While Canada continues to act as a mecca for film and tv production, the sophistication and size of the post and effects industry has grown commensurately, offering an ever more comprehensive complement of gear and services.

The industry has grown in volume to an estimated quarter billion dollar business in 1997 and in profile – foreign producers now come seeking the talents of Canadian shops without the benefit of shooting in close proximity. The industry has evolved beyond back-end, fix-it-in-post expertise and Canadian shops have become major players in high-profile, front-end work, with imaging experts assuming a larger role in the production as well as the post process.

On the following pages, some of the bright lights of the Canadian post, animation and effects industry discuss some recent projects, where they came from and why.

* * *

Scoring a gig to do some computer-generated effects on the Shostak Rossner production of the tv movie Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World marks a positive step for Montreal’s Big Bang Animation.

The five-year-old cgi house is making the move from commercials towards more television and film work. This began with a job doing morphing and facial animation on the Punch International series Dog’s World. Now the company is working on the full-length dinosaur movie.

Lost World director Bob Keen met with Big Bang president Mario Rachiele, creative director Sylvain Marotte and 3D animation supervisor Patrick Faille to discuss the non-Spielberg version of a dinosaur movie that has less money and a quick turnaround.

‘They want to get it out as soon as possible,’ says Rachiele, whose company was assigned the task of animating a specific creature and compositing scenery to a tilting shot that shows viewers the ‘Lost World’ itself.

Keen had a latex rendition of a eudimorphodon, the prehistoric bat-like creature that he wanted Big Bang to create.

Though Keen knew what he wanted the creature to look like, the three Big Bang staffers working on the project along with Marotte and Faille had a lot of input into the design of the production and shots.

Marotte and Faille undertook research to help in the creation of the eudimorphodon. ‘We are watching a lot of movies that have bat movement in them like National Geographic documentaries to make sure that the movement is good,’ says Marotte. ‘But we have to reinterpret the movement so that the bat looks really aggressive.

‘We’re doing a complete study on a creature that doesn’t exist anymore, so we have to do a lot of interpreting and discuss things with the director. It’s a lot of fun.’

For the Lost World shot, the artists are stretching and expanding an existing shot of a volcano and adding smoke, fire and clouds to its peak.

Working on both sgi and nt machines, the Big Bang artists are using Softimage 3D as the main animation software and Softimage Eddie for compositing. Adobe Photoshop is being utilized for retouching all the animation and compositing textures.

*Also in this report:

Post/SFX showcase:

Collideascope injects hip B2

Gajdecki: body parts R us B4

Lost Boy’s extraterrestrial experience B6

Spin in the series race B7

Animation shops to watch:

Bardel gets Dreamworks nod B10

Dynomight’s Net direction B11

Sargent York kids’ 3-pack B12

Canuck evolves from studio flicks to in-house picks B13

Red Giant spawns series B14

Canadian prodcos plotting boffo toonflick projects B15

Animation House, Lightbox both hit 15 B16, B21

B.C. post shops winning more of the U.S. visual effects B18