Despite the b.c. film industry hosting record numbers of foreign productions, Vancouver video post house Finale Editworks is busy with a slate of predominantly Canadian projects.

‘We’ve worked very closely with local producers in developing programs,’ says Don Thompson, president of Finale. ‘Our major thrust since the beginning has been helping to develop tape-based documentaries, variety series and dramas, with an emphasis on the domestic industry.’

Finale’s involvement varies with each client that comes through its doors. It can range from posting a title sequence, as it did for Big Sound, the Peace Arch Entertainment/ Studio Eight record industry sitcom for Global Television, to providing full editorial and online, as with the one-hour doc Leo’s Journey – The Story of the Mengele Twins, produced by Vancouver’s Infinity Films and distributed by Alliance Atlantis Communications.

Leo’s Journey chronicles Dr. Josef Mengele’s inhumane medical experiments on Jewish twins at Auschwitz-Birkenau as seen through the eyes of survivor Leo Lowy, a retired Canadian businessman. The project was produced in the 16:9 digital Betacam format, combining footage of Lowy’s return to the concentration camp earlier this year with archival material and historian interviews.

Finale played a key role in Leo’s Journey, both in creative direction and visual fine-tuning.

‘Al Pinvidic, our senior editor, worked with director Shel Piercy and the producers [Richard K. Lowy and Pat O’Brien] for six weeks creating the whole story outline,’ Thompson explains. ‘One of the differences between our shop and most other post-production companies here is that we supply both offline and online editorial. In the case of Leo’s Journey, Al followed it through and post supervised it all the way.’

The disparate sources of visual material in Leo’s Journey presented a challenge in terms of maintaining a consistent overall look. To that end, Finale performed color correction on its da Vinci Renaissance 8:8:8 system. It’s all part of the company’s ‘one-stop shop’ aspirations.

‘We found offering the whole post package serves certain clients well, particularly those with series-based projects,’ Thompson explains. He adds that Finale’s internal network system facilitates ‘the speed and efficiency of people being able to communicate closely in one place.’

Finale also provided editorial and online finishing for Kink, one of Showcase’s first domestically commissioned programs. Produced by Paperny Films, the docudrama’s 13 half-hour episodes explore the seamy side of relationships.

Finale does handle a number of u.s. gigs as well, including Animal Miracles for family network Pax tv, for which it is providing full online assembly, titling and versioning. The program, which incorporates first-hand interviews and dramatic recreations, is described as ‘a reality-based show about pets that have done heroic things to save people.’

The shop also supplies Avid editorial rooms and systems to Just Deal, a Saturday teen drama produced by GEP Productions for nbc, and it performed one-off service work for the Showtime/Dufferin Gate tv biz satire Beggars and Choosers and the Disney mow comedy Ladies and the Champ.

Thompson explains the nature of the latter two assignments: ‘We were packaging inserts. For example, for Ladies and the Champ we created a whole live fight sequence that began on a tv screen and became a critical element of the live-action sequence.’

Established in 1988, Finale has a staff of about 15 and its facility houses a digital linear suite equipped with Axial 2020 Editor and Abekas Dveous 3D effects gear from California manufacturer Accom as well as seven Avid nonlinear offline and online suites. It also has a 24-track Pro Tools audio mixing room, where sound engineer Marc Benoit recently completed work on the docs Missing for Duncan Productions/ National Film Board and Cougar Crossing for Venturetainment/ctv.

Thompson says his company is currently laying plans for additional digital solutions for uncompressed editing, compositing, tape-to-tape color correction and streaming capabilities. Clients are increasingly seeking to repurpose their tv content for the Web, primarily with clips promoting their programs.

‘We really haven’t seen a lot of Internet business in the past few years, but in the last six months it’s really started to blossom,’ he says. *

-www.finale-editworks.com

-www.leosjourney.com