In an ideal world, all feature films would be posted in actual movie theaters, complete with access to big screens and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound. Fortunately for Toronto director Sudz Sutherland, he was able to do precisely that with his debut feature Love, Sex and Eating the Bones.

Winner of the $15,000 Citytv Award for best Canadian first feature at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival, Love, Sex and Eating the Bones is an urban comedy about porn-obsessed photographer/security guard Michael (Hill Harper) and his budding romance with two-years-celibate Jasmine (Marlyne Afflack).

To make Love, Sex and Eating the Bones come together, Sutherland turned to Toronto’s Theatre D Digital for both picture and audio post-production.

Located in Toronto’s 1927-vintage uptown Regent Theatre (formerly the Crest), Theatre D is the brainchild of Canadian post-production veterans John Hazen, Dan Peel and Carlos Herrera. Two years ago, they roped off and removed the front few rows of the Regent’s balcony and added a two-person ProControl mixing board with 48-channel fader to operate Theatre D’s two Pro Tools HD3 audio systems. They also installed five networked Avid G4 editing stations (recently upgraded to version 11.0) in a second-floor apartment connected directly to the balcony, a 6,000 lumens Christie S6 HD video projector, and an ADR stage within the actual theater. What they didn’t change was the Regent’s 18-foot-tall screen – 35 feet wide for regular screenings, 43 for Cinemascope – and the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound system.

‘I chose Theatre D because I had already done some shorter films with them,’ says Sutherland, whose credits include the award-winning My Father’s Hands. ‘I came away impressed by their professional skills, their commitment to understanding what artists need, and their willingness to support indie filmmakers. I was also impressed by the fact that Theatre D’s owners are not obsessed with making a quick buck. I was able to do a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix at the price most post houses would charge for a two-channel mix.’

Sutherland began cutting Love, Sex and Eating the Bones in mid-2003. Editor Jeff Warren and first assistant picture editor Michelle Szemberg handled the picture editing, while supervising sound editors John Laing and Mark Gingras and assistant sound editor Diep Le handled audio. Hazen served as the movie’s re-recording mixer, aided by assistant re-recording mixer Jan Rudy.

Love, Sex and Eating the Bones’ special effects were produced by Eyes Post Group’s visual FX producer Andrew Hunter, supervisor Tony Willis and visual FX artist Dale Coding, with help from VM Productions.

‘Having all this expertise really helped me in creating a professional-quality feature film,’ Sutherland says.

Beyond the expert help, Sutherland appreciated posting inside a working film theater. ‘The great advantage of the Regent is that you can actually see your work in progress on the big screen,’ he says. ‘You get to experience it from the audience’s point of view, right down to the smell of the popcorn.’

Immediate feedback

‘People in the edit suites can walk straight to the balcony to see what they’ve just cut on the big screen, via the Christie HD projector,’ says Hazen. ‘Its quality is so good, along with the Avid 11’s compression ratio, that we’re able to screen projects direct from disc to test audiences for immediate feedback.’

The feedback Theatre D’s big screen and sound system allowed helped punch up certain scenes, including a key sequence where the camera follows Michael into a dance club. To put the audience in the same space, Hazen altered the audio perspective every five to 10 frames to ensure that the ambient quality changed as the visuals changed. ‘When you entered the main dance hall, it was if the world had opened up,’ says Sutherland. ‘The editing, along with the 5.1 mix, really made this transition believable.’

Meanwhile, the fact that Theatre D’s ADR stage is within the hall itself provided Sutherland with convincing dialogue replacement. ‘Most ADR stages are in dead, soundproofed rooms, which really doesn’t work with the sound quality of a film,’ Sutherland says. ‘However, since Theatre D’s ADR stage is in the theater proper, the dialogue recorded there was very ‘live,’ as opposed to sounding as if the actor’s voice was floating in limbo somewhere.’

Visually, a central theme of Sutherland’s film is Michael’s untapped talent as a photographer. To make this point, the director wanted the audience to see a literal glow emanating from the photographs, expressing their ethereal quality. ‘It was tough to get this effect right; we didn’t want something that looked too Harry Potter-ish,’ he says. ‘Fortunately, Tony Willis came through and got it right.’

All told, Theatre D’s facilities and staff gave Sutherland a higher-quality finish than he had anticipated and than his budget otherwise could have afforded. This appears to be part of Theatre D’s philosophy, which may explain why it has formed partnerships with the Canadian Film Centre and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

To date, Theatre D has helped post CFC founder Norman Jewison’s The Statement and Istvan Szabo’s Being Julia, both coproduced by Serendipity Point Films. It is currently posting rookie writer/director Cassandra Nicolaou’s CFC Feature Film Project production Hostage (working title). ‘We also spend a lot of our time helping filmmakers under the OMDC Calling Card programs,’ Hazen adds.

As Theatre D is still in ramp-up phase, Hazen can’t assess how the 2003 SARS crisis has affected its bottom line. But he does know that the Regent’s exhibition business is being affected by its proximity to a nearby Silver City multiplex, which gets first dibs on first-run blockbusters. As a result, the theater makes its money showing ‘hits that have exceeded their contractual stay at the multiplexes,’ says Hazen, referring to films such as Lost in Translation, American Splendor and Standing in the Shadows of Motown.

That said, Theatre D’s partners created their post house for the sake of filmmakers more than as a moneymaker. As a result, Hazen is most concerned with quality, not quantity, a fact for which Sutherland is grateful. ‘Love, Sex and Eating the Bones wouldn’t be the film it is without Theatre D’s help,’ he says.

Love, Sex and Eating the Bones is due for a theatrical release in March through ThinkFilm.

-www.theatred.com