VO2 Mix, a new audio post shop, recently opened its doors in what is quickly becoming known in the industry as Toronto’s ‘post district’ (Spadina Avenue and Queen Street West). VO2 partners Terry Wedel and Euan Hunter have found a space flooded with natural light that lends itself to ease and relaxation.

‘With our ad clients, I’m finding there are a lot of agency producers that have worked with Terry and myself in the past who have come down here and are very surprised when they get in the door,’ says Hunter. ‘I don’t think they are expecting a room like this.’

Wedel and Hunter met while both employed by Toronto’s Keen Music Voice & Sound Design. After leaving the company to pursue individual sonic endeavors, they rejoined to open their shop, which for now specializes in sound design and effects.

The facility is already servicing long-form and commercial projects, just a few weeks after launching.

‘We are going at a number of different markets at the same time,’ says Wedel. ‘We are continuing to go after the longer format while going after commercials as well. With the longer format we are able to compete mostly on our reputation for the good work we’ve already done. We are competitive because we have a big beautiful room that people are comfortable in and we are offering a great price.’

Occupying that room is a ProTools Mix Plus system, considered by many the standard for digital audio workstations. Hunter has a separate ProTools system running out of his studio, and the studio is able to interface between the two rooms. VO2’s ProTools is run off a ProControl console, which allows it to bring all of ProTools’ automated and DSP features outside the system for use.

‘The console provides the same things that an analog console does, but it also stops you from being a computer worker so much and gets the feel of actual mixing back on a mixing board,’ says Wedel.

‘It allows you to work faster as a sound engineer,’ adds Hunter. ‘It is a little more intuitive, and you can get your hands on things quicker.’

ProTools is manufactured by Avid subsidiary Digidesign and is especially compatible with Avid editing systems, enabling VO2 to shoot files back and forth with picture editors.

Wedel says for the moment VO2 will not be getting into the scoring side of the biz, while acknowledging that an increasing number of spots are currently being audio posted through creative music companies.

‘We’re trying to carve out a market for people who don’t necessarily have the budget to go for the full creative treatment and get a full music score written,’ says Wedel. ‘We are offering people a chance to do quality work with stock music and sound design without having to go through that creative music process.’

So far, the partners report, Black’s Photography, the Ontario Science Centre, the City of Toronto and Corona have all left the shop satisfied.

With a loyal contingent of longer-format clients to fall back on, Hunter and Wedel say they are not being affected by the commercial slowdown plaguing the industry this summer. Hunter, however, is quick to admit they have nothing to gauge their business progress against, having only opened recently.

‘It’s been noticeably less busy, but it is generally slower in the summer, especially for [ads], because everybody is out shooting and things don’t get down the pipe to post until later in the summer,’ says Wedel. ‘Usually, in the second half of the summer and in the fall it really picks up, but we’re still running sessions every week on the ad side.’

TOPIX keeps its Marbles

TORONTO’S TOPIX has designed and produced the animation and F/X sequences for the 4th Annual Golden Marble Awards (for advertising) and the 3rd Annual Golden Marble Promotion Awards, to be held Sept. 10 and 11 in New York City. The 32 five-second award lead-ins were brought into the world by designer/animator Kara Blake and produced by TOPIX president Chris Wallace. The same 25 IDs from last year’s promotional awards, also created at TOPIX, will be recycled for this year’s edition.

‘This year we followed the lead of the print campaign, which had a kind of retro feel,’ says Blake. ‘We used black-and-white stock footage stills and combined them with graphic treatments that were authentic to the period, so we used a very ’50s looking font and graphic elements.’

Blake, who says she has been working on the pieces for about four months, designed all the identities in Adobe Photoshop and animated them in After Effects.

‘They like to keep them kind of humorous and keep the audience engaged, so each one is playful and witty,’ says Blake.

-www.topix.com