Izhak Hinitz rushes in a little late as he is busier than usual these days playing the dual role of Eyes Post Group president and interior decorator, running around the city checking out furnishings and picking up tiles in an effort to have the Toronto post shop’s new Henry suite open for business as soon as possible.

Eyes hung out its shingle less than four years ago, and continues to grow, adding colorists, tape operators and client service staff, promoting film operators to colorists, and updating and acquiring new equipment.

Hinitz decided to bring the Quantel Henry V4 on board to accommodate the shop’s commercial and music video client base who wanted a nonlinear editing solution that would allow them to finish their projects in the same facility where they did their film transfers.

The Henry, which marks the company’s first step into the nonlinear domain, is equipped with four concurrent super layers offering numerous simultaneous processes online to the operator, a comprehensive feature set which includes motion tracking, 16 tracks of digital audio, texturing, color correction, matte keying and special effects capabilities, as well as two hours of full broadcast-quality ITU-R 601 video and realtime viewing and editing at any stage of the project.

Operating Eyes’ newest toy will be one of the company’s senior editors, Fred Lenchner, who has been editing for roughly 10 years and is presently in the process of getting to know Henry.

While the Henry itself is set up in the boardroom and ready to go, Hinitz wants to give Lenchner some time with the new machine before renting it out as he says there is a difference between simply making it work and knowing all the things it can do.

In addition, Eyes, a fully digital environment, is home to two film transfer tape-to-tape suites, a component Digital Betacam/compositing suite, two interformat suites including D3, D2 and Digital Betacam formats, an Avid 8000 nonlinear editing suite, 2D paint and 3D animation services.

Recently Eyes upgraded its URSA Gold transfer suite to include Twigi and Edwin, increasing the windowing capabilities.

Like most of the suites at the shop, the newest addition – which will be furnished with a sunshine yellow leather couch – is fully equipped with windows facing into the building’s big, bright solarium. The reasoning: after spending so many hours cooped up in a dark editing suite editors can see the light of day.

‘Everything in the building is the best I could buy,’ says Hinitz. ‘The theory behind it is that it makes the employees happy to be working in the best rooms with the best tools, and if they are happy, they work better.’

Since opening its doors in 1994, Eyes has been busy with a wide range of projects, including Nelvana animated kids’ tv series Ace Ventura and Rupert, Insight Productions’ teen series Ready or Not, the Associated Producers doc Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies & the American Dream, and feature films The Sweet Hereafter, Crash, Lillies and Sabotage.

Currently the folks at Eyes are working on the John Woo mow pilot Blackjack, Nelvana’s Ned’s Newt and Blazing Dragons animated series and mgm mow The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

A thirtysomething-year veteran of the post business, Hinitz says he has seen the industry evolve from the Stone Age to the computer age.

‘Toronto certainly has established itself as a serious contender to be shot in and posted in; the government has been very accommodating in terms of shutting streets down, the money is great, and as long as those factors remain, show business will grow,’ he says.

While many Americans shoot in Canada, they often return to the u.s. for post, which Hinitz chalks up to a time-zone issue. He says if Eyes was located in Vancouver, more l.a. post work would be coming through the shop. But he is confident that with the attractive Canadian dollar, u.s. clients will learn to live with the time difference and post jobs here.

Hinitz’s career began in the late ’60s with the birth of cable television. Long before editing existed as it does today, the young teen volunteered at a cable company. When school was out for the summer, a relative hooked him up with Moses Znaimer, who gave him a job at the new Citytv.

Next he went to cfto, where he picked up the tricks of the trade, then freelanced at a company in Whitby, Ont., and eventually opened Eyes Video Post Production in North York, competing for corporate clients against such established post houses as Electric Images and Magnetic South.

‘Life was good,’ recalls Hinitz, ‘but the complaint was the location was no good; you have to come downtown, closer to the agencies, if you want to get more work.’

Toying with the idea of opening shop in California, Hinitz decided to stay put in his home town and merged with Greystone Productions to create Eyes Post Group. Following a two-year search for a one-storey building in the right spot – with parking – Hinitz finally found what he was looking for at the corner of King and Parliament Streets.

The former car dealership was gutted and rebuilt to be post-friendly – from the cable troughs in the concrete floors to the soundproof walls and air ducts. All doors are wide and light switches low, making the facility wheelchair accessible; Hinitz says that since he was doing it he was going to do it right.