After a six-month slowdown, Vancouver post houses are anticipating a strong slate of service work this spring to keep facilities busy.

‘It is pretty quiet right now on the post side,’ admits Michelle Grady, VP and GM of Technicolor Creative Services Vancouver. ‘But Fox, Universal, MGM and Disney are all coming to town, so we are encouraged that spring will be busy.’

Vancouver is poised for a busy spring/summer, with a number of large productions shooting, including Summit Entertainment’s Twilight sequel New Moon, the Disney sci-fi feature Tron 2, and TV series such as Fox’s Defying Gravity and Sci-Fi Channel’s Stargate Universe. Also anticipated, but not confirmed, for early summer is NBC Universal’s Battlestar Galactica spin-off series Caprica.

The majority of post-production work that lands in Vancouver is tied to servicing American projects while they are shooting in B.C. As a result of a strong Canadian dollar in much of 2008 and the ongoing Screen Actors Guild contract dispute, offshore work has decreased in recent months, impacting the post sector in the last six months of 2008. However, Vancouver studios say the phones started ringing again in January as they started making plans for spring/summer 2009.

Northwest Imaging & Effects has reduced its staff by 15% over this time last year.

‘Our business is 90% U.S. work and it is closely linked to the exchange rate,’ says Alex Tkach, NWFX VP and GM. ‘Now that the dollar is down, we are getting a lot of requests for quotes, so we know there is business on the horizon.’

Alternately, VFX work is booming in B.C. because American productions can take advantage of the 15% Digital Animation or Visual Effects tax credit that is not tied to shooting locally.

For example, Image Engine Design has been awarded one of the largest effects contracts to ever land in Vancouver. The shop is the lead facility on the sci-fi movie District 9, produced by Peter Jackson, directed by Neill Blomkamp, and shot in South Africa. The shop is also working on the Dark Castle Entertainment film Orphan.

Shawn Walsh, Image Engine’s VFX executive producer, says the shop landed District 9 as a result of relationships (Blomkamp worked in Vancouver as an effects artist before moving into directing) and technical expertise, as well as price.

‘Vancouver isn’t the cheapest nor the most expensive place to do VFX,’ says Walsh. ‘The cost base is marginally lower because of the tax incentives, but it’s a combination of skill set, price point, creative pitch, understanding of the work and relationships that goes into being awarded a contract.’

Technicolor’s VFX division – Moving Picture Company Vancouver – has also ‘been going crazy with work,’ notes Grady, having just completed over 240 shots for Warner Bros.’s Watchmen and now working on over 100 shots for the Disney sci-fi thriller The Surrogates.

Deluxe Vancouver – which acquired Rainmaker’s Vancouver post and VFX operations in January 2008 – reports the same scenario. Mark Atkinson, VP and GM of Deluxe, says 2008 was ‘a challenging year’ for post services.

Meanwhile, the company’s visual effects operation, CIS Vancouver, has been ‘slammed with work,’ over the past year, according to GM Dennis Hoffman, having landed VFX contracts on Sony Pictures’ Angels & Demons, based on the Dan Brown novel; 20th Century Fox’s Tooth Fairy; and Clint Eastwood’s new biopic on Nelson Mandela, The Human Factor.

Two of the contracts are a result of previous relationships. CIS Vancouver worked on Sony’s previous Brown adaptation, The Da Vinci Code, and Eastwood’s film Changeling.

‘Vancouver is becoming one of the premier places where studios feel comfortable taking their tentpole visual effects work,’ says Hoffman.

Vancouver shops would like to extend the success they are seeing on the VFX side of the business to other post-production services by adding a financial incentive for studios to finish their films locally.

A proposal is in front of the provincial government to expand the DAVE tax credit to include not just animation and effects, but all digital post-production services.

‘We need an incentive to keep more of the finishing work in Vancouver,’ says Grady. ‘Studios do dailies locally, but then prefer to go back to L.A. to do the finish in their hometown. We don’t have all the Canadian series and coproductions like Toronto to keep post houses busy. The Canadian production community in Vancouver is a lot smaller in scale than the service work.’

This additional incentive could be critical if the economic downturn continues. Northwest will service seven American MOW projects beginning later this month, and Tkach says budgets are tighter than ever, and that producers will be doing a lot of number-crunching in deciding where to finish their films.

‘The new reality is [that] things have to be sold for a bit less, and the value-added service you offer becomes more important in making the deals,’ he says.