Post-production and its powers are personified in this column. We’ll cover new techniques, technologies and the creative personnel and companies giving them vibrant visual life.

A new Toronto post shop recently opened up under the name Relish. Don’t let the name fool you, though – the players in Relish are anything but green.

On the contrary, Relish is being run by partners Chris Van Dyke, a veteran editor whose career began at The Daily Post in 1990, and Kate Bate, who started in post-production more than six years ago as assistant to Michelle Czukar, then editor at The Partners’ Film Company. When Czukar left for Panic & Bob, Bate decided to give producing a try. She says she ‘fell in love’ with her job and is now with Relish as executive producer.

The partners say they met through mutual friends in the industry. They discovered they had similar goals and decided they would open a post shop of their own, offering another option for the Canadian production community. And, according to Bate, this was only decided a month ago. ‘We work fast,’ says Bate with a laugh.

No, it doesn’t seem like a very long time to establish a new shop in a highly competitive city, but Van Dyke says Relish started early out of necessity. Jobs were being spiraled his way before he and Bate could even find a permanent home for their post house.

‘I’ve been a member of the Toronto post industry for quite a while now, and I’ve kept in touch with a lot of clients of mine, like directors and agency people,’ says Van Dyke. ‘In a perfect world, Relish would have started in February or March, but we got a couple of jobs that I knew about in December and so we decided to act fast.’

Van Dyke moved to New York City to cut spots after The Daily Post closed its doors. He returned to Toronto at the end of last summer. He had been cutting in the Mega-city for three months on a freelance basis and a lot of Van Dyke fans in the community had been waiting for him to either find a permanent home or set something up.

‘People were calling him and asking him where and when he was going to land and that was kind of our inspiration to get going,’ says Bate. ‘Two weeks ago we moved in here on Monday and by Wednesday we had our first rushes screening. We are now working on three jobs.’

Van Dyke is joined on the editing front by Marc Collister, most recently editing in-house with The Players Film Company, and assistant editor John Zubac.

At press time, Van Dyke was working off an older model of Avid, but a brand-new Avid 1000 was en route and scheduled to be operational by February. As jobs continue to present themselves, Bate and Van Dyke are confident about their new endeavor, with Bate saying they have many plans to put them at the top of the Toronto post community.

‘We want to make sure that we have a new, young, fresh atmosphere,’ says Van Dyke. ‘The way we plan on putting the company together, it is going to be a good, fresh place to work.’

Berardi, TOPIX launch Mr. X

Former Toybox visual effects supervisor Dennis Berardi has joined forces with Sylvain Taillon and Chris Wallace of TOPIX/Mad Dog to launch Mr. X Inc., a new digital visual effects studio for what Berardi calls ‘director-driven’ entertainment. The equal partnership between topix and Berardi will see topix retain the incoming commercial post/effects work, with Mr. X handling features, mows and other long-form television projects.

‘The opportunity came with Sylvain and Chris to do something a little bit different, a little more free-form, director-driven – and that was literally helping filmmakers tell their stories,’ says Berardi. ‘Right now these tools we use are a storytelling device and I think really for the first time, filmmakers are starting to understand that they have to include us to help tell their stories.’

And he’s got the tools. Fully integrated into the topix infrastructure, Mr. X has access to the shop’s DigiBeta, dubbing and Inferno systems, but also brings a new Flame, Effect, Shake, Renderman, Combustion and eight Maya workstations to the party.

Berardi says he is anxious to get started on effects work for some music videos and is currently working with Revolver video director Noble Jones on a treatment.

‘We’re actually pitching with Noble right now,’ says Berardi. ‘We are doing a test right now for him, before he goes in for his pitch. That’s what we are hoping to do, to be on the director’s pitch team, to develop the concepts where possible, and help visualize and design his or her vision.’ •

-www.mrxfx.com