Tattersall Casablanca prepares for Origins

While sound and picture post shop Tattersall Casablanca’s future is up in the air with prez Jane Tattersall gone and the sale from Alliance Atlantis to Point.360 still in limbo at press time, TC remains busy. The biggest project on the slate is the AAC mini Hitler: The Origins of Evil, which communications director Robert White says will have the facility ‘working 24 hours a day’ for a very quick turnaround. White says 20 sound studios will be put to work on that project alone.

Features on the horizon include AAC’s Foolproof, William Phillips’ highly anticipated follow-up to Treed Murray, 49th Parallel Films’ Ginger Snaps 2, Republic of Love, Deepa Mehta’s latest, and Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World and the arts film Firebird, both for Rhombus Media.

TC is also gearing up for upcoming seasons of locally shooting series Soul Food for Paramount and Queer As Folk for Showtime, along with AAC’s own The Eleventh Hour and Blue Murder for Barna-Alper. Other TV work includes the new CBS series Platinum produced by Francis Ford Coppola and daughter Sophia. Recently completed are the MOWs Homeless to Harvard for Lifetime Network, The Ranch for Showtime, and Martha Inc., starring Cybill Shepherd as Martha Stewart.

The deadline for the Point.360 sale, last slated for March 31, has been extended yet again. Rumor has it that regardless of where ownership ends up, TC will soon be going HD. John Harcourt, VP post-production for AAC, is the shop’s current acting prez.

-www.tattersallcasablanca.com

Manta flying with pilots

Command Post and Transfer is in the process of relocating much of its infrastructure into its Manta DSP facility. Manta is holding off on any facility expansion until it sees what’s new at NAB2003. Having acquired the DAVE facility a couple of years back, Manta is in construction mode.

The shop is busy with the U.S. pilot season, including the drama series 1-800-Missing, the video and audio post for which was completely done in Toronto. Universal’s straight-to-video The Skulls 3 is in the shop for processing and mixing, while Manta is also performing processing, transfer, online and sound on the new WB fantasy cop series Chasing Alice. ‘It is rare for Warner Bros. to leave us to do this in Toronto, but it’s good for our community,’ says Manta’s Louis Major.

Manta is processing all sound and video on the Calgary-shot MOW remake of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. If successful, the program could be spun off into a series. The shop also mixed the full audio package for the recently aired CBC mini Hemingway vs. Callaghan.

-www.compt.com

Kozak goes Kozmic

Hockey fever is at a peak on the West Coast, and Vancouver’s Wayne Kozak Audio Productions has caught it. The shop has provided audio post for TV projects Legends of Hockey – A Personal Journey, The Grind, a series of hockey vignettes for ESPN’s playoff coverage, and The Life and Times of Mario Lemieux for CBC. The latter project features an original score by Wayne Kozak and Bryan Adams guitarist Keith Scott.

Kozak has also hired Megan Andrews as its new client liaison/project manager.

In December, Kozak and engineer Chris McLaren opened all-digital audio studio Kozmic Sound, which will be dedicated to music production for WKAP’s TV soundtracks and other projects. McLaren, whose credits include Madeline and Inspector Gadget, is currently recording animation voice projects in the new studio, which fits up to 14 actors. The surround-capable control room is equipped with a DM2000 Digital Production Console and Pro Tools 5.1 Mix Plus system.

Kozmic is also in production on season two of the BLT Productions animated series The Cramp Twins and will soon take on BLT’s Searching for Santa. The studio also recently completed ADR for the animated movie Ark.

This month, writing and producing team Kevin Hamilton and Lesley Sutherland are opening a new studio called Fresh Air Audio behind the Kozmic facility.

-www.waynekozak.com

Saying it loud and McClear

Staffers at Toronto recording studio McClear Digital are psyched as they put the finishing touches on their Studio 3, which now houses a 96 kHz 24-bit Studer Vista 7 digital recording console with 5.1 capability. The investment cost several hundred thousand dollars, but McClear believes it is well worth it for the ‘hot’ digital res. Studio 3 is big enough for about 20 players, and so is well suited to recording scores for series and MOWs, with HD future proofing in mind.

The board is hooked up to a Pro Tools HD system. Film scores can be digitally recorded in one of the studio’s bigger rooms then transferred through the board and mixed in 5.1, IMAX or whatever digital format, explains chief engineer Mike Jones. (McClear has five rooms in total, two of them offline, also offering sweetening and dialogue and sound effects editing.) Even prior to the upgraded room, McClear recorded 5.1 surround music for the HD delivery on AAC’s Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and mixed the large-format IMAX Space Station 3D.

Before Studio 3 is launched in all its new glory, it is being used for voice-over on the Japanese animated kids series Beyblade, distributed by Nelvana.

Jones’ and McClear’s other recent TV credits include Guilt by Association, Salem Witch Trials, Tribulation Force, Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay and The Man Who Saved Christmas.

McClear also foresees the preparation of 5.1 music for release on DVD as a burgeoning revenue stream.

-www.mcclear.com

Footsteps making noise

At first it might not seem like smart business to set up a foley studio in Uxbridge, ON, 40 minutes north of Toronto, but Footsteps Post Production Sound, with credits ranging from Canuck features Spider and Atanarjuat to Hollywood flicks Red Dragon, Ali, Austin Powers and Meet the Parents, knew exactly what it was doing.

Digital technology makes it easy for Footsteps, headed by foley vet Andy Malcolm, to get material to producers in L.A., Toronto or Nunavut fast, and it doesn’t have to be concerned with noisy distractions going on outside, nor nosy production execs breathing down its neck.

While Footsteps does features and IMAX films almost exclusively, it does occasionally take on animated projects as well. It is safe to say that Malcolm, who worked at Deluxe for a number of years, is at the top of his field, with his name engraved on nine Genie Awards. He has built up quite a client base over the years, and, luring work because of the exchange rate like everyone else, he says that 80% of his gigs now emanate from Hollywood and New York.

Footsteps’ technology is Pro Tools-based, and Malcolm has two alternating crews, including a pair of re-recording mixers, two foley artists, two assistants who operate the Pro Tools systems and a couple of trainees.

Presently Footsteps is working on the Robert Altman ensemble drama The Company, starring Neve Campbell. It recently finished up on Disney’s The Lizzy McGuire Movie and has lined up The Rock’s forthcoming Helldorado (aka Welcome to the Jungle), currently in production.

Lenz’s Passion music

Toronto’s Jack Lenz has written original music for Mel Gibson’s controversial forthcoming Christ film The Passion, due out in spring 2004. Recording is proceeding with artists including Shahid Ali Khan and Ron Allen. Lenz also wrote three original songs for the made-for-TV movie Icebound, starring Susan Sarandon.

Lenz wrote, arranged and supervised the music for the recent Genie and Gemini Awards, and Lenz Entertainment is also scoring series including Designer Guys and Holmes on Homes for HGTV, on which it also did audio post. Lenz will soon take on music supervision, original theme and post audio for the reality-TV series Strip Search.

The shop has recently added a full-post audio, recording and mixing studio, a fourth writing room and another digital audio station. Over the next month it will be adding new Avid editing facilities on the second floor.

-www.lenzent.com

Talking Dog gears up

Regina audio post facility Talking Dog Studios, owned by Minds Eye Entertainment, went through a major upgrade last summer, installing a high-speed Fibre Channel SAN network, and now has 18 workstations linked together with the fibre-optic technology. The studio is also Dolby-approved for 5.1 theatrical mixing and employs fast two-gigabit switching technology.

The new setup allowed the shop’s 24 engineers to cope with a tight turnaround on the PAX TV/W Network one-hour drama Just Cause. Other recent clients include the CBC tainted-water MOW Betrayed, The Wisher for Paramount, 2030CE for YTV and Showtime Family, I Accuse for Rampage Entertainment, Mentors for Family Channel, and the tentatively titled Dave Thomas feature Whitecoats for its parent company.

-www.talkingdogstudios.com

Post Modern forecasts sunny spring

Vancouver audio post house Post Modern Sound reports that it has been cautious about spending on system upgrades due to the current industry slowdown, yet it already has a Euphonix System 5 mixing theatre that can handle feature-quality work. It plans to pitch some of the big movies that are rolling into town.

Post Modern anticipates business picking up around June, when its staffers start up on new seasons of The Chris Isaak Show and Andromeda, with a couple more new series pending. It has just finished mixing the fourth Mary Higgins Clark MOW of the season for U.S. broadcaster PAX TV, with three more to come.

-www.postmodernsound.com

Umbrella showered with gigs

Toronto’s Umbrella Sound Studio balances post with music recording. The shop posted the recent season of Summerhill Entertainment’s globe-trotting botany series Flower Power that airs on HGTV and CG Kids, a spin-off of Canadian Geographic Presents for TVOntario, APTN and Knowledge Network. Rounding out the list is Amaze Film + Television’s new sitcom Patti for The Comedy Network.

Umbrella is also trumpeting the fact that several of its musical clients are up for Juno Awards, including Sam Roberts and K-OS.

Compiled by Mark Dillon, with files from Karli Vezina