CinéGroupe Corporation

Source: Exec Digital Canada

Date :8/7/2007 4:19:16 PM

CinéGroupe Corporation is taking the latest special effects and animation technology to a worldwide audience

Written and produced by James Buchanan & Kevin Patey

Perhaps you and your kids have watched CinéGroupe’s animated show Sagwa:

The Chinese Siamese Cat on the Knowledge NetWork in Canada and PBS in the U.S.

Or maybe you have seen the company’s CGI animated show Tripping the Rift on SPACE: The Imagination Station in Canada and the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S.

If not, you may have seen the company’s work in any one of a number of movies and television shows featuring CGI special effects and animation.

Based in Montreal, CinéGroupe Corporation is a fully integrated entertainment company dedicated to the creation, development, production, postproduction, and distribution of original television programming, feature length films, and interactive entertainment products such as CD ROMs, DVDs, and Web animation for a worldwide market.

“What we do is create new shows by looking all over the world and finding new concepts that would interest our broadcasters,” says Jacques Pettigrew, founder, president and CEO of CinéGroupe. “And we want very much to be innovative in the work we do.”

Speaking to the company’s effort to always be innovating, Michel “Mitch”

Lemire, executive vice president for creative affairs and production, adds, “We were the first production company in North America — other than [Walt] Disney Studios — to bring on a digital ink and paint studio.

Each production has an entirely different look and technique.”

He adds, “We are always pushing the envelope when it comes to being innovative in our productions.”

On the creative side, the company was the first to produce a 3D CGI theatrical feature film in Canada in 2004 called P3K: Pinocchio 3000, which is a futuristic version of the classic Pinocchio story, says Pettigrew.

CGI stands for Computer Generated Images for film that can either be presented in the form of special effects for movies such as The Abyss, which won an Oscar for visual effects, Titanic, The Matrix, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and many more.

CGI is also used for animated movies such as Toy Story, Shrek, Monsters Inc, and many other popular movies for kids.

In this vein, Lemire adds that CinéGroupe is also the first company to produce a 3D animated sitcom for audiences age 18 to 35, which is the science fiction-based program Tripping the Rift. Two of the actors doing character voices are Carmen Electra and actor Stephen Root, who has appeared in feature movies such as Office Space and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

“Tripping the Rift is an animation situation comedy ala The Simpsons and the Family Guy,” says Pettigrew. “Critics have called it South Park in space.”

Reflecting the multimedia nature of entertainment that has developed with the Internet age, CinéGroupe is launching a website

(www.trippingtherift.tv) as a companion to the series, which will provide a multiplayer game, a graphic novel strip (which will also be published in book form at the end of the year), character clips, ring-tones, contests, and previews of upcoming episodes.

“We are focused on the multimedia trend as is everybody else on the planet,” says Lemire. “We are watching viewership trends on the TV and the Internet, and developing concepts that reflect a multimedia strategy. This strategy is best reflected in Tripping the Rift, which has the companion website offering interactive games, comic strips and graphic novel. It allows us to fill the gaps between episodes and offer our fan base a fun place to visit and come back to.”

Further, highlighting the company’s international reach, the program is available beyond Canada and the U.S. in such countries as France, the U.K., Italy, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, and Russia. Often, CinéGroupe’s productions have an international audience, with its programs being distributed in more than 100 countries, says Lemire.

The company was also the first to license what may be the signature software for CGI special effects from Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc. Softimage software has been used to create live action special effects for Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park among many others, says Lemire.

“This is pioneering software that has been, and still is, used in feature live-action movies,” he says. “We have used this software for Pinocchio 3K as well as such live action/ CGI productions as Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension and Charlie Jade.”

Unlike many production companies that focus on one aspect of production and outsource the rest, CinéGroupe is a fully and vertically integrated company that can see a project through from concept to output for broadcast. Its capabilities, says both Pettigrew and Lemire, include concept creation, planning, marketing to broadcasters, preproduction, production, postproduction, distribution and licensing for spin-off products such as toys, t-shirts, games and the like.

Making all of this happen are approximately 70 core employees that handle finance, writing, production, directing, postproduction and the technical aspects of the company’s 3D CGI animation and special effects.

As the number and scope of projects in production waxes and wanes, the company can expand to include up to 250 more employees.

“Our film production is like an accordion — it builds up, and collapses, depending on what we have in production at any given moment,” says Lemire.

CinéGroupe also offers postproduction services for other younger companies for audio and video services.

“They need a one-stop-shop to take their footage from the sets to a studio, to turn it into a broadcast - ready production,” says Lemire.

“In our history we have produced about 50 television series and have done as many as 15 shows for the U.S. market.”

The companies seeking CinéGroupe’s services, says Pettigrew, tend to be local producers that lack the necessary equipment and/or studio space.

One example discussed by Pettigrew and Lemire was a production company that had booked a show for airing in Europe, but when the master tape arrived in Europe the audio quality was found to be of low quality. The tape was sent to CinéGroupe where the audio was brought up to grade, and sent back to Europe, where the program successfully aired.

This work is done is the company’s four-story, Montreal-based headquarters, which has 37,000 sq. ft. of studio space.

Studios include a 3D CGI studio with 100 workstations and 40 terabytes of render power (which refers to the process of producing a digital, pixilated image from creative drawings).

“By contrast, there is a U.S. civil defense air station near here, which has about six terabytes. We could defend all of North America,” jokes Lemire.

The company also has nine picture editing suites provided by Avid Technology of Tewksbury, Mass, seven audio editing suites using Pro Tools (also by Avid Technology), and three in-house recording studios.

The first of which records foley sound effects, which are sounds synchronized to on screen actions such as breaking glass, feet walking on gravel, and are generally made by a foley artist. The other two are a surround sound studio and Dolby 7.1 mixing studio.

Though the company is able to offer a full retinue of services, CinéGroupe does outsource some of its production work and has established studios in Europe, Asia and South America.

“We do outsource and we have allies in many places in the world,” says Lemire. “We have had as many as 17 studios working for us.”

He goes on to add, “While we do most of our work here, we outsource our overflow or in-betweens, which is the rather tedious and labor intensive aspect of animation. Currently, everyone is doing it, including Lucasfilm and Pixar Studios, but we were among the first.”

By way of example, Lemire says that to produce CinéGroupe’s popular children’s cartoon show Sagwa: The Chinese Siamese Cat, the company required approximately 300 artists to create the images. Of that number, 100 are located in Montreal with another 200 based in Taipei.

Further, by overflow, Lemire means to say, “When we can’t provide the space and the number of people necessary to do the show, we will partner with international producers and studios to help us with the work.”

When establishing a studio, such as those in Chile and Vietnam, the company will send people to establish the studio and train staff, making it something of a satellite working for CinéGroupe.

Beyond the scope of its capabilities, what sets the company apart is that it is a privately-owned, independent company that Pettigrew says is something of a boutique one-stop-shop.

“By boutique, I mean that we are a vertically integrated, service - oriented company because everyone is in one place,” he says. “We are not so big that no one there to answer the phone.”

Lemire agrees, adding, “I have worked in studios in L.A. and elsewhere, where you have just an office and things are outsourced on the fly. At CinéGroupe — on the other hand — the resources are here so we can see things in five minutes rather than have to drive across town or wait for another company to bring the work to us.”

The localized nature of the company’s resources helps the company maintain control of its product.

“We can do everything in-house and control the quality of the shows,”

says Lemire.

This is even true when the location for a live-action shoot is as far away as South Africa. Planning and preproduction and other aspects of the show can be done in Montreal, while the movie or program is shot on location almost anywhere in the world. The film created by that shoot can be quickly sent to the studio for editing and post production, oftentimes the next day.

Montreal has long been thought of as a city devoted to art and creativity, and CinéGroupe is expanding on what may be seen as the traditional production house with its state-of-the-art technology and the multimedia applications of its properties.

The company is also demonstrating that a midsize studio can produce high-quality programming and entertainment that is competitive in a worldwide marketplace.