Success Stories
A Thunder Bay Region Success Story
Cinevate Inc.
From the basement to the boardroom, local entrepreneur is equipping new-age filmmakers with the tools they need
About seven years ago, entrepreneur Dennis Wood was a civil servant who became the father of a beautiful little girl. Glowing with pride, he wanted to capture some footage of his newborn on a small handheld camera, but something just wasn’t right.
The video quality wasn’t up to par, and spending thousands on a new camera was out of the question. That’s when he decided to create the Brevis 35 adapter, a high quality cinema industry lens which he attached to his consumer camera — and voila! His handheld camera began shooting Hollywood quality videos right in his own home.
Dennis Wood, Founder and President of Cinevate
— on the set of a video shoot —
A budding blogger, he posted his invention online and began receiving requests for his Brevis 35 from other users. Wood decided to create and sell 10 over the internet to balance the cost of creating one for himself. But before he knew it, users from all over the world began sending him deposits. They wanted their hands on his new device.
Wood sold the lens adapter online for a few years under his previous company’s name Bits and Bytes. Over that time he realized his passion — giving filmmakers the tools they need to create their cinema dreams. In 2007, he decided to take a chance and quit his two jobs — as both a civil servant and also a part-time computer repair specialist — to focus on his camera equipment company, which he renamed Cinevate 
.
Through hard work and many long hours working in his basement, Cinevate started growing. So much so, that it caught the eye of the Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre — a member of the Ontario Network of Excellence .
The Centre’s manager, Judy Sanders, lent boardroom space to Cinevate because the company had started outgrowing Wood’s basement — this allowed Wood to hire more staff. She also started Cinevate down the road to intellectual property management by helping them navigate the route to patent protection of the new products being introduced.
Soon after, Cinevate started shipping all types of camera equipment across the world to filmmakers in Spain, Australia and the United States.
Cinevate's "Core Rig" technology
— a versatile camera support system —
Sanders was so impressed at the company’s continued growth that she nominated Cinevate for the Royal Bank Innovation Award. This led to another nomination for the first ever Pan Northern Innovation Challenge Award. And then yet another award nomination came from Professor Dennis Austin of Confederation College’s film school — for a Premier’s Catalyst Award in the category of “Startup Company with the Best Innovation.”
Cinevate won all three awards.
The company — which is now one of the leading camera equipment suppliers for independent film makers around the world — contracts its manufacturing work to several local, specialized manufacturers in Thunder Bay.
“Not only have we created jobs by hiring the young talent coming out of Lakehead University and Confederation College, but our growing demand directly benefits local industry who machine, anodize and powder coat 90 per cent of our production locally,” said Wood.
Cinevate’s rapid growth — it now employs 15 people — has kept Wood busy. The company just bought a brand new warehouse and recently acquired a United States distributor for its products — many of which are used by filmmakers and photographers working for companies like NFL.com , Apple Inc. and Pixar .
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