Prodigal son Brian Reid has left the sunny skies of Tinseltown for his old Canadian stomping ground. After working eight years on top-flight projects south of the border, the visual effects artist/editor has moved back to Toronto and joined the team at toybox, the fx division of Command Post.

Reid began his career in his native Calgary, then relocated to Ottawa for a brief stint before settling in Toronto for eight years. He spent seven of those years at post house Magnetic North, where he worked on numerous Bessie Award-winning commercials.

The fx artist remains fond of his time in the u.s., where he amassed an impressive array of credits.

‘It was a childhood dream working in the Mecca-land of tv and film,’ he says. ‘I loved working in Los Angeles. I would walk in every day and there would be different people in my room. I would go ‘Incredible, today I’m working with Rob Reiner.’ It was brilliant working with those kinds of people.’

He collaborated with director Reiner a couple of years ago on a tv pilot for Castle Rock Entertainment and then with laughmeisters Christopher Guest and Torontonian Eugene Levy on doa, a cable pilot for hbo. Although neither program was picked up, Reid enjoyed his involvement and holds them both in high esteem.

He also did high-definition compositing on the title sequences for City of Angels, the cbs medical drama produced by Steven Bochco, and the 13-episode Fox sci-fi drama Dark Angel (co-created and exec produced by James Cameron). He says he likes this type of work and does not want his output to be limited by the job description of ‘visual effects artist.’

‘[Title sequences] are very creative and you have a lot of different elements you can play with and tweak,’ he explains. ‘I don’t really consider myself a ‘compositor’ in the sense of sitting in a dark room by myself eight hours a day for weeks just doing blue screens. I like to do blue screens, but the next day I want to be able to do some ramp vari-speeds and a lot of graphic type work. Variety is great.’

Reid considers himself exceptionally lucky to have enjoyed that degree of variety in Hollywood. ‘It takes about two years to break into the marketplace there to gain some sort of acceptability, and then after that you’re pigeonholed by whatever work you’ve done up to that point,’ he says.

He was able to get a lot of exposure to both short and long-form projects in the u.s., beginning primarily with commercial work, serving tours of duty at The Post Group, EDS-Varitel (now part of Modern Video), and R!ot (formerly Encore Santa Monica). To him, the best part of doing spots is working with the various creatives on hand in his suite.

‘It’s creative synergy, and I live on that,’ he says. ‘Many times you’re basically creating the look of the spot in the suite. The other nice thing about it is a day or two later you get another group of people in your room and the different ideas they bring to the table.’

Reid next moved into long-form compositing work on Space: Above and Beyond, a one-season series from the creators of The X-Files. He also took on high-profile music video projects for the likes of Janet Jackson, Prince and Busta Rhymes, the latter featuring 3D animation by none other than toybox. He says the Toronto fx house has a strong reputation south of the border.

‘You could take this facility, drop it in l.a., and if you could take along the people [it would do great],’ he says. ‘l.a. is definitely standing up and paying attention to Toronto, not just because of the runaway production business, but because the work created here is very good.’

One of the jewels of Reid’s l.a. output was the Gold Clio he won for his participation in Soul Asylum’s Runaway Train video, directed by Tony Kaye. The fx artist says he completely re-edited the video in the online bay, lending the project its psa theme of children on the streets.

‘I don’t think it was really the intention of the band to head it in that direction,’ he explains. ‘But they really locked on to it and we ended up doing four versions of the video just for the u.s., and then we did versions for London and Australia with some of the local runaway kids associated with Child Find and organizations like that. It was a labor of love.’

Reid’s focus at R!ot shifted from short to long form as a result of the recent sag strike. In a sense Reid was lucky there was no commercial work for compositors, because it led him to the hot hbo gangster series The Sopranos. Using Fire, the hd-enabled nonlinear online editing system from Montreal-headquartered Discreet, Reid headed a team which included Fire artist Jason Frank and assistant artists Charles Ottaway and Diana Young. They remastered the first two seasons in the hd format, which entailed re-titling, rotoscoping and recreating the visual effects.

‘Originally it was because hbo had a sale in Europe for pal dvds,’ he explains. ‘We ended up doing it at hd 24 frames per second [compared to the North American ntsc standard of 30fps] and then converting it to pal hd, which is the exact same frame size, so there are no motion artifacts. There are no problems with any country rejecting any of these elements, because the quality is so staggering.’

Variety is the spice

With toybox since late September, Reid has already experienced the diversity of projects he was looking for. One genre keeping him busy which barely existed in Los Angeles is cinema commercials. So far he has reworked nationally aired tv spots including bmw’s ‘Landspeed’ and msn’s ‘Anthem’ and ‘Soccer Cup’ for theatrical projection. In long form, Reid has joined his new colleagues on Jason X, the next Friday the 13th film, which shifts locales to outer space.

toybox has performed 3D animation and compositing on the feature, which, according to Reid, has generated substantial buzz at Hollywood test screenings. Coming into the project with the visual effects work already completed, Reid’s duties on the film nonetheless take advantage of his experience on The Sopranos.

He explains: ‘I’m producing a 24-frame digital master for them onto an uncompressed hd D6 tape. Then I will be making digital data frame sequences for toybox’s Arri film laser recorder to go back out to film.’

Some might wonder why Reid left behind so much Hollywood success, but his reasons are simple.

‘The principal one was based on family,’ he says. ‘My wife and I have a young child and felt the school system is superior in Canada.’

The union of Reid and toybox seemed in the cards, as the fx house was in the process of acquiring his preferred system at the time of their meeting.

‘I came up for vacation at the end of July and scoped out the town and talked to a few different places,’ he recalls. ‘toybox was already purchasing a Fire and they said ‘We’re just putting it in next week, so come on by and we’ll work on the room for you.’ ‘

In addition to leaving l.a., accepting the Toronto gig meant Reid had to decline the opportunity to work in London, Eng., on the hbo World War ii miniseries A Band of Brothers, exec produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. While that offer was enticing, he has no regrets.

‘I really felt coming back to Toronto was a far better decision for my family, lifestyle and work,’ he says. *

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