When it came time to relaunch its newly acquired specialty services, Corus Premium Television called on Toronto F/X and animation house Spin Productions.

Last year, CPT did some dealing with WIC, purchasing the latter’s Superchannel, which runs recent-release movies, and MovieMax!, which features old and new film "classics." (The stations operate out of Edmonton and are broadcast to audiences from Manitoba to B.C. and in the territories.) CPT decided to revise its new properties, changing the name of Superchannel to Movie Central and serving up four new networks in the action, mystery, comedy and romance genres.

The challenge then facing Corus was to come up with a look for all these channels that would keep clear in viewers’ minds not only the focus of each, but also the fact they are all part of the Movie Central brand. Corus entrusted creative direction to Dolores Keating-Mallen, (also creative director at YTV, a Corus Entertainment subsidiary) and art direction to Nicolas Kadima, a freelancer who had previously worked for YTV for seven years.

Keating-Mallen and Kadima collaborated in the planning stages with Susan Schaefer, YTV/Movie Central acting VP marketing, and Hatmaker, a broadcast design strategist out of Watertown, MA that specializes in channel positioning and launching. Together they set about to market Movie Central and the genre-based sub-brands.

"Instead of coming up with names like Movie Central’s Action Channel and Movie Central’s Mystery Channel, we decided to give the viewer something a little more interesting," explains Keating-Mallen. "We came up with the idea of Movie Central being a model of a big building in a great big city, and one section of the metropolis would be for action movies, which we would call Adrenaline Drive."

The other devised channels/neighborhoods connecting to the Movie Central building were named Shadow Lane (mystery), Encore Avenue (the revamped MovieMax!), Comic Strip (comedy) and Heartland Road (romance).

Kadima adds that it was important to illustrate the genre networks’ connection to Movie Central in an integrated 3D animation.

"We looked at lots of brands in the U.S. and found the linking very abstract between the main brand and the sub-brands," he says. "Like Viacom and MTV – kids watch MTV, but ‘Viacom – who’s Viacom?’ By using the city analogy we’re creating in people’s minds a physical space which is easier to relate to than a corporate kind of link [from one graphic to another]."

CPT assembled a temporary design department in the Toronto YTV office to focus chiefly on looks for the sub-brands, and it approached Spin to design the lion’s share of the city animation.

Spin’s John Fraser, who had previously helped create space-age urban environments for commercials and feature films including Bicentennial Man, was appointed in charge of the city design and matte painting.

"We saw his reel and were blown away," Keating-Mallen says. "This man’s artistry is incredible, and we said ‘We’d love to have him on our team.’ "

Mike DeArruda, Spin’s executive producer on the project, adds, "We’ve collaborated [with Keating-Mallen and Kadima] before, and it’s a very good working relationship."

Kadima worked with Spin on developing the look of the CG city, which was built in Houdini (Toronto’s Side Effects Software’s 3D animation tool), with rendering done in Pixar Animation Studio’s RenderMan and finishing in an Inferno system from Montreal-headquartered Discreet.

The creative team was aiming for a style that would be sci-fi but not gloomy, which tends to be the trend.

"We didn’t want to go dark, like say Blade Runner or [Batman’s] Gotham City," Kadima explains. "We went with a kind of magic-hour lighting. We wanted to keep it nice and bright so our main brand would be very strong and positive."

The city they constructed looks like how the future might have been envisioned in the Art Deco era of the 1920s and ’30s, as exemplified in movies such as Metropolis and Things to Come.

"Nicolas always had his vision of the city clearly in his head," says DeArruda. "It’s a lot easier going into this when somebody can say ‘I know what I want, that’s good, let’s get going.’ "

Construction of the CG city began with the main building, crowned with a decorative globe and the Movie Central logo, followed by the smaller edifices surrounding it. The animators, led by Spin’s Dave Geldart, then attended to lighting, camera placement and details including clouds, birds and other objects flying about, such as retro-futuristic zeppelins and wooden airplanes.

Design on par with programming

When a broadcaster provides a pay service, and one featuring blockbuster movie product, promo spots and station IDs have to relate to and be on par with the programming. With this in mind, CPT opted for stylish, detailed visuals.

The network logo is along the lines of that of Twentieth Century Fox, which recently went 3D with a shot moving around its familiar 2D company emblem. In the Movie Central promo before films begin, the cinematic brand is reinforced with projector light and a film leader countdown emanating from the "o" in the building-top logo.

The overall relaunch entails numerous clips to satisfy a variety of functions, including lineup, ratings and station IDs as well as promo openers, closers and end tags. Length of the clips varies from a couple of seconds to half a minute when movie highlights are included. The city animation is seen in several versions, from close-ups to wide shots, pull-ins, pull-backs, and shots that branch out from the Movie Central building to one of the genre streets or vice versa.

"In those spots [the camera] basically goes down the building, around the corner into an alley, and now you’re in Adrenaline Drive, and the look is the wire-frame green of that channel," Kadima explains.

To enhance the cinematic style of the pieces, CPT hired three-time Gemini Award-winning composer Chris Dedrick to write and conduct a sweeping Movie Central theme performed by a 65-piece orchestra.

CPT also collaborated with Toronto spot house Mad Films to produce a package of 35mm live-action vignettes for promos on the sub-channels. CPT worked with Mad cofounder Mark Bisson and director Javier Aguilera on the pieces.

"We decided to capture little moments, like unusual scenes from movies, to articulate what the action channel is, or scary cinematic pieces that would tell you you’re watching Shadow Lane," Keating-Mallen explains.

One eerie Shadow Lane clip shows a young girl offering a cup of tea to an invisible friend on a rocking horse; an Adrenaline Drive spot has a man sitting in his office when an explosion outside shatters his window and sends him flying. The actor was filmed in front of a blue screen, with compositing and effects done at Spin.

Since there are no product spots on the Movie Central channels, these clips are longer than typical interstitials.

"At YTV we normally do five-second spots, and :10s and :15s," Keating-Mallen says. "Usually you only have enough time to say ‘You’re watching YTV,’ but we wanted to really allow those spots to breathe, so you think you’re watching a clip from a real movie with those [beats] in it."

CPT also had the challenge of finding looks for the sub-channel promos and IDs that were specific to each network yet somewhat consistent across the board.

The Encore Avenue spots feature a live-action montage of different film equipment, whereas Shadow Lane has all manner of murderous imagery on one screen. Comic Strip has ink splattering on a bulls-eye and spelling the channel name, accompanied by clown-like organ music and laughter. Heartland Road opts for the more subdued images of flowers and chess pieces in front of quilted and checkered backgrounds in deep red and purple tones. By contrast, Adrenaline Drive offers a high-octane countdown to an explosion on a computer interface.

In explaining the quick turnaround of a project of such large scope, Kadima gives much of the credit to Spin.

"Spin put its resources behind us and said ‘Okay, we’ll get them more people,’ " Kadima recalls. "I can’t say that if we’d had another couple of months it would have been better. We’re very happy with the end product."

The launch of Movie Central and the five additional channels is scheduled for April 1. *

-www.spinpro.com

-www.moviecentral.ca (as of April 1)

-www.madfilmsinc.com