Among the veterans wheeling and dealing at mip this year, a group of eager new faces may be making the scene, bringing a different perspective and a new set of skills to the international production arena.

Representatives of some Canadian post animation and effects facilities are bringing their particular brand of expertise to market, looking to form partnerships for new production ventures as one strategy in maintaining and expanding their sphere of influence.

With the evolution of technology and a commensurate increase in the wondrous capabilities of post and effects shops, along with, theoretically, a decrease in costs, post animation and effects shops are looking closely at the market and their business plans to ensure the continued growth of their role in the production process.

With some major studios bringing on effects supervisors on long-format projects, there is motivation among post houses to avoid commoditization – a reduction of their creative production role – to avoid being renderedrenderers.

For the past few years many shops have been expanding into the production process, providing a creative presence from the beginning of a project through shooting to post. Now many are following through with strategic alliances with producers, technological partnerships, coproduction deals, and even development of their own projects – searching previous contacts and the markets to put the broadcaster-producer-distributor picture together.

Skilled in the mechanics of visually building a show in post, animation and effects shops are now building on relationships, and as they become a more integral part of the process, moving steadily toward creative ground zero.

In many cases, shops are reorienting themselves, finding new niches, opening up new avenues of creative work; many facilities which have traditionally focused on commercial work are expanding into longer formats.

TOPIX points in new direction

Toronto’s TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation and Mad Dog Digital have been two of the shops to bring their expertise to the production process at the early stages, and now the facilities are taking that involvement further.

Both Mad Dog and topix have been bursting with business of late, to the point of turning away jobs, an act topix head Chris Wallace says is anathema to a shop owner.

topix moved into big-budget film work with the opening sequence for Paramount Pictures’ Kids in the Hall Brain Candy and Harriet the Spy. The facility also recently completed work on the Paragon feature The Wrong Guy and has recently added human and computer resources to handle the volume.

Wallace says the company has been approached on numerous occasions to become involved in projects in exchange for points, but has undertaken only a small fraction of that type of work. Two tv series are currently under consideration.

Wallace says it is a common phenomenon for producers to come to the facility with ideas but insufficient financing in place to put behind an opening trailer until a distribution deal is in place. Based on work done at a post and effects facility, the project can proceed and presales can be sought, with points exchanged for services rendered.

topix is currently considering a deal with New York-based Sunbow, makers of the off-kilter cartoon The Tick. The producers had presold a new show and had a budget in place when they approached topix, where the project generated ample enthusiasm. Sunbow’s pricing estimates proved unrealistic, however, and Wallace says because of his facility’s interest in the product and the people behind it, the two parties are working on negotiating a deal, probably based on points.

topix has also completed an eight-minute trailer for The Olympians, a show for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney with Athan Katsos, and will receive points for the eventual one-hour project which will profile early Olympic athletes.

3D series pilot script

topix is also fixing to bring a 3D series to Toronto under its own steam. Wallace says the company has been working on a pilot script for a 3D series and has already gained some positive feedback. Citing the 3D animation initiatives in other regions of Canada, Wallace points to the obvious dearth of that form of series production in Toronto, a hotbed of software development, digital artistry and education in the country.

‘One of the reasons people go to Hollywood is to work on cool projects,’ says Wallace. ‘Toronto should become a source for programming like that, but currently it’s the hole in the market. We’re trying to change that.’

Mad Dog’s feature foray

Mad Dog head Sylvain Taillon says that shop is being called into feature production not to fulfill the fanciful requests of a director but to consult on the art of the possible.

Primarily a commercial shop, Mad Dog has moved into the feature realm with effects work on other films Robert LePage’s Le Polygraphe and most recently Atom Egoyan’s Sweet Hereafter from Alliance Films.

But Taillon says the type of work isn’t necessarily the big change, rather it’s the approach of the post shop and the production companies. Taillon says creating effects today means using a gamut of media sources, from videotape frames to film resolution to photo cd to computer-generated images, and this is one of the factors leading to a reorientation and rethinking of post and effects as a more comprehensive part of a production, handled by artists, not technicians.

‘More and more we’re mixing techniques in order to get results. The technology is changing and the philosophical approach in terms of using a computer is changing – where you don’t just generate a graphic and superimpose it, it’s all becoming part and parcel of a new language, a new way of creating images.’

Taillon also points to the emerging line of demarcation, as noted by clients, between service houses and creative boutiques, where a distinction is made between a facility that can expertly handle a compositing job and a shop that is, effectively, a creative partner.

‘We’re not as much of a service house as post-production has traditionally been, but we’re a partner in the production process,’ says Taillon.

Looking down the road, Taillon also cites the beginning of a trend toward a new breed of technologically astute filmmakers schooled in traditional and digital methods.

‘This is an interesting trend where you will have digitally literate filmmakers in the near future,’ says Taillon, citing a young Mad Dog staffer who is studying as a director and who has a firm handle on the post and effects process. ‘These people will write and direct and be completely aware of what can and can’t be done at any point in the digital evolution of a project, and in some cases do the work themselves.’

Gajdecki: the artist’s role

John Gajdecki, head of John Gajdecki Visual Effects in Toronto, notes the trend for studios to bring on full-time visual effects supervisors who in turn hire an effects facility. ‘The creative is being separated from the facility and that’s turning effects facilities a little more into commodities,’ he says. But Gajdecki also stresses the crucial role of individual artists and cites the difference between high- and low-end effects.

‘As the cost of low-end effects goes down you’ll see a lot more competition in that market, but conversely I think with high-end effects – whatever is the state of the art at the time – the price point will remain the same.’ So while anyone can do a morph now, to do really cool work, he says, ‘still requires a fair bit of money and a fair bit of ‘artitude.’ ‘

The separation of visual effects supervisors from facilities, a change that has happened in the u.s. and is being imported here, will be a fact of life on big projects, anything over $1 million, says Gajdecki. mgm, for example, now has a stable of four effects supervisors with more to come.

For his own part, Gajdecki is not falling all over his Flame to get financially involved in projects. While much depends on the project, he says his company has been offered the opportunity for points on low-budget projects but has yet to participate.

In terms of moving into content creation, Gajdecki says while that avenue can be lucrative it isn’t the one he chose as a young effects meister working on Friday the 13th (a fecund spawning ground for seemingly every second effects wizard who works today) and it’s not the one he is choosing at the moment.

‘I want to do effects. I like doing effects. I get a kick out of what I do for a living,’ he says. ‘I’ve been presented with the opportunity to do other things, but it’s not what I want to do right now.’

Rainmaker

Vancouver’s Rainmaker has expanded its technological role with major compression development initiatives and expansion into the u.s. Rainmaker visual effects supervisor Lee Wilson says the facility has seen an increase in feature projects, with the company currently working on Free Willy iii. Wilson, who had formerly freelanced for almost 20 years, says working on effects at Rainmaker largely entails involvement in a project from the earliest stages.

Big Bang moves into series development

Montreal’s Big Bang Images, formerly known as Big Bang Technologies, has taken steps toward its own production initiatives, coming at it from the effects and the multimedia side. A post house in its former incarnation since the 1980s, Big Bang as such was formed in 1993, undertaking corporate, commercial and more recently tv and feature work. The company recently completed film effects work for Productions La Fete’s Whispers and is working on 26 episodes of the live-action talking dog series Dog’s World from Prisma Communications.

Last year, Big Bang founder Danny Bergeron says the company began to develop its own animation projects and now has three pilot projects in development, including an all-cg series. The first project is expected to be completed in the next two years, and Bergeron says a trip to mip will determine which project gets out of the gate first. Big Bang is also contemplating a merger with another media company early this year.

A year and a half ago, the company spun off a multimedia arm, Big Bang Images, which has become the name for all of the company’s undertakings and which has developed a hybrid cd-rom online interactive game based on auto racing. Strategic Racing Pro will be tied to a tv network, where after a televised race viewers will be instructed to proceed to the Web site and continue the racing thrills. Big Bang is finalizing negotiations to license the game – which was fully developed in-house – to broadcasters and an Internet service provider.

Terminal Frost, another online game based on escaping from an Antarctic prison, is also in development. The games were developed for about $500,000 each by Big Bang’s six staff members on the nt platform.

Bergeron says multimedia development is a good proving ground for developing concepts, licensing, rights ownership and the other baggage involved in creating tv projects. ‘The scope is a bit smaller but it is a good school,’ he says.

While Big Bang completely owns its multimedia projects, the company is actively seeking coproduction partners, particularly those of the international/European persuasion for its more expensive tv series propositions and the next mip will determine which of the projects gets a head start.

Bergeron says the nature of the post effects and animation industry is changing, spurred by the evolution of technology which now allows shops to produce more in less time – so those restricted to commercial work are branching out.

He sees traditionally service-oriented shops moving toward producing and owning at least part of the rights to the content they create.

‘For an animation and technology company like ours, it was frustrating to wait for a production house to create an appropriate project,’ says Bergeron. ‘So many companies, like us, are looking at doing it themselves and selling it to a more traditional production house or division. We’ve waited enough and we want to push our technology to gain a bigger place in the industry.’

Calibre’s equity-based plan

Other shops are undertaking projects as part of a long-term strategy to direct their creative juices down expanded and potentially lucrative avenues in the marketplace.

‘As far as a long-term business plan goes, developing equity property is definitely a part of it,’ says Neil Williamson, vp at Calibre Digital Design.

The Toronto shop has long been a force in high-end Canadian and international commercial work and recently completed the first season of the Atlantis/All American Entertainment series The Adventures of Sinbad. Calibre delivered effects work for the series via a network between its Toronto facility, l.a. and the South Africa shooting location.

Now, Williamson says Calibre has three fully animated tv projects in development, including Dragons All Around, a 3D and cel animation series developed in-house. Based on Sheree Fitch’s book Sleeping Dragons All Around, the series is aimed at six to 12-year-olds and Williamson says the project garnered a strong response when he showcased it at mipcom.

The budget for the show is about $400,000 per episode for a 13-episode order, but Williamson says because of the high 3D quotient, a 26-episode series would mean costs would fall as the expenditure for much of the 3D work is amortized over a longer period.

Calibre also has two other properties in the works, a comedy directed at late teens that’s designed to be a coproduction with a major animation producer and an all 3D preschool project.

‘Ultimately a large part of Calibre’s future business plan is to own at least part of some of the work we do,’ says Williamson. ‘We’re in a good position to do that because we’ve always been a production house not just an effects house per se.’

Calibre is currently negotiating to bring Dragons to life, likely in late ’97, says Williamson, ‘trying to get the magic puzzle together’ with broadcast, distribution and video deals and is looking to presell as much as possible.

‘The trip to mipcom was an amazing eye-opener,’ says Williamson. ‘It gives you access to a whole new world that you don’t have doing service work; about the mechanics of getting an original or a licensed property into production. It’s valuable information.’

Calibre will continue full-scale with its service jobs as well as expanding into feature work this year, an undertaking Williamson says the facility has resisted somewhat up to now. ‘When we’re prepared to go into it at the same level and the same quality that we’re doing with tv work, that’s the logical time for us to start taking on that kind of work,’ he says.

Diversification into equity-based work would mean expansion for Calibre, which would spawn a production entity to handle new shows, as well as fulfilling all of the facility’s other commitments.

There are more opportunities for Canadian effects people as features go the way of tv work – i. e., not only shooting but posting and doing effects here – but the market is still young.

Cuppa Coffee sets sights on long form

Another fresh face on the tv market circuit in the near future will be Adam Shaheen, executive producer and president of Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee Animation, a shop which has specialized in distinctive 2D animation work for commercials.

Earlier this year, Cuppa Coffee begat Sargent York, an arm of the company devoted to longer format tv and feature projects.

The company’s first foray in this direction is The Adventures of Sam Digital in the 21st Century, a short film for Nickelodeon’s Creative Lab series called Short Films for Short People, made for and with the participation of school kids.

While the rights for the film will be owned by Nickelodeon, Sargent York is working toward developing its own projects in house, for which Shaheen says the company will maximize the varied talents of its staff, industry connections formed through commercial work, trips to the market and hard-won new production experiences.

The Sargent York/Cuppa contingent came to the long-format work with some skepticism about the shows out there already, and when the group began putting out its ideas, the response was positive.

‘There’s so much of that Saturday morning cartoon stuff out there – that’s an area I don’t want to get into,’ says Shaheen. ‘I think there’s an area of animation that hasn’t been tapped into that we can develop with the Cuppa Coffee style but along the Saturday morning story line.’

Sargent York has been working on show ideas for about a year and in addition has written kids’ stories for which a book deal with a Canadian publisher is expected to close early in the new year and which could potentially lead to a spin-off tv project.

Moving from commercial to longer form work was not without difficulties, says Shaheen, challenging paradigms and prospective clients’ perceptions of what is expected. But he says a long list of industry contacts earned through previous work also proved useful in that clients familiar with Cuppa’s work were more willing to take risks on a company inexperienced in long-form but with a solid record on the commercial side.

‘It wasn’t such a stretch as someone walking in off the street and saying, ‘I’ve got this great idea,’ ‘ says Shaheen.

The collected talents of the Cuppa and Sargent York creative team, which include animation, writing, live-action directing, and tv producing, also mean that they come at tv with a multitude of different sensibilities. ‘I think we’re coming up with interesting ideas for shows that broadcasters haven’t necessarily been presented before,’ says Shaheen.

The company is also expanding its post capabilities to allow more projects to be completed in-house. With the installation of After Effects suites, some of the post work previously taken to other shops will stay inside, with the company reaping the creative and financial benefits and enabling it to divert money and energy to other projects.

Magnetic in copro talks

Toronto post organization Magnetic Enterprises has expanded its relationship with producers with deals for one-stop post and participation in projects. Magnetic struck a deal with l.a.-based Keller Entertainment Group for post work on its series Acapulco Heat, shot in Mexico. Magnetic coo Bruce Grant says the facility offered the producers a package price on the complete post job, including effects and also including lab services which aren’t offered on-site at Magnetic.

Magnetic’s Rob Adams says there are three additional coproduction arrangements in negotiation and the organization is generally moving toward co-participant and away from pure supplier status.

‘I think it’s an industry trend, having more interest or control in the product you’re making,’ says Adams. ‘I think the days of the pure service facility aren’t coming to an end per se, but things are changing; we have to jump into productions and get our hands dirty and assume some of the risk in a sense.’

Most agree the market will change considerably over the next few years. Williamson looks forward to the evolution of the market and says those who establish themselves during that time will benefit from the expanding opportunities. ‘There will always be a place for talented effects artists, it’s just a matter of what you want to do.’