If Canada’s visual effects community picks up any more gigabytes of U.S. work, the Film and Television Action Committee in Los Angeles may have to open a new front in its ‘Blame Canada’ runaway production trade war. Increasingly, larger-budgeted U.S. productions are coming north to use post-production services in Canada – and not just for shows shot north of the 49th parallel.

For instance, those edge-of-your-seat scenes in Columbia Pictures’ Panic Room may have been set in a New York brownstone (although shot on an L.A. soundstage), but 160 visual effects were done at Command Post’s TOYBOX in Toronto. While the attractive exchange rate may be a major motivator to ship post work to Canada, the work continues to flow because of the ability to deliver, says Andy Sykes, TOYBOX partner and VP sales and marketing.

‘We’re competing effectively with L.A.-based companies,’ he says, ‘and that doesn’t mean we are going in and offering low-cost visual effects. The exchange rate allows us to get more in a shot than might otherwise be available for budget-challenged shows.’

Previously, Panic Room director David Fincher had brought FX work for the Brad Pitt feature Fight Club to TOYBOX. Reputation and word of mouth may be key in the growing FX business, but TOYBOX has sought to make it easier still for U.S. clients to work with them, following a volatile 2001 that resulted in a 15% drop in revenue.

In November, TOYBOX launched a new dark fiber connection to create a virtual studio in L.A. so that producers of Panic Room and other features can remotely approve FX, color correction and other post tasks via a digital Betacam-quality feed.

Sykes says this capability has been an effective marketing tool – not only for big-ticket features, but for TV and commercial clients as well.

TOYBOX has also started to reap the benefits of a proprietary digital intermediate process called Cinema HD that gives the traditional filmmaking process all the benefits of video post.

‘Cinema HD is a proprietary data path that gives today’s filmmaker access to toys and techniques previously only available in video post-production,’ says Sykes. ‘Never before has a director had so much power to apply visual effects or color treatments to a film without losing the quality of the original footage.’

For example, parts of the Jennifer Lopez feature The Cell were produced with Cinema HD, and the upcoming New Line Cinema horror sequel Jason X was shot on film and then scanned into Cinema HD for its 300 FX. Finally, the digitized production is transferred back to 35mm complete with all 2D and 3D FX, compositing, matte painting, supers and titles.

‘While Cinema HD is not a prescription for every film, it is an extremely attractive option for medium-budget films that are visual effects-rich,’ says Sykes. ‘In the past, if a filmmaker went to his investors with grand plans to shoot over 200 visual effects, if he wasn’t George Lucas they would tell him that it couldn’t be done. Now, with Cinema HD, what has traditionally been a 75-shot visual effects budget may yield a 200 FX shots film with excellent results.’

In Vancouver, GVFX president and CEO John Gajdecki is FX supervisor on The Mrs. Clause: Santa Clause 2, the big-budget Disney sequel starring Tim Allen.

‘The currency exchange makes [the U.S. studios] willing to try us,’ says Gajdecki. ‘Then it is up to us to keep or lose the business.’

According to Gajdecki, Santa Clause 2 is GVFX’s first ‘A-level’ feature, after years of mostly TV work. Santa Clause 2, in which Allen has to get married in order to maintain his Yuletide career, features 100 FX shots. GVFX is working with Tippett Studio in Berkeley, CA.

‘There is a lot of pressure to be cheaper,’ Gajdecki says, ‘but we pay well for the Canadian market and we control costs in other ways. We’ve got to be clever.’

For instance, GVFX works from modest office space, preferring to leave the flash and panache to the artists and their computers, he says. At the same time, software costs are increasing and hardware costs decreasing for all post houses.

Recently, GVFX has upgraded its flame, inferno, Maya and RenderMan software, and is in the process of trading up to more sophisticated hardware.

Meanwhile, its Toronto office was the sole FX creator on the sci-fi MOW Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers, which required 300 FX shots. GVFX’s 3D artists and 2D compositors provided a film-quality crystalline city and battle sequences.

Hybride Technologies in Piedmont, QC, is currently at work on Dimension Films’ Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams, which wrapped on March 11. The FX house also worked on the original feature after Robert Rodriguez, who has written and directed both installments, discovered Hybride’s abilities in 1998 while making The Faculty.

‘[Clients] expect the same level of quality that they would get in L.A., and then hope they can do more here,’ says Hybride president Pierre Raymond, adding that few Canadian companies are able to put through the kind of volumes some features require; Hybride operates six inferno systems to meet such demand. ‘For the same money [as clients would pay in the U.S.], we can do more shots,’ he says.

The dollar exchange is attractive but less of a factor when post houses generally buy equipment and software in U.S. dollars, says Raymond. Canadian shops can’t compete with U.S. companies with vast resources and staff in terms of output, he explains, but they can through versatility. This means a modeler won’t just do modeling and an animator won’t just do animation.

Hybride is also at work on the big-budget Canada/U.K./France miniseries Napoleon, starring John Malkovich and Gerard Depardieu.

-www.compt.com/toybox

-www.gvfx.com

-www.hybride.com