Jeff Fish is a hot commodity in Halifax commercials. He is one of a very few editors who specialize in cutting ads and has become somewhat of the go-to guy in the region for agencies and start-up production companies like Cenex Inc. In the East Coast advertising market, which is in a serious growth phase right now, Fish’s Filet Post Production is rarely quiet and a quiet rarity.

Fish was groomed in Toronto, getting his start in 1990 as assistant to editor Andy Attalai at Chameleon. Three years in, he received an offer from Lori and Michael Covert at Halifax’s Post Perfect. They wanted to fly Fish out east to show him the scene and lure him away from Hogtown.

‘I had no interest at all in leaving Toronto,’ says Fish. ‘I thought if I was going to go anywhere, it would probably be the States. These people told me I should come down and see what was going on here because the Halifax industry was growing.’

Fish flew to Halifax on Post Perfect’s dime and was instantly drawn to the area. He’s still there.

After his tenure in a senior editor position at Post Perfect, Fish moved on to Ocean Digital in April 1997. After almost three years to the day, he decided to go it alone, and last year opened Filet with partner Cathy Brown. The clients quickly followed. Fish says he enjoys working in Halifax much more than he did in Toronto because of the variety of projects sent his way.

‘Toronto is very niche-oriented I find,’ says Fish. ‘If you’re in commercials, you do commercials, and if you’re in television, you do television, but never do those people seem to intermix with one another….What Halifax offered is a place where everything gets done and you can do everything.’

Filet, says Fish, runs on a non-compressed Avid platform and the suite housing the system is something to behold. It is set up in the living room of a house with a console at one end, underneath a large, flat projection screen. There are sofas to sit on, but Brown says clients often prefer to sit in the theatre seats she and Fish installed, at the opposite end of the room, which give the suite a unique look and feel.

Fish says the presentation of their facility is as important as the quality of work he does.

‘Our clients want to feel that what they have produced is something magical, and that is what this room is all about,’ he says. ‘I hate edit suites that are traditionally set up, where everyone is looking over the editor’s shoulder. It is a very nerve-racking way to work. No other offices are set up that way. Cathy and a custom furniture designer came up with the idea of sinking down the console, which isn’t terribly unusual, but they also pointed me back toward the client so that I have that one-on-one contact.’

Fish says probably the most frustrating part of being a commercial editor in Halifax is watching work produced in Atlantic Canada shipped off to Toronto for post. He understands the allure for Maritimers wanting to take a trip to the big smoke for a week of shopping and dining, with a little work thrown in for good measure, but feels this isn’t always the most prudent or logical way of doing business.

‘It is a bit of a struggle for us to keep post-production work here,’ he says. ‘It can be tough on the market, certainly, and we are the response to that. The talent, skill set, resources and equipment are here, and people have asked if we expect to get people away from going to Toronto. If clients have the budget and they want to go they will, but they’re not always going to want to. We believe more production happens [in Halifax] because of the services that we and others like us can provide here, but it is a fight against Toronto a lot of the time.’

That said, Fish and Brown haven’t been suffering. In the last few months, Fish has posted work for Nova Scotia Tourism, Alexander Keith’s, Atlantic Lottery Corporation, Timbermart, Acura, Aliant, Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation, Hyundai, McDonald’s, and others, not including longer-format projects that come his way.

While there are other post facilities in town, the majority are owned by agencies or production houses. Filet, on the other hand, is completely independent, owned and operated by Fish and Brown. Much of the East Coast commercial work is theirs for the taking. This is partly because of Filet’s independence, but also because, in Fish’s opinion, commercial work isn’t as appealing to other post shops as it is to him.

‘They like the idea of being able to generate some extra revenue [with spot jobs], but I’m not entirely sure if commercial work is sexy enough for a lot of them,’ says Fish. ‘We love it. It’s everything we know and everything we are geared up for.’