As the level of Canadian production increases in volume and sophistication, the Canadian production and post scene has, like an attractive and sonorous onion, created layers of talent to support every audio and visual requirement.

Rising behind the established stars of the audio production, audio post and post-production sectors, is a field of up-and-coming-talents, the next generation who bring a wealth of experience and enthusiasm to commercial, feature and tv projects.

Many of the rising stars in sound and video editing emerged together with digital technology; with early schooling in traditional film methods, they were present at the rise of nonlinear editing and grew along with digital developments. They bring a variety of artistic experiences and technical acumen to their projects and are now hitting their stride, tackling some high-profile Canadian and u.s.-based projects.

In this report, a sample of some of the ascendant names on the audio and visual firmament discuss some of their recent projects, where they come from, and where they and the industry are going.

* * *

Many people are at times given pause to wonder about their chosen vocation, usually after being pilloried by a psychotic boss or while sitting at an unkempt desk, ignored documents swirling around, the sound of their blood pressure rising in their ears. For Nelson Ferraro, that moment came whilst in his garage one day, blood, flesh shards and smoke swirling around him, the sound of a chain saw meeting beef flesh screaming in his ears.

Ferraro was taking his usual hands-on approach to capturing and recording sound for film, this time for a slaughterhouse scene in Columbia Pictures’ Maximum Risk.

‘It was the ugliest job I ever had to do,’ he recounts. But for Ferraro, cofounder of Toronto’s Sound Dogs, the horror of hacking up two sides of beef and having the stench of death follow him for weeks thereafter was mitigated by the fact that two days later he was recording the sonic stylings of a Rolls-Royce going down the road and, he loves what he does.

The Toronto- and l.a.-based sound post facility, currently working on Paragon’s The Wrong Guy, has taken its specialization in car chases and surround sound and is making some real noise in Hollywood North and South.

Ferraro and partner Greg King became the Sound Dogs in 1991 when they were working on effects, dialogue and adr on Nelvana’s Mr. T. series, T and T.

Born and raised in Ontario, Ferraro, who attended the London Film School and worked cutting film in England before being bounced out of the country. He says he and King, then only 24, shared a strong work ethic and a philosophy, and, being ‘young loser guys living in our apartments with record crates as furniture,’ were ready when digital technology provided a window of opportunity.

‘We were trained by old-school British guys on mag, cutting old-style film,’ says Ferraro. ‘We learned video because of circumstance, and then nonlinear technology came along and we grabbed it and got in at the ground level.’

Ferraro says the new company immediately established a relationship with DigiDesign, makers of Sound Tools and then ProTools digital audio workstations and served as a Beta site for the emerging technology, which Ferraro says ‘felt tailor-made for us.’

The Dogs moved themselves into Film House (now deluxe toronto) and began working on tv series, including Grosso Jacobson’s Top Cops. But the real opportunities lay in feature films, and Ferraro says the Canadian feature market was difficult to crack in that established filmmakers had established post people. So they wound up cracking l.a. instead, working on a stream of ‘b’ movies like Cannon’s American Samurai before 20th Century Fox brought the Charlie Sheen vehicle The Chase to Sound Dogs for their no-frills sound-centric approach.

Ferraro says the core strength of Sound Dogs is the attention paid to building an unbeatable effects library, which he estimates is comprised of about 70,000 sounds.

‘If you watch the biggest or the best Hollywood movies, you can’t watch those and then listen to a cd library and say, `This is as good.’ ‘

Creating the right sound for a project entails finding, recording and mastering everything from swamps at 3 a.m. to cars on country roads, and while it’s labor-intensive, Ferraro says the satisfaction derived from taking a sound, shaping it to a picture, and ‘watching it all come together’ is worth it.

With about six editors and assistants in each office, Ferraro says Sound Dogs is an association of hand-picked editors who work in the same way, citing in particular the contributions of Michael Werth and Paula Fairfield.

‘Everyone in this place knows how to take this gear apart and put it back together,’ he says. ‘Everyone has a very strong work ethic and is technologically and creatively adept.’

Ferraro says with digital technology, an editor doesn’t have to apprentice for 15 years before cutting something but still must have a sense of the high standards of the old school of film and be technologically astute.

In the wake of The Chase, Disney’s feature The Santa Clause enticed King to take that California trip and open a Sound Dogs office in l.a., which currently operates out of Sony’s facilities. Ferraro says the l.a. incarnation of Sound Dogs has been highly successful, and has applied the same philosophy of sound that has propelled the Toronto operation.

King records things like the sound of the wind in the desert, and sound libraries are shared between the two locations.

Ferraro says while the Toronto office deals in volume, working on three smaller pictures at once, the l.a. operation will work on one big picture at a time, including past jobs Forget Paris and The Cable Guy and the upcoming sequel to Terms of Endearment.

With its work on Jean-Claude Van Damme’s The Quest from Universal, Sound Dogs Toronto proved itself on a big-budget picture and earned the next Van Damme film, Maximum Risk, which allowed the facility to focus on its emerging specialty, creating sound for sdds theater surround systems.

Ferraro says discrete channel digital recording adds another challenge to the process of sound post, allowing sounds to be manipulated spatially. ‘It’s like the difference between a photograph and a moving picture, or a moving picture and a hologram,’ says Ferraro. ‘You have to think more of space and what’s happening everywhere in the theater.’

Ferraro says the timing and technology were significant factors in the Sound Dog experience. ‘If it had happened 15 years ago, the technology wasn’t ready then. We came in at a good time; mag was still alive and we picked up good habits while making the crossover into tape and digital.’

He cites as important developments the evolution of DigiDesign sound technology after its acquisition by Avid Technologies and the ability of both systems to fully interact and work in the same media files as well as interface improvements between sound and picture.

Ferraro says the trend in major feature films is the virtual disappearance of the concept of a locked picture. While formerly a final picture edit was decided upon and handed over to the sound people, with bigger budgets hanging on the whims and wants of audiences (less dialogue, more chase scenes), market testing and endless edits, a picture often isn’t stable almost until the popcorn is being made.

Ferraro says the final decision on picture cuts for Maximum Risk were made three to four weeks before the release date.

‘That’s the way all pictures are going,’ he says. ‘You have to conform to picture cuts all the way along. We are virtually doing sound for a picture as the dailies come off. Nobody wants it that way, but technology is making it possible. Sound editors who can’t keep up with that won’t work.’