 3D Studio Max on an nt platform and the final compositing was done on Adobe After Effects on a Macintosh.

‘The logo is going to be used in different ways so we delivered it on various backgrounds and on a chroma key background with traveling mattes so that they could use it both as a still bug with elements of other animation as well as a standalone flying logo,’ says Comeau.

The new theme music was done during the same period as the 3D effect and the aggressive electronica piece was composed and performed by Comeau.

Once again, Comeau was given a fair amount of freedom in what he delivered. ‘They basically wanted something kind of hip and mentioned some of the electronica bands that were around,’ says Comeau.

The piece was composed using a Mac sequencer and a Roland JD 1080, mixed through a Yamaha DMP 11 to a dat. ‘They totally liked it the first time they heard it,’ says Comeau. ‘It’s got aggressive drums and guitar with a real electronica kind of feel that I think adds an interesting texture for the editor to cut to.’

*Also in this report:

Post/SFX showcase:

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