Amidst a corporate reshuffling and a slow year in foreign service production in Toronto, post giant Technicolor is relying increasingly on Canadian productions.

Parent company Thomson promoted from within this past June, naming Ahmad Ouri president of the Technicolor content services division in Burbank, CA. Ouri was formerly chief technology officer for the services section of Thomson and president of Technicolor Digital Cinema, where he strategized the D-cinema rollout with studios and exhibitors.

The filter-down effect of the California corporate restructuring resulted in Claude Gagnon, former head of Technicolor creative services in Canada, leaving Montreal for Burbank, where he is now COO for Technicolor content services in a newly created role, overseeing product consistency for company locations worldwide.

Meanwhile, François Deschamps, former principal VP at Technicolor creative services in Montreal, is now exec VP of the firm’s Canadian content services dvision.

Deschamps stresses that the main focus at Technicolor Toronto remains on front-end processing and transfer, as it does at the company’s New York and Vancouver facilities. Also, this year has seen growth in HD origination and delivery for local producers and distributors.

‘HD is almost like standard definition eight years ago,’ says Deschamps. ‘A lot of our customers start on a lower-cost basis. We have to make sure that we adapt and have services for the budget [level].’

To that end, Technicolor Toronto completed its digital intermediate suite in late April – upgrading from the one it inherited when it took over Toybox in 2004 – with the capability to color grade in 2K or HD 4:4:4 on the big screen and render back out to film, or master and deliver in multiple HD formats.

Since then, it’s delivered seven features, including Reg Harkema’s Monkey Warfare, Chinese actioner The Banquet (for which it also did VFX) and Sarah Polley’s TIFF darling Away from Her. Clement Virgo’s Poor Boy’s Game is currently in the suite.

Meanwhile, the firm’s release print lab in Mirabel, QC, worked in concert with its U.S. counterparts on Martin Scorsese’s recently released cop drama The Departed.

Deschamps sees the business model for producers and distributors evolving with the mobility of digital technology, leading to opportunities beyond just TV and movie screens.

‘Our world is totally changing,’ he says, adding that these changes have also improved the post pipeline immeasurably. ‘We went from a tape world to a tapeless one. We do everything from exchange data to deliver across our networks.’

In keeping with these innovations, Technicolor recently launched two new ventures in Montreal: a VFX arm with a dozen artists, and a locally driven commercial division, both of which will be able to interact with other Technicolor facilities worldwide.

In Toronto, while posting Canuck shows including Corner Gas, ReGenesis, Life with Derek and Falcon Beach, Technicolor suffered from a dearth of Hollywood TV projects and features shooting in town this past summer. The Vancouver division, on the other hand, has seen a rise in front-end work and VFX on big-budget features as well as an expansion in HD transfer capacity.

‘We want to set up tools that work in all markets for our clients,’ says Deschamps. ‘If they need high-end stuff, we’re ready. If they need low-end, we’ll do that as well, because that’s the new reality.’

www.technicolor.com