Post house Triangle Studios is moving this winter to the downstairs portion of the building it shares with commercial post/animation shop Spin Productions on Toronto’s King Street West. Triangle partner Matthew Bush says he and the dozen or so staff members at his shop are excited about the one-floor relocation because of the opportunities it opens for the shop and its clients in the audio post realm.

Founded six years ago by Bush, then an independent producer, and partner Hugo von Levetzow, an editor, the shop has performed its post work almost exclusively on Avids. Despite the new technology that floods the post marketplace every season, Bush says the Avids are all his shop has ever really needed, and going forward it is unlikely that will change too dramatically.

‘The key in the two of us joining together was the fact that Hugo was a senior editor and he required a very robust piece of technology,’ says Bush. ‘After reviewing what was available on the market we decided that Avid was the only technology to use. It was at that time, and still remains, the premier both in functionality and in price.’

Today Triangle’s work is split mostly between broadcast tv and corporate work, with approximately 20% of its time spent on graphic and broadcast design jobs. Bush says since the specialty channel blitz of the last couple of years, business has been coming in steadily and fast. He believes the volume of work thrust upon his team of editors is due to its reputation for turning over jobs in a fraction of the time allotted.

‘As broadcast channels increase, so does the demand for video post-production,’ says Bush. ‘As video post maxes out in this city, people are realizing that it comes down to the editors and not necessarily the equipment.’

Some of the projects Triangle has handled in post are the documentary Handle With Care, produced by Skyworks; Vision tv’s Skylight series; and recently the opening to Catalyst Entertainment’s Tales From the Longhouse.

In an effort to be a more complete post shop, the company has decided to enter the world of audio post as well, hence the downstairs move and the studios being completely rebuilt.

‘Last year we concluded that in order to make the future really viable for us in the long term, we had to have an environment which embraced some of the demands being asked of us that we hadn’t been fulfilling,’ Bush says. ‘The major one is the audio component. We did not set out to design an audio studio here, because there are many companies that do that extremely well, but for tv series and certain corporate work they need to have the ability to lay a quality voice-over down and have us subsequently mix that.’

Bush sees a lot of money wasted by various producers on pulling multiple masters of audio tracks and sending them via courier from shop to shop. With its new audio gear, Triangle will be able to complete a post job, rather than just contribute to it.

In the new space, which is still very much under construction, Bush shows where four editing suites will be situated, with an audio booth in the centre where talent can perform narration and voice-over. Much to Bush’s delight, much of the Avid equipment used upstairs can be brought downstairs as well, since its Digidesign audio systems are compatible with Avids.

‘The Avids have the capability of mixing audio to the expectation producers have,’ says Bush. ‘In the future, if we find limitations in the Avid audio mixing capabilities, given it is [the parent company] of Digidesign anyway, we’ll just put Digidesign software on the computers. We’ve already got all the equipment, all the boxes that take the digital signals – it’s part of the Avid. The dynamics for downstairs are yet to be fully appreciated because it isn’t built yet, but the expectations are huge.’

Bush forecasts all renovations will be completed and operational by Dec. 1. *