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.

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Vancouver’s Lost Boys Studios was formed in the spring of 1997 out of a partnership between Solstice Digital Imaging, a small Vancouver 3D animation and effects house, and Virgin Digital Studios of Los Angeles, part of the u.k.-based Virgin Group that includes Virgin Megastores, Virgin Airways, and Virgin Records. Virgin chose Vancouver as a natural place to invest, in keeping with its worldwide expansion in the post-production industry.

Lost Boys Studios’ sister companies include 525 Post Production in l.a., Rushes and West One in London, Eng., e-magine in New York, and Virgin Television Mexico in Mexico City.

Solstice had previously been the concern of founders Mark and Denis Benard, who started the company in 1996 as an sgi-based boutique for film and broadcast projects.

With a raft of sci-fi series shooting on the West Coast, the shop took on some of the effects work for shows like Trilogy/mgm’s Poltergeist and mgm’s Stargate, as well as mgm feature Warriors of Virtue.

Now operating as Lost Boys Studios, the shop continues its high-end series work and recently completed a large, time-crunched job for mgm/ Atlantis/Trilogy’s The Outer Limits.

In the initial few months of collaboration, Lost Boys partner and senior visual effects artist Mark Benard was contracted to create visual effects for The Outer Limits episode ‘Tempests.’

Working with mgm visual effects supervisor Steve Anker, Benard was given the script, blueprints and conceptual drawings of the existing set structure, which included the door to a ship and a small section of landscape.

‘Friday afternoon, Steve Anker approached me with a proposed 18 visual effects shots including the Tempest ship, escape pods, alien skeletons, and foreign planets,’ says Benard. ‘The deadline for the project was the following Thursday.’

At the time the project began, Benard was the sole worker bee for the company. ‘It was to be an extensive undertaking and I had never heard of a company taking on that amount of workload with that tight of a deadline,’ says Benard. ‘But I have a hard time turning down a good challenge.’

Benard worked over the next few days designing and modeling the exterior of the ship. The proposed concept style for the Tempest was not just any low geometry, smooth surface Star Trek-like ship, says Benard, but a ‘complex computer-killing gargantuan the likes of the `Nostromo’ from Alien.’

The Tempest is the cornerstone of the episode, which revolves around a spaceship ferrying a lifesaving serum to a planet devastated by an epidemic. Things naturally go all wrong when the ship crashes and the captain, after being bitten by a strange creature, finds himself lost between two alternate realities.

The key to making the 3D element blend seamlessly, says Benard, was the accurate recreation of the existing set structure, which included an outer door that the actors could exit and reenter and a small portion of the surrounding ship’s hull.

Along with the accuracy of the model, great attention to textures and lighting had to be paid in order to achieve a photo-realistic blend with live-action plates.

Benard used Alias/Wavefront Power Animator 3D software to create the ship. One of the highlight shots included a unique pan zoom effect made possible by Lost Boys’ sister company’s custom plug-in for Flame that allowed for high-resolution matte paintings and 3D renderings to be blended with live-action plates.’

*Also in this report:

Post/SFX showcase:

Collideascope injects hip B2

Gajdecki: body parts R us B4

Big Bang graduates from Dog’s World to Lost World B4

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