LEXX is the latest tv series to switch to Sony 24p hdcam origination, and Halifax’s Salter Street Digital, a full-service audio and video post-production facility, reports it’s ready to post in the show’s new format.

‘We’ve done our research,’ says Rob Power, vice-president of ssd. ‘I saw this stuff at nab [the National Association of Broadcasters trade show] and have been talking to the Sony guys for about two years.’

LEXX, a production of Salter Street Films [ssd’s parent company] and Germany’s TiMe Film und TV Produktion, is a sexy sci-fi program about a group of misfits who inadvertently steal the Lexx, an enormous living insect genetically modified for space travel and planet destroying. Nicknamed ‘Star Trek’s evil twin,’ the show airs in Canada on Space: The Imagination Station.

The producers’ decision to go 24p represents a natural evolution for the program’s fourth season. In the first two seasons the program was shot on 16mm and 35mm film, switching to Sony HDW 700 high-definition cameras in season three. The 24p Sony HDW-F900 brings cost-efficient digital video closer to film with a 24 frames per second capture rate and 180-degree shuttering similar to that of a motion picture camera.

Power expects ssd will be able to handle nearly all of the series’ post needs, including 2D and 3D visual effects and offline and online editorial. All that need be done outside of Halifax would be the processing of any film stock the crew might shoot, as for off-speed sequences, in which case the film would be sent to a lab in Toronto.

On the production end, the crew at ssf’s Electropolis Studios in Halifax learned a lot in season three about the challenges of shooting hd. The major obstacles include the unflattering way hd records hard lighting and its seemingly infinite depth of field – problems that can be rectified with filters and long lenses. Power says the show’s producers want to keep the style consistent with what was established initially in the film domain, and the post team can also contribute to that end.

‘I’m sure we will end up treating the images,’ he says. ‘You can ‘film look’ stuff. We’ve used CineLook from [Massachusetts company] Ice and it’s okay. We will probably add grain.’ Adding grain is only one of 50 film presets the software offers; others include color adjustment and the addition of film artifacts.

Power believes the move to 24p is a business strategy many tv programs will soon adopt, and admits the LEXX team monitored the progress of the Alliance Atlantis/ Tribune Entertainment Company series Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, the first program to switch formats to 24p.

‘Those shows are finished and no one’s dead, so obviously it worked to some degree,’ he says. ‘It makes you feel more comfortable. When someone like Alliance Atlantis gets behind this, you feel ‘Okay, we’ve probably made a good decision here.’ ‘

Three guys in a basement

ssd has experienced tremendous growth since opening as an audio facility in 1991. Power recalls when it was ‘three guys in the basement of Salter Street’s corporate offices, with a little Yamaha digital board and some Studer Diaxis systems.’ In 1998, it expanded to five audio rooms, and in the past year it built up the video component to be on par with the sound.

Today the facility has a staff of 22 running its various suites: seven for audio; four for offline editing; two for online with hd-enabled Avid Symphony Universal systems; four for visual effects, including one Jaleo system and three Avid Media Illusion systems; and a soon-to-be added suite with either a Discreet Flint or Smoke.

ssd has gone with digital audio workstations from Hollywood headquartered manufacturer Fairlight. It purchased two Fairlight MFX3 systems in 1996, later upgraded to MFX3plus, and then bought additional MFX3plus systems and Fairlight DaDplus digital dubbers. ssd uses the Fairlight systems for foley, sound effects, adr, dialog conforming and editing, as well as music recording, editing and mixing.

Early last year ssd installed a Fairlight Merlin in its mixing theater. Power believes it was the first North American facility to do so.

‘We’re not afraid of being first,’ he says. ‘When you’re out on the East Coast by yourself, you have to have an edge. There wasn’t much [momentum] – it wasn’t like there were 15 Pro Tools guys in town so we had to go with Pro Tools.’

Power prefers Fairlight to Pro Tools, the popular audio editing system from Digidesign, a division of Avid Technology.

‘Because [Fairlight] has a dedicated hardware interface and computer platform, and not the Mac os or nt os with an audio workstation on it, they don’t crash,’ he elaborates. ‘And with the dedicated hardware interface, editors have all the functions they need at their fingertips, as opposed to pulling down menus and changing modes. It’s faster for cutting.’

Power believes an advantage of a one-stop shop is that when difficulties arise, there aren’t various companies at different stages of the process becoming territorial.

‘Instead, it’s ‘Let’s just work this out and solve the problem,’ ‘ he says. ‘Because we’re all under the same roof and we’ve had the same people year after year, we don’t ever run into those issues.’

ssd was created specifically to service ssf’s in-house productions. Major internal projects for which the shop performed all post last summer include mock entertainment news show The Itch, production biz satire Made In Canada and historical comedy Blackfly. The post house worked simultaneously on the Big Motion Pictures/ssf mow Blessed Stranger: After Flight 111, a look at the aftermath of the Swissair plane crash on a small Nova Scotia fishing village.

According to Power, after ssd finished the audio for Chasing Cain, a cbc mow about the investigation of a Toronto murder that may have been ethnically motivated, coproducer Bernie Zukerman said it was ‘the most stress-free mix he’s ever had.’

In December, ssd worked on the audio for ssf skitcom This Hour Has 22 Minutes and CBC Halifax’s consumer show parody Street Cents, for which cbc handles the picture post. This month ssd will be moving on to LEXX’s fourth season.

While these are mostly ssf-related projects, Power wants to dispel the perception that’s all ssd has time and space to do.

‘During the summer we had the three 13 half-hour series and four features and nobody lost their mind,’ he says. ‘The biggest challenges for us are that people think if we have one production going we’re full, and that this is a Salter-only facility, neither of which is the case.’

In fact, Power reports ssd’s external clientele has grown from virtually nothing in 1998 to 23% of its business today. Notable recent outside projects include the feature Black Swan, a New Brunswick-shot black comedy, and the Creative Atlantic Communications series Liography, a spoof of a&e’s Biography, with Leslie Nielsen hosting profiles of fictitious people. Then there is Topsail Entertainment’s Trailer Park Boys, a docudrama consisting of six half-hours, which Power describes as ‘The Sopranos go to a trailer park’.

Although ssd worked with 20 producers other than its parent company in 2000 – with participation from each of the Atlantic provinces – Power says the company has yet to make deep inroads in the u.s. market the way Vancouver and Toronto post houses have.

‘There have been a few u.s. productions coming here,’ he says. ‘I’m sure the tax credit and the dollar are kickers, but they shoot for the location more than anything. They’re not even using all that much studio space, and they go home to post – for now, anyway.’

That is starting to change with ssd getting the gig for audio and online video on Passion and Prejudice, an mow for Stones Throw Productions. The project is a copro with Nova Scotia’s Magic Rock and l.a.-based producer Craig Anderson.

On the local scene, ssd is doing what it can to help young filmmakers. Power points to the fact the shop was involved on 11 movies screened at this year’s Atlantic Film Festival. One of those was Parsley Days, the debut feature of Halifax director Andrea Dorfman.

‘She had a deal with a sound house to do her mix and they pulled out of Halifax and she was left high and dry,’ Power recounts. ‘So we stepped in and did her mix for free.’

Another ssd initiative for Atlantic directors is its sponsorship of a Linda Joy Media Arts Society award at the aff that consists of free post services, this year won by Deanne Foley for her debut film Trombone Trouble.

‘Young directors help build your business down the road,’ Power adds. ‘The future of this company is in the young filmmakers out there. I don’t ever forget that.’

Looking ahead, ssd wants to consolidate its post infrastructure.

‘Right now picture and sound are in two different buildings, so we’re going to move to one building and finally create a permanent home for our facility,’ Power says.

He is also anticipating more work from the parent company, especially with the new tv specialty channels being licensed to ssf by the crtc, including Independent Film Channel Canada, which has guaranteed carriage in Category 1, and 20 specialty services in the competitive Category 2. But Power insists the post division will always have time for outside productions.

‘[The new specialty channels] definitely change the landscape,’ he says. ‘But in terms of the outside work, I never say ‘no.’ In this business you can’t say ‘We can’t service your project.’ We will. It’s my job to make sure we can.’ *

-www.salter.com