A group of industry vets has opened a new kid on the post-production block in Toronto, and they've got brand-new British toys.

Despite the rampaging Canadian dollar, the folks behind Alter Ego have opened their doors, and London-based FilmLight has equipped the post studio with its Northlight 2 scanner, two Baselight FOUR high-performance, nonlinear color graders and Truelight color management system.

The new 5,000-square-foot downtown facility on Wellington Street West houses two color suites and two Flame visual effects suites.

Exec producer Michael Lambermont (formerly with editing shop Stealing Time) believes the time is ripe to target film producers as well as spot makers, and has brought highly specialized color-correction artists on board.

"Toronto is the hub of the Canadian advertising and film industries," says Lambermont, "yet [it] has relatively few post-production resources in the area of color correction."

Lambermont says the company's unusual two-pronged strategy is based on market demand.

"There weren't enough post facilities in Toronto addressing color correction, considering the size of the market," he says. Local film-transfer facilities also include Notch for commercials, and Technicolor, Deluxe and Cine-Byte for long-form.

The timing is also good to start a new business "because of the availability of some exceptionally talented people, and because of a leap forward in color-correction technology, which has afforded a whole new world of creative possibilities," explains Lambermont.

Alter Ego's key creative talent includes colorist Andrew Exworth (formerly with Technicolor Toronto), Flame artist Mike Morey (formerly with Stealing Time) and colorist Eric Whipp, who recently arrived from Australian animation studio Animal Logic, where he performed DI color grading for the Oscar-winning computer-animated feature Happy Feet.

VP sales Cathy MacMillan, formerly with defunct visual effects house D.A.V.E., concedes that it's unusual for a company the size of Alter Ego to do post for both commercials and long-form.

"Really, other than the large players like Technicolor, we are the only house that is treating feature films and commercials," says MacMillan. She points out that: "Our core business is [definitely] commercials."

Adds Whipp: "We're not necessarily out to become a conglomerate that turns over 150 features a year, but we want to do creative work, and if we can do a handful of features a year, then so be it."

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