Six years ago, Paul Sharpe heard the jingle of coins in his pocket and wondered if he was taking the right steps. Returning home to Vancouver to start his own sound editing company, he was about to capitalize on his experience doing the sound for big-ticket Hollywood pictures and spend $3 million to build and equip Sharpe Sound.

There was no post-production sound industry to speak of on the West Coast and the buzz was that the Americans were unlikely to leave all their business – production and post-production – in Vancouver. The risk seemed great.

Today, however, with the skill saws and hammers working this summer to expand his company’s working area by 5,000 square feet with two new studios and six audio suites, the echoes of uncertainty have ended.

Sharpe is an acknowledged leader in building Vancouver’s post-production sector. His business is heavily booked with series like The Outer Limits and Poltergeist and the feature Warriors of Virtue, he’s a beta test site for new sound technology, and he’s attracting sound editors to the city.

‘We’ve busted our asses to show that Vancouver can do it,’ Sharpe says regarding the growth of the sound sector. But key to his success is his keen understanding of the market, customer service, and capital reinvestment.

Like others who do sound and music in the Canadian film industry, Sharpe has been savvy about where the business is and he’s constantly scouting out new sources of money. Diversification is key to keeping the sound production revenues flowing as the market fills with competitors, technological advances affect work flow and production budgets shrink.

At Sharpe Sound, for example, 80% of the sound editing business comes from u.s.-based series, mows and features, and there is no indication that volumes will let up in the mid-term. The balance of business, meanwhile, is dedicated to giving local producers what he calls ‘an incredible break’ to finish the sound on their projects, an investment that works to build an indigenous film industry in the event that the Americans pack up and move elsewhere.

Searching out new markets

In Toronto, Jane Tattersall of Tattersall Sound struck a strategic alliance with deluxe toronto in May to enhance her significant Canadian sound design experience with more American projects. The volume of Canadian work, she notes, has become pinched and long-term business survival means looking to new markets.

Toronto-based composer Amin Bhatia sees business stability in the collaboration of small independent sound and music suppliers. And for sound engineer Howard Forman of Visual Music in Montreal, new business is coming from the production of cd-rom soundscapes and the toy market.

Clearly, few who work in the field still point to digital technology as the driving force of the industry. While there was a period of autonomy in the late 1980s when everyone had a digital studio in their basements, the business trend du jour is decidedly more personal and based more on human nature.

As an anglophone in Quebec, Forman has seen a polarization within the film community since the referendum. ‘As a result, there is much less work in (English-language) film and tv,’ says the 14-year industry veteran. So he’s been forced to look at where his experience will take him, including new clients outside the traditional film industry.

While he continues to work on film, most of his time of late has been spent developing the sound for 19 unnamed cd-rom titles (he’s signed a confidentiality agreement) that need everything from ambient background sounds to Quicktime animation and film synchronization and narration. ‘They have been more interesting and more lucrative,’ says Forman.

Using his Mac computer system, he’s also created the new voice for Barbie, and has a deal with Hasbro to do the sound for the next wave of Jurassic Park toy merchandise. The new markets and open-minded clients are allowing him new creative freedoms, Forman says.

Convincing Americans to stay for post

Tattersall’s deal with deluxe, meanwhile, is a strategic step to make herself more attractive to American producers.

‘They want packaged deals,’ she says, ‘with one bill. We need to persuade the Americans to stay for post-production.’ By piggybacking with a well-established operator like deluxe, Tattersall opens doors to larger operators in new markets.

As an independent partner for five years, Tattersall continues to oversee editing, looping and foley work on features such as Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Brain Candy and Lilies. But with the pressure put on time and budgets, her affiliation helps with the demands of her clients. ‘Producers want a big-budget kind of soundtrack but give us no time or money to do it,’ she says.

Neo-classic music composer Bhatia agrees that collaboration is key to meeting the needs of the production industry. As proprietor of Bhatia Music in Toronto, he works in the same space as independent music production facility Magnetic Music. And while they cultivate their own accounts, the two companies often team up to provide original scores and music editing for motion pictures.

Lines blurring

‘The line between composition and sound design is blurring,’ says Bhatia, ‘especially for commercials and short-form projects. With the technology at hand, it’s easy for one person to trade hats from cd-roms to project administration to composition. But that means they can lose their objectivity.’

The industry, says Bhatia, who has worked on the mow Once a Thief, the feature Iron Eagle II, episodes of Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and Nelvana’s animated series Tales from the Cryptkeeper, is moving back to a team approach. ‘The most successful projects are collaborative.’

So whether sound people use avid or Dawn hardware or Opcode software appears to be less important to business plans than their ability to cultivate traditional business ties.

And there is the impetus to do it. socan, the Canadian arbiter of the music business, states in a June report that there was an 18% year-to-year rise in licence fees paid to sound people from television, due in large part to the growth of the industry. Last year’s tally was $38.3 million.

Says Paul Spurgeon, general counsel for socan: ‘Composers are in great demand with the proliferation of (television) signals and channels. Canadian programming is more popular around the world. Yes, the use of music in film and television is very important.’