Who’s posting what for whom

WESTERN CANADA

BIG Red Barn Post has settled into its new Vancouver digs and is doing offline on Spirit of the Game, directed by Annie Frazier Henry and produced by the National Film Board/Full Regalia Productions for CanWest Global and the NFB. It is likewise doing offline for Team Tootoo for CTV, produced by Big Red Barn Entertainment/Trailer Park Productions.

BRBP is also doing online finishing on hour-long docs The Walk and The Hunt for APTN, produced by Poor Boy Pictures/Big Red Barn. Ongoing series Fishing with Shelley and Courtney (The Outdoor Channel/OLN) has returned and is being edited in the shop.

The growing fusion of film and digital formats has proven a boon to Vancouver video-to-film transfer house Digital Film Group. The shop has been busy doing blowups of 24p HD films including Ori Kowarsky’s Various Positions, Winning Girls with Psychic Mind Control and Hillary Jones Farrow’s New VI/CHUM MOW Croon, which was lensed by DFG kahuna James Tocher.

The shop is also collaborating with the NFB on feature doc transfers including boxing flick Le Ring interieur and Journey to Little Rock.

Calgary’s White Iron Digital recently teamed with Alliance Atlantis’ Great North Productions to create an opening title sequence and 3D medical animations for the Discovery Health Channel’s one-hour Children of Glass special, about brittle bone disease. The shop performed offline and online editing for season three of the HGTV series Bugs and Blooms for parent company White Iron Productions.

White Iron also did a promo package for ESPN’s Major League Baseball Post Season as well as an opening title sequence and bumpers for the weight-loss series Taking It Off for Anaid Productions.

TORONTO

Command Post & Transfer/TOYBOX reports a record six months of VFX delivery for features and MOWs. Among the titles for which its Vancouver and Toronto facilities have provided VFX: Chicago and A Wrinkle in Time (Miramax), Gods and Generals (Warner Bros.), House of Dead (Brightlight Pictures/Mindfire/Bol KG), Head of State (DreamWorks) and Butterfly Effect (New Line Cinema).

One of the company’s biggest growth areas is digital intermediates, with its proprietary CinemaHD system for digital video and video-captured features and cinemaDI for film-captured features. Command is currently servicing five features with this process with eyes on spring delivery.

Command subsidiary Manta DSP has recently hired Australian Eric Whipp, who joins TOYBOX’s Walt Biljan as the organization’s senior colorists in Toronto.

Tattersall Casablanca is expanding big time, upping its offline systems to 30 with 13 new Avid Media Composers. It previously expanded its HD capabilities for AAC’s Earth: Final Conflict and will continue in that direction with the purchase of an Avid DS/HD. TC has also established a fiber link with Calibre Digital Pictures for media sharing and file transfers on the animated series Ace Lightning for CBC and Hey Joel for VH1 and CHUM.

Other picture-post projects for the shop include the Showtime series Soul Food, Blue Murder for Barna-Alper/North Bend/Global and AAC/CTV’s The Eleventh Hour, on which TC helped establish the look.

Calibre Digital Pictures recently provided an HD finish, a 3D forest, a title sequence and matte paintings to recreate 17th century Massachusetts for Salem Witch Trials, an Alliance Atlantis/Spring Creek mini for CBS. Artists are also currently creating virtual sets, 3D environments and VFX for the Touchstone Television/ABC Indiana Jones-like HD series Veritas, which is shooting locally.

In features, GFT Entertainment/ Hannibal Pictures’ Crime Spree, a heist flick starring Gerard Depardieu and Harvey Keitel, has called upon Calibre for title work, VFX and compositing. The AAC kids heist film Foolproof, meanwhile, requires 3D compositing, extensions, animation and F/X.

Fearless Films recently purchased a Sony HDCAM 24p deck for posting the Decode Entertainment series Blobheads. Fearless is providing offline facilities and doing online for the 26 half-hours, to air on CBC. The shop is providing offline and online services for Nelvana’s animated Berenstain Bears series airing on PBS, producing both PAL and NTSC masters on its Avid Symphony.

Still in animation, Fearless conformed Portfolio Entertainment’s Robo Roach on the Symphony. The shop also provided facilities for doc filmmaker John Walkers’ latest, Men of the Deeps, a one-hour for CTV and the NFB.

Animation/design shop The Studio Upstairs completed 60 treatments for Rhombus Media’s one-hour HD dance special Firebird, directed by Barbara Willis Sweete and slated for broadcast on CBC. It has also finished titles for Three and a Half, by rookie writer/director Boris Mojsovski and Summer Pictures.

On the broadcast side, Upstairs has done an intro, bumpers, lead-ins and titles for TSN’s The Reporters. Downstairs, parent company Creative Post has expanded its Avid Suites from three to seven. It is also installing online delivery solutions, including a Telestream system.

DKP Effects has produced animation, F/X, graphics and compositing for Top Speed, the shop’s fourth IMAX project in as many years. Produced for MacGillivray Freeman Films, the film stars Tim Allen as an animated CGI hummingbird named Zippy.

DKP has just wrapped its own direct-to-DVD project based on a product licensed from Hasbro. Warner Bros. will distribute in the spring. The shop has also entered the video games fray, completing cinematics on the Electronic Arts James Bond game Night Fire.

Cuppa Coffee has rebranded 007 and the New TNN for the 21st century with a promo series called ‘Bleached Bonds.’ The spots, sponsored by the Clorox Company, blend Bond-style, action and sexy heroines. Cuppa combined repurposed footage, 3D text and design and an organic textural approach in the 25-, 15- and 10-second clips. The artists rotoscoped and manipulated footage in Adobe After Effects, and also called upon Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Electric Image.

Toronto HD specialist Stonehenge is seeing more traffic with the growing interest in 24p capture. Recent projects include Randall Cole’s comedy 19 Months, the latest output from the Canadian Film Centre’s Feature Film Project, for which the shop provided HD post services. It did likewise on the four-part David Suzuki TV special Sacred Balance, produced for Kensington Communications and airing on CBC and PBS.

Stonehenge was also recently contracted to create an official in-cinema logo for Christie Digital’s new DLP cinema projectors.

Four members of Post Producers Digital are tackling season three of The Star Treatment, a who-does-what-for-the-stars series directed by Paul Gardner, produced by Kaleidoscope Entertainment and airing on Star TV! and A&E Biography Channel. PPD’s mission on the series, which is shot on Betacam SP and mini DV, is to give it a slick look befitting its Hollywood subjects, using its Avid 1000 XL online suites.

Post and design house Crush has recently doubled its size, adding a new suite and more designers, including Stefan Woronko, who joins as art director after five years at MuchMusic. The shop is dividing its time between broadcast design and U.S. and Canadian spots. It has recently done packages for CMT and Astral Media. The shop notes increased demand for CG elements and editing.

MIJO Corporation has gone the HD route. The Toronto-based outfit has acquired Sony HDCAM equipment and now adds to its list of services HDCAM cloning (24p or 60I), 24p to 60I crossconversions as well as standard-definition up- and downconversions. The company’s subsidiaries include Comprehensive Distributors, Rocket Digital Post & Sound and Undercover Film & Electronic Media Storage.

Bullet Digital is looking to upgrade its infrastructure of seven Avid systems and one DPS Velocity. Last year the shop welcomed senior editor Warren Chin. Bullet also reports more movement on the episodic field, including some work for A&E. The facility offers camera packages as well as offline, online, DVD, audio post and duplication services.

Newly launched Images Post recently opened an Avid Media Composer 9000 XL suite to complement its pair of Avid Xpress offline systems, available with or without an Images editor. Images bills itself as an ‘alternative’ post environment, touting its on-site meeting and screening rooms as well as its duplication services, standards conversion and DVD authoring capabilities.

MONTREAL

Montreal’s Covitec has announced that, subsequent to its takeover by Technicolor in 2000, it will now be officially known as Technicolor Creative Services – Montreal. The company has moved its three offline and two online Avid suites and a 2D CG workstation, along with editors, artists and assistants, under one roof at its Westmount Square location. The company believes this consolidation will streamline workflow from offline through F/X.

The most high-profile project under Technicolor’s roof is the 20th Century Fox weather disaster blockbuster Tomorrow, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Dennis Quaid. Technicolor is providing front-end lab services, electronic dailies and editorial materials.

Buzz Image Group is catching its breath after a busy year. The post shop did VFX for director Christian Duguay’s Paramount action release Extreme Ops as well as on-set supervision and F/X shots for George Clooney’s directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, distributed here by AAC. Buzz also did 3D animated broadcast graphics for Corus Entertainment’s Edge TV.

Recent Buzz hires include Patrice Cormier, ex of Discreet, joining as VP of HD development, and Andre Montambeault as senior editor and compositor.

Compiled by Mark Dillon