Post-production and its powers are personified in this column.

Post house Stealing Time is opening two sister shops within its Toronto location. According to Stealing founder Alex Eaton, there is enough free space at the facility to house the new gear and staff at the new shops, Stealing Time Lite and Stealing Time Digital.

Stealing Time Lite will be dedicated to lower-budget commercial projects, using more junior editors.

‘Budgets are being crunched, and when we are able to do the online and offline in-house, we can do it much less expensively and with junior people,’ says Eaton. ‘Because Stealing Time Editing is a fairly high-end shop, we just wanted to be able to separately pursue smaller projects, larger projects [with Stealing Time Digital] and more money-challenged projects.’

Producer Heidi von der Gathen, formerly of Axyz, has come aboard Stealing Time Lite and says she is excited by the prospects of the new company.

‘The goal in terms of Stealing Time Lite is to achieve something that is very exciting and very accessible for the smaller and more experimental projects, and I quite like that idea,’ she says.

The editors working at Stealing Time Lite are Michael Harding, Ian Harvey, Mark Boudignon and Frank Russo. Von der Gathen says that although she is focusing her efforts on Lite to begin with, there will inevitably be a ‘smudge factor’ which will see her producing work for Stealing Time Digital.

Stealing Time Digital is being heralded by its staff as a digital online post outfit that will provide editing work for both commercial and longer-format projects as needed. Eaton says he has purchased an HD Flame system for the shop, and it will be operated chiefly by Mike Morey, formerly of Manta DSP, who brings with him assistant John Dowding.

Eaton has been working on the idea for Lite and Digital for a few months, and knew he was onto something as soon as he started running the idea by various producers in Toronto.

‘I’ve had a few blank stares, but most people have been really positive about it,’ he says. ‘In fact, when I started thinking about Stealing Time Lite about three months ago and bounced it off a few producers, people immediately started calling saying, ‘I’ve got this job – are you going to be open by then?’ If we had been open a month earlier, we probably would have done another 10 jobs.’

Stealing Time Lite and Stealing Time Digital are open for business Sept. 4. Eaton says Morey and Stealing Time Digital are already booked up for its first month, and the Stealing Time Lite schedule is filling up quickly.

-www.stealingtime.com