Calibre Digital Pictures, the Toronto-based effects and animation house, is up and running with its new matte department. According to Mark Fordham, head of the four-member division, this expansion "meets the needs of the new digital environment for more and more films."

Fordham reports Calibre is providing an increasing number of productions beyond the science fiction and fantasy genres with "invisible effects", photo-realistic backgrounds audiences would not recognize as computer-generated.

Fordham would seem the right man for the job. Trained in fine arts at the Ontario College of Art (as is the whole department), he has displayed his realist paintings and sculptures in galleries in Toronto and New York. Making the transition to digital matte work primarily required he and his staff get up to speed on the Avid Matador software.

The department's skills are particularly handy on period pieces. One of the projects it recently completed was Nuremberg, the Alliance Atlantis Communications/Productions La Fete miniseries about the trials of the principal perpetrators of the Holocaust. It also wrapped on Haven, aac's Citadel Entertainment miniseries documenting the escape of 1,000 Jews from Europe to New York in 1944. The program is scheduled to air on cbs in February.

"On set right here in Ontario they had some army trucks pulling down an old dirt road, with a camera move," Fordham explains, referring to the latter project. "Then the matte department took over and designed a spectacular vista showing the whole harbor of Naples, totally bombed out during the war, with Mount Vesuvius behind."

Fordham says the department's work is accomplished through both traditional and cutting-edge methods.

"We might physically make a sculpture and photograph it and then digitize the photograph," he says. "We might make a sculpture in the computer or digitally paint everything within the computer. Every art technique is being used all the time."

Fordham does not agree with the view held by some filmmakers that it's always preferable to shoot an actual object than build it in the computer.

"I like having total control over shots, which you can't get when you're out on location with limited time, at the mercy of factors including Mother Nature," he explains. "Instead of taking a photograph, we've gone one step further in the digital realm - we're making a photograph. We're making creative decisions every step of the way, leaving nothing up to chance or luck."

Fordham admits it's not easy for Calibre to promote its matte department when its work is supposed to pass for reality.

"We want to highlight what we've done, but at the same time we don't want people to be too aware," he says. "We're very proud when nobody knows. All they notice is there's a kind of poetry to the shot."

Production boom

When Calibre opened its doors a decade ago, it was strictly a commercial house. The boom in Canadian film and tv production contributed to its shift toward long-format projects, particularly its gig on Atlantis Films' The Adventures of Sinbad series, which ran from 1996 to 1998. In 1997, Atlantis purchased a 50% stake in Calibre, which is now owned outright by aac, which formed by merger in 1998.