EIGHT players in Canada’s post-production industry answer the question: ‘What was the biggest story in equipment in 2001?’

Robin Hackl, cofounder and F/X supervisor at Vancouver visual effects house Image Engine, says the shop hasn’t made any serious purchases recently, but this year he was particularly impressed with RealFlow, Next Limit’s standalone software for simulating fluid dynamics.

‘For example, the mud shower at the beginning of Shrek was done using RealFlow. That would have been very difficult and time-consuming to do before this product. Another tool that is extremely helpful is Alias|Wavefront Maya 3D motion tracking.’

Ron Lees, VP of Toronto-based Stonehenge, which performs online editing, animation, and audio design and mixing, cited his shop’s big story in hardware as the Sony linear 24P online post system. For software, he points to Nothing Real’s Shake compositing tool, available on the Windows NT, IRIX and Linux systems.

‘From what I’ve seen, Shake is as much of a breakthrough as Adobe Photoshop was. It’s a real landmark in software.’

Bob Munroe, president of Toronto F/X shop C.O.R.E Digital Pictures, responded that the hottest new product on the market is one of the oldest – the Mac.

‘The new operating system, os x, is an indication of where and how correct Apple’s thinking is. It’s great to be able to run all this software such as Final Cut Pro on my PowerBook and to not need to have an SGI machine at my house.’

While Munroe embraces the accessibility smaller systems offer, Mark Benard, president of Vancouver boutique F/X shop Lost Boys Studios, writes that they threaten to sound the death knell for traditional post facilities.

‘We sold our million-dollar Discreet Inferno on eBay to a hopeful buyer in Taiwan and replaced it with a $5,000 dpsReality I/O system from Leitch Technology. Is it the hottest piece of gear to bless the post industry? I don’t really care – it does what we need it to do at a price that I classify as ‘disposable technology.’ All tech-based equipment is ‘obsolete’ every 18 months. The upside is that this allows for small shops like Lost Boys, which has always focused on talent, to compete globally on an even playing field. The downside is that it opens the field up to anybody who wants a shot at the big league.’

Izhak Hinitz, president of Toronto’s Eyes Post Group, felt that although the technology wasn’t brand new, taking video back to film was the story of the year.

‘Obviously HD’s part of that – realtime HD film scanning going into DDRs, going back to film. So [our most important equipment] has been the ITK Millennium Machine telecine, and the newest Quantel product, the iQ, which lets us work very easily in HD and combine all sorts of frame rates and aspect ratios all in one box, making the workflow much faster.’

Daniel Pellerin explains that the most significant development of the year at Deluxe Post Production Sound in Toronto, where he is director of mixing services, has been the renovation of two of its theatres with Euphonix System 5 digital mixing consoles.

‘They are already paying for themselves. We had some here as a sort of test run and then upgraded two more of our theatres. They’re good because they are of equal value to more expensive systems. The sound revolution really took place about three or four years ago. The picture revolution, though, is just starting. The advent of digital cinema will change everything.’

Andy Sykes, VP sales and marketing at Toronto-based F/X and post shop Command Post/TOYBOX, felt the biggest impact with the installation of MediaNet, which allows the facility to more quickly send data via fibre among its Toronto and Vancouver offices and Los Angeles.

‘It gives us the ability to eliminate the geographical difference from here to L.A., which is especially important right now when people are hesitant about travel. If material can be delivered a day earlier, that’s great – especially in television.’

John Gajdecki, president and CEO of Toronto and Vancouver F/X company GVFX, says the slowdown has meant post shops haven’t had the money to buy much, but the time has allowed them to focus on tightening their infrastructure.

‘This has been a good year to change your switches, put way more RAM into stuff, upgrade versions, and maybe people are going to Gigabit Ethernet. So while there’s no extra equipment, maybe their network’s faster. What we’re doing is consolidating our operation so that when [business slows down] again, we’ll have a really strong infrastructure we can build on quickly and efficiently.’ *