Go east, young men.

This was the mantra playing over in the minds of Torontonians Brian Howald and Breandan McGrath when they ventured to Nova Scotia three years ago to open digital video post and F/X shop Wingit Productions. The pair proceeded to work on LEXX, the sexy sci-fi series coproduced by Halifax’s Salter Street Films and Germany’s TiMe Film und TV Produktion, with Howald as senior compositor and McGrath as compositor/Maya operator.

‘We did all the major effects [on LEXX],’ says Howald, who learned the ropes during a 10-year stay at Toronto animation and F/X house DKP Effects. ‘We had four other animators and compositors under us, which allowed us to go into the studio to make sure the effects were shot correctly and put the shows together. We did 22 episodes the first season and 13 the next, with anywhere between 100 and 600 effects per episode.’

After working on Blackfly, Pirates! and other SSF productions, Howald says Wingit decided not to work on the newest season of LEXX, favoring other projects. With the series switching from motion picture film to the Sony 24P high-definition format, Salter Street Digital, SSF’s post arm, is now handling the 2D and 3D visual effects work. Howald adds that Wingit nevertheless continues its association with SSD.

‘We use them for audio and closed captioning,’ he explains. ‘We are also available to them for overflow as their equipment gets overused.’

Howald believes that settling in the Atlantic region was a good decision for Wingit, for reasons beyond just the lifestyle.

‘There are [few] other players out here, so we have our fingers in most of the productions going on in the city as far as TV series go,’ he says.

Some of the more recent work that has come through Wingit’s doors includes the opening for the Creative Atlantic Communications series Liography (a spoof of A&E’s Biography, with Leslie Nielsen hosting profiles of fictitious people) and a pair of music videos for local artists directed by Howald and produced by McGrath.

The partners really made their mark with the CTV animated Christmas special Little Buck’s Christmas, produced by Virtual Media in Sydney, NS. The Wingit team spent about four months in Sydney helping to put it together, with Howald as director and McGrath as project manager.

‘We worked with [Virtual Media’s] animators and basically taught them how to animate without doing everything in the computer, allowing them to concentrate on the animation,’ says Howald. ‘Then we did the compositing and added in all the snow and other effects with the backgrounds they had created.’

With the animation, post and F/X community in Halifax as small as it is, Howald says the companies there believe in solidarity.

‘Yes, Wingit does 3D animation, and yes, we have [Alias|Wavefront’s] Maya, but when it comes to series and larger projects, we are working in conjunction with all the players out here,’ he explains. ‘They all work as a service group for us, just as we work as a service provider for them. They [might not] have the skills for compositing on a large scale, and they don’t have online, but they do have young animators who are learning and willing to learn the systems and the way we do things.’

Howald admits there are also disadvantages to setting up shop in Halifax – primarily, watching major film productions from both inside and outside Canada shooting in Nova Scotia for the locations and soundstage availability, and then going home and taking the post work with them.

‘It is a pain, but I can understand it to an extent,’ he says. ‘It’s hard to teach the producers what there is out here. I think they’d find we [can do] work that is as good as what they would get done elsewhere.’

Howald ventured to Las Vegas in April for NAB2001, the technology marketplace. Although he made no purchases, he did make many new contacts and was able to get a sense of the new gear available.

Wingit considered upgrading its Jaleo 3.5 editing and compositing system to high-definition, but decided against it for the moment, since filmmakers currently shooting in HD are still downconverting to 601 NTSC for post. Currently running an SGI JaleOctane with R12K processors, Wingit will not yet be joining the trend of going with smaller, cheaper desktop boxes.

‘The power of the Octane is so strong that we are doing color correcting in realtime online, so there’s no need to slow it down by putting on a G4 or an NT,’ says Howald. ‘Those boxes haven’t proven themselves yet in the compositing and online stages. When that time comes, yes, we might possibly look at them.’ *

-www.wingit.ca