The high-definition explosion many have been bracing for may well be a reality within the next 18 months, and pioneers such as stock footage veteran Paula Lumbard are ready for it.

If you get the top talents in one field working under the same roof toward the same goals, business is bound to follow. Toybox and Manta Digital Sound and Picture, both part of Command Post and Transfer Corporation, have lost three of the country’s top colorists to Canada’s first transfer-only boutique, Notch, which opened in Toronto Oct. 25.
Gary Chuntz and Elaine Ford, formerly with Toybox, and Bill Ferwerda, formerly with Manta DSP, are now principals and part-owners at Notch. According to Chuntz, both rooms at their new facility have been booked solid since day one and will be full well into January.

When Toronto’s The Animation House closed in April, founder Bob Fortier swore he’d have another animation studio up and running within six months, and he has done it at AXYZ Edit.
Fortier joined AXYZ as a creative consultant and set up Monkey Business, a 2D animation division at the Toronto editing house. ‘I’m back in business, so to speak,’ says Fortier. ‘AXYZ is just a great place to be. All of the technical and creative support is here; it’s worked out great.’
Fortier has already completed a Kellogg spot and has two more projects for Kraft Foods currently in production, a Post Sugar Crisp spot and an Alphabits spot through Ogilvy & Mather.

Billy Barnes is a perfectly normal kid…that is until two aliens erupt into his life through the family toilet. In a time when presales are hard to come by, the far-out premise behind Decode Entertainment’s hybrid live-action/CGI children’s series draws on universal themes and characters, which have already secured The Blobheads extensive distribution deals worldwide, including Nickelodeon International’s largest multi-territory deal to date.

Sparks Productions in Toronto has added Laura St. Amour to its team as artist representative, a new position the prodco created using the management design of a record company as a reference point. Sparks seeks to distinguish its directors in a saturated marketplace by focusing on developing directors’ reels. Amour will guide the directing roster as well as advise agency producers of how best to approach Sparks’ lineup. One of her aims at the company will be to help directors build and design effective reels.

The early part of 2002 may have been about surviving, but the latter part has been about adapting to the changing marketplace. Canada’s commercial production industry emerges from one of its most difficult years, anticipating a brighter, busier 2003 with a more developed sense of the role strong homegrown talent will play in the collective future of the industry.

Production in Calgary is booming. On top of the latest feature from waydowntown director Gary Burns, shooting has begun on Alberta’s biggest local feature yet, which has some serious star power to boot.
The Great Goose Caper is a family feature from Calgary-based Voice Pictures, budgeted at $8.5 million. Voice’s Wendy Hill-Tout produces with Montreal’s Colin Neale and U.K. coproducer Alex Brown of Studio Eight Productions.
‘The wonderful thing about a budget this size is that you can make creative choices that really add value to the film,’ says Hill-Tout, who adds that one of the distinguishing elements of this production is that scheduling was star-driven rather than budget-driven.

As president of newly integrated Corus Television and Nelvana, Paul Robertson faces a $200-million writedown on the animation company, and although merchandising will play a role in turning it around, Robertson is not planning to transform Nelvana into a toy store as some industry pundits have urged.
‘Merchandising is not going to be the driver on all the projects,’ says Robertson. ‘We would like to do more projects like Jerolemon Street Players or Braceface that have so much merit as standalone TV shows.’

Saint John may not seem a likely place to recreate the biggest city in North America, but on Sept. 30, the New Brunswick city became the location for the six-week shoot of Jericho Mansions, a $10-million feature set in a New York City apartment building.
Producer Suzanne Lyons says the architecture turned out to be a great match for New York, because after an 1877 fire wiped out much of Saint John, architects rebuilt in a style similar to Boston and New York apartments, leaving several city blocks that closely resemble the Big Apple.
Lyons, who along with partner Kate Robbins runs L.A.-based Snowfall Films, was born in New Brunswick and is thankful for the opportunity to work on a feature at home, something she’s dreamed of doing since leaving Canada 13 years ago.

Looking to escape the hectic pace of the Toronto market, producer Scott Westerlaken almost packed up and left the country three years ago, when out of the blue a friend called him about a producer position at a Newfoundland ad agency. Two days later he headed east and has never looked back.
Upon arriving in Atlantic Canada, Westerlaken spent several months producing in Newfoundland before relocating to Halifax. ‘But I still wasn’t happy because I wasn’t able to do the quality of production that I was normally used to doing in Toronto,’ says the veteran producer, who had a long career in Toronto including partnering in the prodco Roundhouse Films in the early ’90s.
When he arrived in Atlantic Canada, smaller budgets were still synonymous with lower production values. And this is where Westerlaken realized he could make a difference.

Trevor Cornish, this year’s recipient of the First Cut Award, has only just hit the directing scene with less than two years experience and has never worked on a spot with a budget over $30,000. Proof positive that directors do not necessarily need big budgets to demonstrate their skill.

Directing a feature is like writing a novel and television like tackling a short story, but for Zach Math, directing commercials is pure poetry.