A new Denys Arcand film is always an event in this country, and Montreal service provider Covitec was excited to be a part of it – a large part, in fact, as the Montreal-based subsidiary of Astral Media handled complete post-production duties on the director’s latest effort, Stardom.

Described as a ‘darkly funny tale,’ Stardom chronicles the rise of small-town girl Tina Menzhal (Jessica Pare) to supermodel status. Costarring Dan Aykroyd, Thomas Gibson and Frank Langella as some of the men in her life, the English-language feature is a $12-million coproduction of Toronto’s Serendipity Point Films, Montreal’s Cinemaginaire, France’s Cine b. and Alliance Atlantis.

The film closed the recent Cannes International Film Festival and is slated for a fall Canadian release.

Much of the action in the film is supposed to be observed through the eyes of video cameras, as Tina appears on various tv programs. To find a visual style to get this effect across, Arcand enlisted three post-production houses to run a series of tests.

Guy Langlois, the technical production manager at Covitec’s Westmount Square facility in Montreal, recalls that Arcand was initially unsure as to the best way to achieve the right look.

‘The question at the beginning was ‘Do we find a way to shoot some segments in video and then upscale it to film, or do we shoot film and then treat it?’ ‘ he says.

Arcand shot tests in several video formats, including Minidv, dvpro, Betasp, and DigiBeta to gauge how each would perform when transferred to film. He then began to favor the idea of originating on 35mm film and then adding a video ‘look’ in digital post. In the end, this concept, too, was for the most part abandoned.

‘Instead of adding some look to the picture, he simply added logos, like you have now on most tv stations at the bottom right, which come in and out all the time,’ Langlois explains.

Ultimately, Arcand did not want to be stuck with video-originated images if he later changed his mind as to how much electronic look he wanted – 35mm material, on the other hand, could always be treated or left as is. He eventually opted for a heavy video style only in a sequence that was to be shot at a low-budget community station that would probably shoot on Super vhs.

‘It was shot 35mm, transferred normally, and after the offline edit we went back to the film and did a TEK-Light transfer on DigiBeta, which we upscaled to film resolution,’ Langlois says. ‘Then we started adding some horizontal lines and playing with the chroma and luminance and the focus, as if the cameraman is refocusing, and it really looks like video.’

‘All of this was done in the Discreet Inferno,’ adds Denis Mondion, Covitec’s vp technology and new media, ‘so we had a lot of control over what type of video look we could add or take out.’

Although many of the techniques employed in the testing process were not actually used in the film, it was Covitec’s test results that won it the job. And its complete post-production facility enabled it to show Arcand its footage with great efficiency.

‘Because Covitec has a lab and an electronic film printer, it was quite easy for us to do multiple print tests, instead of having somebody else print them,’ Mondion says. ‘It was a little cheaper for us and faster. With a lot of these sequences, we could do the effects in the morning, process it, look at it at the end of the day and go back in production the next day to retune.’

Something old,

something new

Covitec’s business is based in Montreal, where it also has seven studios which are heavily booked – so much so that even Arcand couldn’t be scheduled in for a couple of weeks. It also has a video renting department in Ottawa and another post-production facility in Quebec City built around two Avid systems. A large part of the company’s business is dubbing Hollywood productions to French for specialty channels, as well as subtitling and closed captioning.

Arcand’s involvement with the company on Stardom was something both foreign and familiar to the director.

‘Denys has not done that many films with electronic effects, so what he did here was maybe kind of new,’ Mondion explains. ‘But for lab services we’ve been doing it for awhile. Some of the people at our lab were at the National Film Board 20 years ago, and for Denys it was important to work again with those people he’s known since his days at the nfb.’

Covitec also performed Inferno compositing to help the modestly budgeted production recreate the global backdrop called for in Stardom’s tale of international celebrity. Shots of characters in vehicles in New York and London were not shot on location, but were instead accomplished by combining studio scenes with exterior background footage.

‘The challenge was to have the cab and limo sequences look natural,’ Langlois says. ‘We had to work a lot on the texture of the background and compositing, because for Denys it was very important.’

Arcand was pleased with the results, says Mondion, who adds, ‘He commented that he didn’t know why you should shoot in real life again, because it was so much easier to have control over it in the studio. That’s the way he said he’ll do it in the future.’

Compositing was also required for scenes where Tina guest stars on an mtv-style program, as well as one similar to The Today Show. The production did not have the rights to use those particular brands, but Arcand wanted to establish a clear reference.

A second unit camera crew was sent to New York to film plate shots of Times Square pedestrians staring into large tv studio windows, as is the setup with the shows’ real-life equivalents. The shots were later composited with Montreal studio interiors.

Tests for these compositing effects were initially shot in Covitec’s studios on DigiBetaCam with the co-operation of editor Jean-Francois Bachand.

Langlois describes the tests as ‘some temporary compositing to show Denys and to establish some of the parameters of the shoot. He adds that Covitec was also heavily involved in the final filming of those scenes. ‘We kind of – I don’t like the term, but – ‘took control’ of the set those days technically, either for the action here or for the plate in New York or other cities, and we did all the compositing at the end and printed everything.’

Covitec’s HD future

With the efficiency of digital compositing, Covitec is anticipating the impact of high definition on the production world.

‘A lot of our clients are looking to [originate on] hd to go back on film,’ Langlois explains. ‘So we’re making tests for those clients – and for ourselves – especially with some 24p footage [using the Sony HDW-F900 camera]. We have a couple of productions that might start this year that are shooting on hd and finishing in film with compositing effects.’

Covitec has also been approached by two clients looking to both shoot and release mows in hd, bypassing the costly film printing process altogether.

‘In a market like Montreal, I predict it will have a bright future,’ Langlois says. ‘Most of the series that we do here in Canada are still shot in Super 16, whereas in the States some of the series are shot with three 35mm cameras. [A better solution is] the 24p, or even the 30p, if you just shoot for the North American market. hd is something that should not be overlooked and that’s why we’re working a lot on it, even though we have a film lab.’

Regarding Covitec’s work on Stardom, Langlois is thrilled at the exposure the company will get following the movie’s Cannes debut.

‘The film is going to have a wide distribution,’ Langlois says. ‘For example, it’s the first Denys Arcand film that will be available in Japan. It’s pleasing to know that you worked on something that is going to be seen all over the world.’

www.covitec.com