Halifax-based PowerPost Production continues to be Atlantic Canada’s busiest post-production facility since launching in its current incarnation in February 2004. It has seven projects on the go and is establishing itself as a leader in posting HD.

The company was formed when Alliance Atlantis Communications, as part of its efforts to scale back on its involvement in the production and post sectors, sold Salter Street Digital to a group led by Rob Power, then VP of the post facility.

Power, now president and CEO of the renamed PowerPost, says that in 2004 the company was busy with a full slate of standard-definition projects. This year, by contrast, it is HD projects that are keeping the facility’s 40 full-time staff busy.

PowerPost acquired its first HD edit suite in February 2004, while working on full audio and video post for local prodco Big Motion Pictures’ HD drama series Snakes and Ladders. Now, Power says, his HD facility, which includes an Avid DS Nitris and a Final Cut Pro HD suite, is booked right through to September.

‘The fact that we don’t have a film lab [in Atlantic Canada] is probably pushing people to go HD, because they don’t have that delay of sending their film out to Toronto, getting it transferred, processed, then sent back again,’ says Power of the recent surge in HD work in the region.

HD projects currently in the works at PowerPost include full audio and video post, including FX, on Paul Donovan’s $4-million MOW The Conclave, which producer Bill Niven says will also be blown up to 35mm for the festival circuit. Donovan penned the historical drama about the selection of a new pope in 1458.

Power’s HD suites will also be busy with Canada Russia 1972, the $7.8-million CBC miniseries about hockey’s fabled Summit Series, coproduced by Halifax-based Summit Films and Moncton’s Dream Street Pictures. The production was shot on 16mm, transferred to HD, and will be finished in HD. The shop is handling audio and video post, including FX.

PowerPost also has two HD docs in the works: Halifax-based Picture Plant’s Reading Alistair MacLeod for CBC, shot on Panasonic 720p cameras, and Silent Messengers for CTV. Both are coproduced with the National Film Board.

In addition, PowerPost’s P.E.I. office, opened in 2003 under AAC, is gearing up to do audio post on Trailer Park Boys: The Movie.

Other SD projects in the works in Halifax include 26 half-hour episodes of the stop-motion animation series Lunar Jim and season two of Poko. Both children’s series are produced by The Halifax Film Company for CBC and require significantly more post-production than average live-action projects. PowerPost is on call for full audio and video for both.

-www.powerpost.ca