Nuts-and-bolts services such as processing, formatting, conversion and duplication might not seem the most glamorous aspects of post-production, but Canadian shops are finding them increasingly useful in terms of luring major Hollywood productions and landing more creative gigs. Plus they allow companies to better weather the storm of volatile production volumes, representing a large chunk of the bottom line.

Just how large?

According to Barry Chambers, GM of Vancouver’s Rainmaker, formatting, conversion, duplication and similar video post services represent 45% of the post shop’s revenues. Processing film stock accounts for another 10%, while the company’s burgeoning visual FX department, recently put to work on projects including MGM’s Good Boy! and 20th Century Fox’s Elektra and Garfield: The Movie, tallies the remaining 45%.

When Rainmaker began 25 years ago as Gastown Post, its core business was transferring film to video, with a client base 90% on the commercial production side. Then TV productions such as MacGyver and 21 Jump Street came to Vancouver and the focus shifted. For Rainmaker, offering a wide range of post services allows it to continually win Hollywood gigs.

‘If you’ve got a lab and post and FX – the more you can package, the better deals you can give,’ Chambers explains. ‘[Some facilities] have tried to work with the L.A. market where they don’t have a film lab, and it’s much harder for them to package.’

Despite having the opportunity to work with Canadian picture editors and sound mixers and save on the exchange rate, many Hollywood directors have their favorite collaborators back home to whom they give this high-end work. Although a Canuck shop may lose out on these jobs, it can still service these productions’ more immediate needs, and getting a U.S. studio in its doors for tech services can establish a relationship that leads to gigs on the creative side.

‘The Garfield people came up and came through the place, and they saw the work we were doing on Good Boy!, and that’s, I am sure, what landed us the Garfield project,’ Chambers says.

For Deluxe Toronto, offering lab services is key to overall efficiency.

‘If you’re in, say, the high-def telecine business, certainly there is an advantage to being able to handle the 35mm or the Super 16 processing for that customer,’ says Dan McLellan, EVP and GM of Deluxe Sound & Picture. ‘You want to look after them at the lab stage; you want to know that film was coming out of the lab at two o’clock, at 2:15 a.m. it’s on your scanner, at 6 a.m. their dailies are ready. That is a very big part of our business.’

There are nearly a dozen features currently shooting in Toronto, and for Deluxe, that means big business. The shop is seeing record amounts of footage coming in for Universal’s Cinderella Man and Focus Features’ Assault on Precinct 13, starring Ethan Hawke. The Deluxe Labs operation, overseen by EVP Joe Micek, has also been servicing New Line’s The Man, Universal’s The Perfect Man and Disney’s Ice Princess and The Pacifier, with Vin Diesel.

Out-of-town business

The company’s international name even brings it productions shooting out of town, such as Focus’ Calgary-based Brokeback Mountain (Deluxe has a longstanding relationship with director Ang Lee) and the indie The Big White, shooting out of the Yukon. And in many cases, Deluxe’s lab is basically a loss leader.

‘We may not make the most money processing, but by virtue of the fact that we have [a project] in the shop, we can sell them high-def dailies, sound synching and transfer work, and put ourselves in a position to do the mix,’ McLellan says. ‘The demand to be a full-service soup-to-nuts supplier has never been more critical.’

The trend towards HD shooting, expanding rapidly in the TV world and slightly into features, means that some post shops that don’t have a lab but were early HD adopters are getting a bigger piece of the pie.

‘We get a lot of jobs now because [clients] never have to leave, more so with high-def,’ says Ken Mac Neil, VP operations of Creative Post’s Studio Upstairs design and FX department. ‘We were never into the film or telecine business – it was always separated. But now we’re starting to find there are things people traditionally did in 16mm that now they’re doing in high-def. So now we’re doing everything from the offline to the online to the conversions to the visual FX.’

Creative recently provided front-to-back services for Michael Maclear’s doc Vietnam: Ghosts of War, for Screenlife Productions.

Creative opened 18 years ago specializing in offline editing, and now has a DVD, CD and tape duplication department that accounts for 25% of company revenues. Add in the fact the shop’s editing and multimedia division also encompass some duplication, and ‘maybe 40% to 50% of the company is straight replication/duplication services,’ says Mac Neil.

Creative, which also does large amounts of formatting, conversion and multimedia, has five divisions for different services. That way, after a client’s offline is completed, it has a team of experts to handle areas including DVDs, PAL conversions and show openers. Another benefit of spreading out its business is weathering the production industry’s inevitable ups and downs.

‘When we go through, say, the last 18 to 24 months, it was extremely difficult for a lot of people in the industry locally,’ Mac Neil says. ‘In that sense, it was nice being so diversified. Instead of taking one huge hit, you were taking a smaller hit on five separate levels. It [keeps] you financially strong.’

-www.rainmaker.com

-www.bydeluxe.com

-www.creativepostinc.com