After 10 years with Toronto post house Third Floor Editing, executive producer Jane Broadfoot has left the company to pursue life as a freelance post producer.

The decision to leave was difficult, says Broadfoot, but she felt it was time to try something new.

‘I thought I’d give myself a little more freedom to expand a little further,’ says Broadfoot, who adds Third Floor owner Richard Unruh has been very supportive. ‘He and I are very good friends. I’m hoping one of my first gigs will be from him. I think people are always supportive when you are doing something you want to do and not leaving for any other reason.’

Under the name Janie Films, Broadfoot’s new vocation is essentially that of freelance post-production supervisor and executive producer. She believes the Toronto market is now big enough to support her brand of service.

‘I know that when I was at Third Floor if a big job came in it took up all of my time, which takes away from other exec producing duties that one has,’ she says. ‘With agency producers being busy or [working on] out-of-country jobs, [my job] could [carry] right through to finding a music company, and it gets it out of the production company’s hands.’

She says with a decade behind her at Third Floor, she has received a great deal of verbal support from the community and is confident jobs will begin popping up soon. She adds her expertise on larger, special-effects jobs will come in handy.

TD is TOPIX’s type

TOPIX inferno artist Lee Towndrow recently finished a two-spot typography job for TD Canada Trust and agency Harrod & Mirlin/FCB. The French/English ads, ‘We Know Your Name’ and ‘Big Cheese,’ saw Towndrow labeling people as they walk through the spots as ‘Some Guy,’ ‘Some Kid,’ etc. That is until they step foot into a TD Canada Trust branch. Then they are ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms’ as the case may be.

One of the challenges of the job, says Towndrow, was to get the text to flow in unison with the characters and not smother them as they move through the scenes.

‘The agency said they wanted to do a spot where there was type that was attached to people somehow and floating through the scene with them,’ says Towndrow. ‘They also wanted a transitional kind of thing where the type would transform into something else and that would be the thrust of the commercial.’

Towndrow attended the three-day shoot, presided over by Blink Pictures director Raymond Bark. He says the director was very open to the collaboration.

‘We both tried to work out shots so it wouldn’t look like the type was just pasted on afterward,’ says Towndrow. ‘We tried to make it so there would be something else to add some authenticity to the shot.’

One good example of this is found in the ‘Big Cheese’ ad. As a man mows his lawn, the text pivots with his body when he turns.

This marks Towndrow’s second typography project for TOPIX since he joined the company less than a year ago.

Panic & Bob’s David Baxter edited

-www.topix.com