Burnaby, B.C.-based Big Time Decent Productions has expanded its operations with a newly launched post-production facility in Calgary.

The 5,000-square-foot facility launched at the start of 2023 in order to “keep up with demand,” according to a news release. The services available in the facility include dailies processing and post-production from A-to-Z, such as offline editing, online, colour and conform, VFX, a state-of-the-art colour grading suite, and a 5.1 mix suite.

With the new facility, Big Time Decent is now able to service clients “where they need to be” and has “the opportunity to leverage incentives in both B.C. and Alberta,” said the release. The Calgary operation is now open to accommodate service work.

“With the success of our efforts in Vancouver, and my contacts in Calgary, it only seemed natural to expand to a place that lacked the services we are offering,” Big Time Decent president and executive producer Matt Shewchuk (pictured left) tells Playback Daily in an email.

“Plus, we have some projects we are servicing for a variety of clients in Canada and the U.S. and we are already pre-booked through the first year, because we are known for providing high-quality production services and making hit television.”

In 2022, the prodco increased its post-production service work at its Vancouver headquarters, which resulted in completing three MOWs, including Key 2 Love and Dream Wedding for Super Channel, and A Fabled Holiday for the Hallmark Channel.

Meanwhile, Shewchuk has started a new production company with Vancouver-based Indigenous filmmaker Joy Haskell (pictured right), whom he met two years ago at the Whistler Film Festival.

Their prodco, Happy Heart Studios, launched in the fall of 2022 and focuses on scripted and unscripted projects. Shewchuk says Happy Heart pitched its first projects in the fall and winter of 2022 and has three docuseries in development, which features characters and stories from Southern Alberta to the Northwest Territories.

Big Time Decent is also finishing up six years of production on a documentary feature film about Derek Rabelo and his goal to become the first completely blind surfer who rides the biggest waves in the world.

The doc, directed and produced by Pablo Garcia, is being filmed in Brazil, Portugal, Hawaii, and the U.S. and is expected to be completed in the spring of 2023. Shewchuk serves as the executive producer of the film. The team is also producing an IMAX version of the doc, with plans to bring it to distributors at MIPTV in April 2023, according to the release.

The prodco is also in production on season five of their docuseries Rust Valley Restorers, for which Shewchuk and Tyson Hepburn received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Direction, Factual.

Meanwhile, the second season of Backroad Truckers, which was in production in June 2022, debuted on Jan. 1 on Hulu in the U.S. The air date for the second season for History Canada was not provided as of press time.

Image courtesy of Big Time Decent Productions.