Technological advancements are altering the production industry at breakneck speed. As a result, those at the top of the game need to spend nearly as much time reading as doing their jobs.
In few businesses is this more evident than editing. In recent years the job of the editor has moved from a stationary and linear function – the last stop in the production process – to a highly mobile and versatile role.
While Avid revolutionized the business over a decade ago through the introduction of nonlinear offline, that mind-blowing advancement was just the first in a string that has put a full menu of post capabilities in the hands of the editor.

Toronto producers Elliott Halpern and Jack Rabinovitch have parted ways with Associated Producers and opened a new production company, Ace Pictures. Under their new banner, Halpern, a two-time Emmy and five-time Gemini winner, and partner Rabinovitch will be exploring long-form fiction in addition to a full slate of documentaries. During their tenure with Associated the pair was known largely for their documentary efforts like The Plague Monkeys (which Halpern produced, wrote and directed).

Mark Hajek is senior editor at Stealing Time Editing. He has over a decade in the business cutting commercial spots and documentaries. His favorite equipment includes the Avid Media Composer and the HAL 9000.

Montreal: Muse Entertainment is fine-tuning its production strategies, expanding its relationship with Toronto producer Bernie Zukerman with prospects for more production in Montreal and an entry into feature film coproduction in the year ahead.

In the new year, Canadian animation companies must face a contracting economy, an uncertain broadcast landscape, an ever-globalizing marketplace and opportunities opened up by troubled competitors. With all this in mind, tooncos are preparing their strategies for the NATPE 2002 conference in Las Vegas, Jan. 21-24.

Vancouver: The animation landscape has its share of mutants – you know, the unsuspecting Joe transformed into something more powerful by forces known or unknown.

This year’s Genie nominees for achievement in cinematography include a flick about a chick who turns into a werewolf, another about two girls discovering themselves (in the biblical sense) at boarding school, an East Coast yarn about the mythical sea, another that takes us to the depths of the Indian Ocean, and a period piece encompassing seven periods.

Key players in the Canadian post biz have recently spent major dollars building a high-definition-enabled infrastructure, acquiring systems such as the da Vinci 2K color corrector and Quantel’s iQ. But while this cutting-edge gear no doubt impresses visiting clients, is there enough HD work at present to justify these costly investments?

Vancouver and Toronto F/X company GVFX added more than 300 shots to the imaginary world of Babylon 5 when it took on the role of sole visual effects creator on the forthcoming 90-minute TV movie Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers. The SCI FI Channel/Warner Bros. International production, a spin-off of the series Babylon 5, was shot in Vancouver in May and June 2001.

Economic troubles that have curtailed Hollywood production have had a negative impact on the post-production software manufacturers. Their chief customers – animation and F/X houses – have seen less work coming through their doors, and the hard times have meant these shops have invested in few new systems lately. But some manufacturers see the silver lining in the current storm clouds.

Launched a year ago by 3D animation and F/X house TOPIX and president and F/X supervisor Dennis Berardi, Toronto-based Mr. X is racking up an impressive list of clients. The feature film and music video shop is hard at work on Cube 2: Hypercube, the Lions Gate Films sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 sci-fi surprise hit; Serendipity Point Films’ highly anticipated Ararat, writer/director Atom Egoyan’s forthcoming epic about the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923; and Men with Brooms, a curling comedy, also from Serendipity.

Montreal: A wide coalition of industry and government interests, including Canada’s largest cable companies, are supporting a Bell ExpressVu appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada against Can-Am Satellites, a small B.C. seller of DTH satellite decoders that receive U.S. signals. SCC hearings started Dec. 4 and a normal course decision is anticipated in the next few months.
Black-market DTH sales in Canada are booming.
ExpressVu estimates there are 600,000 pirated decoders in Canada, with the vast majority, as many as 500,000, in the black-market domain. Grey-market sales are fast disappearing as Canadian consumers balk at paying in U.S. dollars.
The appeal, following three recent provincial appeal court decisions unfavorable to ExpressVu, has important charter and commercial implications.