James Weyman is acting director of Skills Development and Marketing Initiatives at the Ontario Media Development Corporation.

With little in the way of industry news unfolding over the holidays while our broadcasting execs, producers et al were vacationing south of the border, despite the poor exchange rate, I’m still thinking about the anti-runaway production issue that inspired at least one U.S. campaigner to make a public parallel between Canada and Osama Bin Laden. The anti-Canada campaign, fully equipped with party-line rhetoric and statistics, couldn’t seem more inappropriately timed, but then propaganda seems to serve its perpetrators best in moments of strife.

New Category 2 apps

Daniel Villeneuve is the HD cinematographer on Galidor, not Daniel Vincelette as stated in the Nov. 26 p. 1 story ‘Production software opens vistas on Galidor.’

The pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place.

Montreal: Three Montreal studio groups have announced major expansion plans.
Construction is underway on Mel’s Cite du Cinema III, a four-studio facility adjacent to the south-central Mel’s Cite du Cinema and Technoparc facilities.
The expansion, an $11-million private investment by partners Mel Hoppenheim and Michel Trudel, will bring the total number of Cite du Cinema soundstages to 13, the largest being Studio H at 37,000 square feet. Cite du Cinema III will house four fully soundproofed soundstages, two at 15,000 square feet and two at 10,000 square feet, the fourth with 50-foot clearance, as well as production offices and areas for makeup and wardrobe. The new facility will also house a 24,000-square-foot lighting department operated by film equipment rental company Location Michel Trudel.

Sales agency hopes to mine U.S. productions

Circle Productions

* Louise Clements has been appointed VP, market development for Bell Globemedia. She was previously VP of sales and e-commerce for Sympatico-Lycos.

Toronto’s Industry Films has signed the roster from L.A.’s Rock Fight to an exclusive Canadian representation agreement, taking on spot directors Pep Bosch and Craig Champion and music video directing teams James and Alex and Blue Source (Rob Leggatt and Leigh Marling).

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.