For the second consecutive year, Toronto’s Spin Productions’ special effects work has caught the collective eye of the Top Spots judges.

Last year, it was Rob Jones’ work on ‘House Hippo,’ a psa for Concerned Children’s Advertisers, that won the shop the best special effects laurel. This year, the f/x nod goes to Spin Inferno artist Steven Lewis for his weird and trippy work on ‘Machine,’ one of three Toronto International Film Festival trailers reminding moviegoers to cast their People’s Choice Award votes.

Lewis, a seven-year veteran at Spin, has been working in effects for about 13 years, having started as a traditional animator.

‘I sort of drifted into working with motion-control cameras and that sort of thing,’ he says. He was also one of the first in Canada to work on the Quantel Harry, and as new technologies presented themselves, Lewis was sure to be on top of them. His work on ‘Machine’ was done completely on Inferno.

Directed by The Partners’ Film Company’s Floria Sigismondi (whose ‘Opera Diva’ spot picked up three Top Spots craft awards this year), ‘Machine’ is set at a party and takes viewers on a hallucinogenic trip down a hallway where a vending machine dispenses distorted faces.

Prima facie

case for ‘Machine’

Lewis says he had a very clear picture of what Sigismondi was looking for when she brought the concept for the ad to him.

‘She had developed some images to show me where she was hoping to take it,’ says Lewis. ‘Then I went ahead and created some tests before the project started to illustrate that it could be done with motion picture because all she had was a single frame.’

He says Sigismondi was very careful through the casting process to get the right people for the ad.

‘She actually cast people who had more extreme facial structure, then we exaggerated those features even more,’ Lewis explains. ‘We figured out which faces were going to be distorted and manipulated into what shape.’

While digitally manipulating peoples’ faces sounds more like play than work, Lewis says he had difficulty enjoying the job until it was finished.

‘As you are doing it, the fun aspect is not as apparent because often you are so entrenched in working out the effects and getting it happening. And it is always working under the deadline gun,’ he says. ‘Often during the process I can’t really enjoy it. After the fact, maybe two or three weeks later, I look at it and think, ‘Oh yeah, that looks pretty cool.’ ‘

‘Machine’ was not Lewis’ first collaboration with Sigismondi; he helped do effects for a Marilyn Manson music video she directed.

‘We did things like remove the legs of Marilyn in one shot, and there was this half-mannequin, half-woman creature in it so we had to do some effects marrying the two,’ recalls Lewis. ‘[Manson] had this prosthetic dress and underneath you could see her legs walking along. We had to remove the legs and make it look like she was being pushed along on this wheely stand.’

He enjoys working with the director because of the different slant she gives to filmic reality.

‘To be able to look at and see something from a different angle sort of knocks you out of your everyday routine,’ says Lewis. ‘It makes it fun to see a different vision every once in a while.’

Sadly, Lewis was not able to see ‘Machine’ on the big screen due to the workload he had to contend with at Spin, but he says he is ‘happy it’s getting such a good response.’ *