Soho staffers are walking with their heads just a little higher after taking home five awards at the Tellys, the Ohio-based showcase for non-network and cable commercials.

The Toronto post-production and graphics studio won one statuette for an on-air design package for Turner South in Atlanta, one for a title sequence for a Broadcast Design Association show, and three for a pair of spots for Humpty Dumpty snacks.

Tony Cleave, the Soho creative director who does much of the studio’s design work, was a moderator for a panel session on "designers as live-action directors" at last year’s BDA in New Orleans. Cleave produced a clip combining live-action and stills-photography techniques to greet conference-goers as they entered, and received a Telly for his efforts. He acknowledges that speaking at these events and showing Soho’s work goes far in attracting U.S. clientele.

One of Soho’s notable U.S. clients is Turner South, which hired the Toronto shop for the launch of WCW Classics, a retro-wrestling program hosted by legendary wrestler Dusty Rhodes. Soho set about to capture the look of old wrestling and boxing posters and handbills with vertically stacked type and various graphic motifs.

"We used all the resources in our building," explains Cleave. "Senior animator Brian De Ville carefully crafted the Turner South logo in chalk on one of our old steel doors, and we went around this old building shooting grimy walls and things [on mini DV]."

Soho also had fun creating "living posters."

"We’d grab the first frame of a wrestling clip, and then design it in [Adobe] Illustrator and Photoshop," Cleave says. "Next we would print it on a laser printer, rub the paper in the dirt, rip it up to make it look distressed and aged, and then move the camera into it and have the poster come to life."

This is but one example of Soho mixing digital and organic methods.

"That’s the wonderful thing about working in the field these days," Cleave says. "We’re totally souped up in [Discreet] Inferno, [Quantel] Henry and [Alias|Wavefront] Maya, but we like to combine those with the old film techniques as well."

While Soho shot the WCW video footage in-house, for previous network packages for CBC programming such as Hockey Night in Canada and TRIO, it has sought the staff and gear of production companies including Revolver Films and The Partners’ Film Company for two- to three-day shoots.

Soho promotes itself with an edgy demo reel, as it is often approached to bring that kind of style to longstanding institutions that may be perceived as somewhat staid, such as the CBC and National Film Board.

It relaunched CBC three years ago, which encompassed a whole on-air package including promos, back plates and 20 different IDs, and Cleave says the network is still using some of these elements to this day. Two years ago Soho relaunched and re-branded the venerable HNIC program with a new opening, bumpers, stings and background boards. But when the era of HNIC exec producer John Shannon came to an end, CBC did another redesign and saved money by going in-house. But Cleave believes Soho’s contribution has had a lasting influence.

"[Soho’s HNIC packaging] won a lot of acclaim and awards, and I think it really put HNIC in a high-end, high-production light," he says. "It really changed the face of what they had done with the show in the past."

Soho exec producer Doug Morris reports broadcast design is currently a little slow in Toronto, but that will change with fall launches on the horizon, especially with the 21 new channels the CRTC has licensed for guaranteed carriage and the 260 Category 2 channels seeking carriage on their own. *

-www.26soho.com