With ad budget cutbacks and increased border security, agencies have to look for alternate ways to get the big shot. Before renting the largest crane at WFW or flying to South Africa to capture that perfect sunset, some producers are looking to rediscover the options presented to them via stock footage.
Freelance agency producer Leslie Hunter went the stock route for a Roche Macaulay & Partners ad called ‘Eat Sleep Work’ for Mercedes Benz. The spot was mostly stock, put together by some slick post work at Toronto design shop Crush. Hunter says in her experience, going the stock route is often a fine alternative.

In Canada, it is on par with the legendary footage of Neil Armstrong taking ‘one giant step for mankind’ on the moon, or that other classic piece of stock footage: Guy getting hit in the gut with a cannon ball.

Kathy O’Brien is a leading expert in the search, clearance and licensing of stock footage in Canada through her company Hot Pursuit. This piece was written in collaboration with Toronto-based writer Ross Jarvis.

Jeff Fish is a hot commodity in Halifax commercials. He is one of a very few editors who specialize in cutting ads and has become somewhat of the go-to guy in the region for agencies and start-up production companies like Cenex Inc. In the East Coast advertising market, which is in a serious growth phase right now, Fish’s Filet Post Production is rarely quiet and a quiet rarity.

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?