Montage Magazine Fall 2012 by Directors Guild of Canada

display until December 31, 2012

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p u b l i s h e d b y t h e d i r e c t o r s g u i l d o f c a n a d afall/ 2012 w w MONTAGE w. d g c . c1a

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CONTENTS

D AVI D W E L LI N GT O N T hi s p a ge : To bi n B e l l ( J ig s a w ) i n S a w V. C o u rte s y L i on s G at e Fi l ms O pp o s i te pa g e : M a n u fa c t ur in g #1 8 . C a n ku n Fa c to r y, Z h a ng z h o u, F u ji a n P ro v i nc e , C hi n a . P ho t o: E d wa rd B u rt y n s k y.

co ver pho to:

D I RE C T O R S G U I L D O F C A N A D A

pub lished b y t he

CHRIS CHAPMAN FA L L 20 1 2 , M o n ta g e

co ver pho tog raphy:

Viewpoint

Listen Up! The Creative Dynamic

Book Shelf

Parting Shot

by Michael Allder Former producer (The Nature of Things), Allder reviews Tower of Babble, Richard Stursberg’s account of his years as head of the CBC

Home Again Sudz Sutherland’s new feature debuts at TIFF

by Sturla Gunnarsson

Editor’s note

by Marc Glassman

The relationship between directors and producers working in Canadian TV was explored in an all-day conference presented by the DGC and CMPA (Canadian Media Production Association) earlier this year. Montage presents an edited version of the event

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FEATURES FALL HAR VEST by ADAM NAYMAN Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s Children, Michael McGowan’s Still and Michael DeCarlo’s Two Hands Too Much lead the autumnal Canadian cinema offerings by DGC veteran directors

THE DIRECTOR FLIES EXEC U T IVE C LA S S by NANCY LANTHIER Gary Harvey is at the height of his powers, co-producing and directing the CBC hit Arctic Air. A Montage profile

IN CONVERSATION WITH… DAVID WELLINGTON by MARC GLASSMAN Montage interviews Wellington, the director-producer of Saving Hope and Rookie Blue, about his working methods and relationship to the producers, directors, cast and broadcasters involved with both hits. His move from cinema auteur to TV powerhouse is explored

THE FINE DESIGN OF STEP H E N S TA N LE Y by JANIS COLE What does production designer Stephen Stanley do? A revealing look behind the scenes of the TV hits Degrassi and The L.A. Complex and how Stanley’s work makes a crucial difference in both productions

PARADIGMS A DOZEN by PETER WINTONICK How will feature documentaries, arguably Canada’s national art form, continue to be financed? The Governor-General’s Awardwinning producer-director offers some solutions

DAVID HACKL: KILLER DIR E C T OR by CHRIS ALEXANDER An in-depth look at the director and production designer who created the look for the Saw franchise and continues to make visionary work in the horror genre

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DIRECTORS GUILD OF CANADA publisher

Sturla Gunnarsson, president Gerry Barr, national executive director & ceo mail@dgc.ca associate publisher DGC NATIONAL 111 Peter Street, Suite 600 Toronto, ON M5V 2H1 Tel: 416-482-6640 Fax: 416-482-6639 Toll Free: 1-888-972-0098 E-mail: mail@dgc.ca www.dgc.ca

Alejandra Sosa content manager

Peter Murphy editor

Marc Glassman art director

Alexander Alter copy editor

Jocelyn Laurence ALBERTA DISTRICT COUNCIL 2526 Battleford Avenue, S.W., Suite 133 (Building B8, Currie Barracks) Calgary, AB T3E 7J4 Tel: 403-217-8672 Fax: 403-217-8678 E-mail: dgc@dgcalberta.ca www.dgcalberta.ca ATLANTIC REGIONAL COUNCIL 1657 Barrington Street, Suite 408 Halifax, NS B3J 2A1 Tel: 902-492-3424 Fax: 902-492-2678 E-mail: inquiries@dgcatlantic.ca www.dgcatlantic.ca BRITISH COLUMBIA DISTRICT COUNCIL 1152 Mainland Street, Suite 430 Vancouver, BC V6B 4X2 Tel: 604-688-2976 Fax: 604-688-2610 E-mail: info@dgcbc.com www.dgcbc.com MANITOBA DISTRICT COUNCIL The Union Centre, 202B-275 Broadway Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3C 4M6 Tel: 204-940-4301 Fax: 204-942-2610 E-mail: dgc@dgcmanitoba.ca www.dgcmanitoba.ca ONTARIO DISTRICT COUNCIL 111 Peter Street, Suite 600 Toronto, ON M5V 2H1 Tel: 416-925-8200 Fax: 416-925-8400 E-mail: odc@dgcodc.ca www.dgcodc.ca QUEBEC DISTRICT COUNCIL 4200 Saint-Laurent Blvd., Suite 708 Montréal, PQ H2W 2R2 Tel: 514-844-4084 Fax: 514-844-1067 E-mail: cqgcr@cam.org www.cqgcr.ca SASKATCHEWAN DISTRICT COUNCIL 2440 Broad Street, Suite #W213B Regina, SK S4P 4A1 Tel: 306-757-8000 Fax: 306-757-8001 E-mail: sk.dgc@sasktel.net www.dgcsask.com

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Merrie Whitmore Directors Guild of Canada mwhitmore@dgcodc.ca Montage is published twice a year by the Directors Guild of Canada. www.dgc.ca montage@dgc.ca Undelivered mail returned to: Directors Guild of Canada, National Office 111 Peter Street, Suite 402 Toronto, Ontario M5V 2H1 Tel. 416-482-6640 Fax 416-482-6639 Please direct all editorial inquiries and letters to the editor to: montage@dgc.ca Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Please include your name, address and daytime phone number. Montage is available free of charge to all DGC members. Copies of Montage are available for $6.50 from the publisher and news outlets across Canada. Canadian subscriptions $12, United States US $15 and International CDN $39 For subscription information or to order back issues, please contact DGC Montage. Subscriptions: montage@dgc.ca All contents are copyright 2012 DGC. All rights are reserved and contents, in whole or in part, may not be reprinted without permission. Points of view expressed in Montage do not necessarily represent those of the DGC. The publisher assumes no responsibility for advertisers’ claims, unsolicited art, photographs, manuscripts or other materials. Printed in Canada by Captain Printworks, Toronto, Ontario

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viewpoint Reflecting on the 300-plus titles selected for this year’s edition of TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival) from over 4,500 submissions, it occurred to me that that they represent just the tip of a massive iceberg of creative output. Each of them carries the hopes and dreams of their creators: that they be touched by magic and become one of the dozen or so films that cut through the noise to find an appreciative audience, critical acclaim and commercial success. But what about the others, the films that almost make it into the winners’ circle but for a fluke of timing, a shift in the zeitgeist, the luck of the draw? It also occurred to me that these films and their makers represent something every bit as worthy of celebration—the irrepressible hopefulness of the artistic community of which we are a part. Filmmakers live in the hope and belief that what we’re doing will become fully itself, and the knowledge that even when it does, we may be the only ones aware of it. And every once in a while, a small breeze blows through, an updraft that delivers the work to public acclaim. But even then, we know we may have worked on a dozen other things that blossomed unseen, yet were necessary for us to have done. Optimism and the belief that our work is going to be worth it for some reason are the common bonds of our filmmaking community. And they extend beyond directors to every level of production: designers, assistant directors, editors and production assistants, each contributing in their own way to an act of creation that may or may not be celebrated but has intrinsic value beyond that conferred by the marketplace. That, I think, is the essence of the Directors Guild. It is a community of artists and craftspeople bound by their commitment to the work itself and the shared knowledge that flows from that commitment. This issue of Montage celebrates members of our community, some of whom have achieved great recognition and others who are, as my friend Tim Southam says, “unsung but still singing.” All are working at a level of mastery of their craft that transcends the capricious nature of celebrity. My thanks to editor Marc Glassman for his passion and tireless commitment to the publication.

Sincerely,

N E T S I L

UP THE CREATIVE DYNAMIC

STURLA GUNNARSSON PRESIDENT, DIRECTORS GUILD OF CANADA

editor’s note The fall issue of Montage always come out in time for the great wave of Canadian film festivals that highlight national and international work. As always, the DGC is well represented, with new films directed by Deepa Mehta, Sudz Sutherland, Michael McGowan, creatively supported by other Guild members and premiering at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). Their films and others will make their way around a national circuit that includes festivals from Vancouver to Halifax over the next few months. We congratulate them while recognising that festival feature films represent only a modest sampling of the work undertaken by DGC members. Guild members work on Canadian TV series like Rookie Blue and Bomb Girls as well as many productions—cinema and television—financed through the U.S. or co-produced with other nations but executed with great professionalism here, across the country. As the DGC publication, Montage takes its responsibility seriously: to focus on the work and professional concerns of all our members. We’re very pleased, for instance, to present a look at The Creative Dynamic, a day-long event sponsored by the DGC and the CMPA (Canadian Media Production Association), which investigated the changing relationship between TV directors and producers in Canada. This is an area of great importance to the Guild and, of course, for the future of broadcasting in this country. Among the participants were directors Peter Wellington, Kari Skogland and Warren Sonoda, director-producers Adrienne Mitchell and producers Jana Sinyor and David Barlow. Kudos must go to DGC director Michael Kennedy for putting this meeting together. The rise of the director-producer on television is a welcome development, supplementing the role of the showrunner, which has traditionally been a writer-producer function. To some extent, The Creative Dynamic explored that issue. In Nancy Lanthier’s profile of B.C.’s Gary Harvey (Arctic Air) and Montage’s interview with David Wellington (Saving Hope, Rookie Blue), we look at two Guild members who are pioneering the dual director-producer position in Canada. Production design is a key function in any film or TV show. In this issue, we look at two figures who have made their mark in that role. Stephen Stanley of Epitome Pictures designs both Degrassi and The L.A. Complex; Janis Cole explores what he does to make those shows remarkable. David Hackl’s designs for Saw helped to make that series of horror pictures into huge international hits. Now a film director, Hackl and his work are investigated by B-movie genre expert Chris Alexander. The DGC is concerned about the fate of the documentary, arguably our most important and intrinsically Canadian art form. How will long-form docs be produced in the coming years? In Paradigms a Dozen, producer and director Peter Wintonick (Manufacturing Consent, Cinema Vérité) surveys the doc scene in search of answers. Finally, we celebrate the annual Fall harvest of DGC features in a piece by regular contributor Adam Nayman. We hope you enjoy the new Montage and look forward to giving you a Winter holiday present: a special edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Directors Guild of Canada. Look for it in December.

On June 2, the DGC and the Canadian Movie Production Association co-sponsored The Creative Dynamic, an all day event at TIFF’s Bell Lightbox that explored the relationship between producers and directors working in Canadian television. Organised by veteran director Michael Kennedy (Little Mosque on the Prairie, Made in Canada), who also acted as host, the conference was divided into three panel discussions. Montage is pleased to present an abridged version of this important meeting. —MARC GLASSMAN

MARC GLASSMAN EDITOR

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1 MICHAEL KENNEDY’S SESSION PANEL 1

Clockwise from top. Left to right: Ken Girotti, Kari Skogland, Warren Sonoda; Michael Kennedy, Girotti, Skogland, Sonoda; Kennedy, Girotti, Skogland, Sonoda; attendees at the Bell Lightbox

MK: MICHAEL KENNEDY KG: KEN GIROTTI WS: WARREN SONODA KS: KARI SKOGLAND MK: If you directors are anything like me, you’re a paranoid bunch. One thing I know about directing is it’s a lot like sex, in that usually you never get to see somebody else doing it so you’re never sure if you’re doing the right thing. The one thing I wonder more than “Why didn’t they hire me for that job?” is “Why did they hire me?” I started thinking in the last year about what the heck am I doing and how do I judge if it’s good or not? Is it effective? Is it good directing? I started to think, “How do producers gauge that? How do they know what is good directing?” When I was a film student, nobody wanted to be a producer. There wasn’t a course offered on being one. Everybody wants to be a director or a hotshot cinematographer or maybe an editor. But producers—forget it! Then you graduate, and the real world hits and you quickly realise that directors don’t get to do anything without producers. They initiate so much. We need producers. Ken, is there anything you want to say about your role as a director and working with producers? KG: I’ve had experiences where you really are made to feel like a traffic cop. And I’ve had other experiences where I felt that what they want from me is the best that I can give them—to really push the envelope. When I was a young buck, every movie was going to

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be mine. If it got changed, there’d be the rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth and the crushing of half-inch videotapes on my living room floor. But as you grow, you realise you’re in it for the same reason the producer is—to make the best movie you can, to put bums in seats. You hope that it will selfperpetuate. You’ll work, they’ll work and it will all be a warm, wonderful world. I’ve found myself thinking, “Damn that producer for cutting that scene.” The producer isn’t to blame. It’s the network. We all have masters we serve in television. That was an interesting wakeup call for me—that producers wanted to make the same movie I wanted to make. The new role of the producerdirector on shows is interesting and I’ve had very positive and not-so-positive experiences. The first couple of times I experienced it, I didn’t know what to make of it, having another director there on set. I got paranoid. As I experienced it more and more, I thought, “Well, this is great. I’ve got a nice, little, soft landing place with a person who understands at least part of what my approach might be. There is only one important collaboration in any television show, and it’s usually with the showrunner. Sometimes, you’ll get into a situation where there’ll be three executive producers on a show and it will be tough to divine which one is the one you should be establishing the most intimate collaboration with. I think that is an important thing for a director to know. MK: Warren, how did you end up working on Todd and the Book of Pure Evil? WS: It’s funny, Michael, when you were showing those graphs at the beginning of the panel [see p. 10], as much as some people don’t think network approval is important,

for me, it was crucial. I was not network approved for the longest time. Until that happens, you can’t do television. It took a group of cool, young, very talented and tenacious producers to go to bat for me.

derailed, I find that the problems are usually egobased, whether it’s my bad ego or their bad ego. It’s really important to try to step back and think, “Am I the problem here or am I part of the solution?”

You’re absolutely right, Ken. You have to figure out who to talk to when you’re trying to get the tone and the intention behind what’s going on. On set, the producers were awesome. I could turn to them and say, “Is this right?” It’s been a great experience. Coming in on a show that was in its second season, I guess they wanted me to come and try some stuff out.

Whether it’s a television show or a TV movie or a film, I think the most important thing is communication. We’re all making the same show on the same budget. We know what problems we’re going to face together. Try to figure out all points of contention before you get there. That gives everybody certainty and a comfort zone.

I don’t have a lot of experience in television, so one of the things I said to the three of them was, “I’ll come in and shadow the show. I’ll see what’s going on and how you guys are accomplishing so much—including f/x—on this crazy schedule.” It’s very much like making small movies every week. In that way, it felt very comfortable to me. One thing I’ll always remember is when we were in the cafeteria and behind schedule. We were trying to get the shot and I turned to Andrew [Rosen, one of the producers] and asked, “What do you want me to do?” He said, “Make it good.” MK: How about you, Kari? KS: I’m respectful of any show that I walk onto, whether I’m doing a pilot or an episode in the middle of a season. It always comes down to the material. I’m always striving to make it better, somehow. Then when we can’t afford it—and in Canadian TV, you never can—you think, “The idea is good but how do we do it another way that we haven’t seen before and that we can afford?” I’ve generally had very positive relationships with producers. But I’ve had a few bastards. When a show or film is

MK: Kari, you’ve been working on shows that are being broadcast and partially financed by American specialty channels. What’s that like? KS: When I started directing The Borgias, and again on Boardwalk Empire, I had a very interesting, completely different experience than what I normally have doing TV shows. The producers on both shows want cinema. You’re not allowed to do a close-up. It opens your eyes. Suddenly you’re making a film. You’re given tremendous respect for what you do as the director. The producer and the showrunner on those particular shows expect you to bring your best game. They say, “What do you need? Go and get it. Make it great.” They’re saying that TV has changed. A lot of it isn’t the network paradigm any more. Now TV is cinema—it’s cinema in everybody’s home. That was really a unique, new paradigm to work in, and the quality of the show obviously reflects that mindset throughout the entire production. Instead of a sevenor eight-day schedule, we’re given 15 days on The Borgias. On Boardwalk, I had 17 days. You shoot four pages a day, never more. When that’s the case, you’ve got to muster up some great footage.

For an episode I directed of The Borgias, they built a castle. No kidding, a whole castle! So I was quite psyched.  WS: It’s like your bucket list.  KS: It was fun. In the show, the castle was under siege. We had to do a big action sequence. This wasn’t about performance, particularly, it was about logistics. The coproducer, Karen Richards, who I think the sun rises and sets by, had to go through some tough moments with me, like when I said, “We need the techno-crane for five days.” She’d ask things like, “How many extras would you like?” I’d say, “How many can we afford?” She’d say, “No, how many would you like?” “Uh, 75—wait a sec, let’s make that 150.” Everything was ratcheted up in a way I wasn’t used to. We shot in and around the castle for six days. I had a full B-unit to help me with some of the action sequences because we just couldn’t do it all. I was doing some A-unit at the same time. Karen showed up with some of the best people she could and we had a full unit going. Anyway, once she got the vision, which I had also storyboarded, her goal, as a producer, was to make it happen. I never had to beg or plead. She’d just say, “You’re going to need such and such, aren’t you?” I’d say, “Yeah, we could use that.” “Then you’ve got it.” She was thinking of the end result. Here’s a case where the producer really measured up in terms of always thinking about the show. She didn’t get lost in the minutia. Mind you, Karen can be tough too. She can say, “No, we’re not going to get that shot. We have to wrap by X.” But then she’d explain why that had to happen.

Above: attendees at the Bell Lightbox Below, left to right: Michael Kennedy, Ken GIrotti, Kari Skoglund

MK: Kari, I can imagine all the producers in the room are getting a bit itchy because you’re talking about fall 2012

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having 17-day-shoots and empowerment. I often think that, as directors, we’d shoot less and be done on time if we felt that producers were really backing our vision. We end up shooting a lot of stuff that we don’t really believe in because we’re trying to cover our ass. We’re all worried that a month from now in the edit room, the producer will say, “OK, go to him now for this” and the editor will reply, “Kennedy didn’t give you that shot.” At that point, you realise, “I won’t be back on that show.” KS: That’s absolutely right. We come from a fear base, and I’ve been burned, badly. I know what it’s like when people say, “She didn’t provide the coverage.” No one wants to mention that an actress won an award for a performance you didn’t cut into and that on the day, you saw it and went, “It doesn’t get better than that. It’s beautiful. Oh, and we’ll wrap on time.” People don’t remember those things. They just say, “We should have had a close-up.”

STURLA GUNNARSSON’S SESSION PANEL 2

Top: Michael Kennedy. Left: Warren Sonoda. Bottom: Kari Skoglund. Chart courtesy Michael Kennedy

But you also have to evaluate the look of the show. On Flashpoint, there are a lot of cuts; it’s a very close-up show. There you do have to do the coverage. David Frazee, who’s a fantastic directorshowrunner as well as having directed a gazillion of the shows, perfected the method that makes it doable with the hand-held look and the lighting style.

Above: Peter Meyboom and Jana Sinyor. Right, left to right: Sturla Gunnarsson, Andrew Rosen, Meyboom

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SG: STURLA GUNNARSSON DB: DAVID BARLOW JS: JANA SINYOR AR: ANDREW ROSEN PM: PETER MEYBOOM MK: MICHAEL KENNEDY MK: How can we make for better relationships? That’s the theme or point of the whole day. There were a lot of interesting responses to our survey, with “respect and communication” being high on the list. I was happy to see that many producers mentioned “should get the directors involved in the development of shows.” Producers were actually saying, “A director should not be treated as a technician. We should get in and tap their creative strengths more.” I think, just as directors are sometimes frustrated on a series work, producers sometimes also feel like a cog in a big machine. “To trust and have faith”—I loved reading that. Again, people pointed out that every show is different and every relationship is different. That’s both the challenge of our business and what keeps a lot of us going. Someone mentioned that a director has to figure out how to work with each cast member individually, to be effective and figure out how to work with each producer or showrunner on each show we come on— how to do our thing best with that person, that relationship. Now, the wrap-up question: Assess the relationship between directors and producers. Is it better today than earlier? I thought producers were very positive— it was either better, much better or the same. They were much more positive than the directors. 54 percent of the producers said that relationships were better or much better

while only 16 percent of directors agreed. Why do producers have a much more positive assessment of the relationship? Our next section is hosted by one of the few people who has won a Gemini and a Genie and an Emmy and gotten an Oscar nomination—the quadhit winner, my hero, Sturla Gunnarsson. SG: David, I have to start with you. You co-created Seeing Things with Louis Del Grande. Canada had not seen anything like this when it came out in 1981. Forty-three episodes, all directed by one man, George McGowan. Could you talk about the relationship you had with McGowan, and compare it to some of the more recent director relationships you’ve had?

DB: George had come from the theatre and worked in television in Canada. Then he’d gone to the United States and directed something like 200 episodes of episodic television, some movies and TV movies. He had family in Toronto and would come back regularly. So it was possible to get him to direct all the shows for us. The thing about George is that he was incredibly accomplished and completely relaxed about collaboration on the set. He created an atmosphere of trust, of confidence. He allowed the actors to try whatever they wanted to, and Lou always felt that he would protect him—tell him when it he was

giving too much or too little in a scene. George sat back a lot, partly because of age and health. He didn’t expend a lot of energy but when he spoke, he had something to say. If you’re a writer-producer, as I am, and you’ve been with the material for a certain period of time, what you really need is to hire a person who’s going to visualise it. You want to hear someone say, “This is my take, this is what I think I can do,” and to enter into that conversation with you. The best directors are good at communicating the way they see a particular episode in the context of your series, what they think in the script can be done better, what doesn’t need to be done to the extent that you, as a writer-producer, think it needs to be done, where you can find a way to

realise something that maybe is more ambitious than you can really afford. This is about the exchange. We’re not always going to agree but this is about getting into that and having somebody who’s got the confidence to say, “You’ve written this, but if you can put it on its feet this way, I think this is what’s going to happen. We have agreed in our discussion that this is what you really want to do with the story. I don’t know if you’re going to get there the way you’ve got it.” SG: Could you describe a situation on any of these shows where it just went sour? What went wrong with the director, and why?

DB: It’s like dating—it’s chemistry. If a scene goes badly, people tend to blame the actors, and I think they’re the last on the list. First you blame the writer, then you blame the director, then you blame the actor. If things go south between a producer and a director, I think you have to start by blaming the producer because they had a hand in hiring that director for that job, and they must have known what their own expectations were and their own style of working was. SG: Jana, how did you set up the visual style for Being Erica? JS : Holly Dale did the pilot. I had seen a bit of Durham County. I know that seems like a really odd choice: “She should totally direct Being Erica off of seeing Durham County.” I was so stressed out by Durham County, but something about what Holly had done with it was really appealing to me. I could see she was very talented. So we started having conversations with her. Holly is a very strong leader and she had a clear vision of what she wanted to do. Ultimately, she set up the visual language of the show. It was her thing to have Toronto be beautiful in the show. Showcasing Toronto became a huge part of the series. She did very stylistic stuff that we continue to use throughout the four seasons. It was really important to have her there at the beginning. SG: Andrew, what’s your ideal relationship with a director? AR: The ideal relationship with the director would be the one we have with Craig [David Wallace]. I mean, that’s a hyperrealised, ideal one, because he’s actually a co-collaborator, a creator of the show, but he also directed a lot of them. Warren Sonoda on Todd and the Book of Pure Evil is someone who’s willing to play in our parameters, in our playground, but he brought more to the table than we thought. fall 2012

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In What’s Up, Warthogs?, which is a three-camera sitcom, trust in the director to get their day is a major thing. We shoot one episode a day—that’s 38 pages. It’s a very different experience. Michael Kennedy was a director on some of those, and as a producer, I would really back him up. I’d say, “Here are the toys to play with, here are your parameters, work with the showrunner and just get the show done.” Whereas we brought Warren Sonoda in early so he could observe Todd and the Book of Pure Evil being directed by someone else. Then we had a tone meeting and worked on development, because each episode of Todd is like a minimovie. The most important job for directors is dealing with the actors. The director is the only person on set who works with the actors. I make sure that’s their focus. SG: Peter, you have had such a diverse career. You’ve worked on films and shows that are auteur-driven, like Good Dog, and really wellestablished, industrial-strength shows where you’re not looking for the director to reinvent the wheel for you. I wonder if you could talk a bit about the difference in your relationship with directors on those two extremes? PM: The relationship is sort of the same. I’m not a writerproducer. I’m usually the first-in and last-out kind of producer. I’m involved with the financing of shows. I’m involved with international sales of shows. I’m involved with development of shows. So the production aspect of the show is, in my realm of things, maybe a tenth of what the life of a show is all about. At the same time, it’s the most important, because if the shooting part doesn’t go well, or if the end product after the shooting is not as good as it could be, all those years you spent working on the project

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are wasted. The relationship with the director is one of the key relationships because, at a certain point, you let it go. You have to give it to somebody; you have to trust somebody. I’m not a big believer in having producers sitting on set looking over a director’s shoulder. My assumption is they know what they’re doing. If I could direct, then I’d be directing the show. At the same time, it’s a bit of a leap, because then you have to say, “OK, I trust you will make this good, so when you hand it back to me, I’ve got something.” With the auteur guys, I choose to work with them largely because I believe the point of view, their opinion, is interesting. Their personalities may not be exactly the kind you would want to have dinner with, but when you look at their body of work, you think, “Jesus, I wish I had done that with you” or “I wish I had produced that with you,” because their opinion merits support and the energy that it takes to put together a production. With a TV series, the relationship is different. In a way, it’s actually more trusting. You need to have a group of directors who are like-minded and who can step in and take on a leadership role in a multimillion-dollar enterprise. You need to give those people the ability, as much as you can, to do that. The only way to do that is to be as direct as you can with them and explain what the parameters are from a financial point of view, which really hasn’t been talked about very much today because it’s a boring subject for a lot of people. But money definitely comes into it. Once I get a sense that the director understands what the size of the sandbox is he gets to play in, my tendency is to step back and let him do his job. The assumption is that he can and the assumption is also, if he

can’t, he’ll come and say, “I’m stuck here, I need help with fill-in-the-blank.” There are so many moving parts in these projects that you can’t begin to guess what in fact is getting stuck. You need to have a very open relationship, but really the most successful ones are the relationships where you barely need to talk any more.

PW: PETER WELLINGTON

PETER WELLINGTON’S SESSION PANEL 3

AM: ADRIENNE MITCHELL BR: BRIAN K. ROBERTS MK: We asked producers, “What is it that directors just don’t seem to understand about producers and what they have to do?”

SG: Fear is the enemy. When fear creeps in, whether it’s on a personal level or because you feel it out there, it infects everything and people’s worst instincts come out. Secondguessing begins, things slow down and the work is not good any more. How do you deal with fear?

There are four general groups of answers. One is, “Directors don’t understand producers’ financial responsibility.” The second was rather predictable too: “Directors don’t understand that they are not the centre of the universe.”

DB: It’s about support. One of the biggest roles for a producer is to be supportive of the crew, of the director, of the actors. When fear arises, my line is, “It’s way too soon to panic, I’ll tell you when to panic.” You should be the last person who panics, or appears to be panicking. Good directors, even when they say they’re not sure how to do something, say it in a way that you feel confident they’ll find a way.

MK: MICHAEL KENNEDY

CDW: CRAIG DAVID WALLACE

The third category, which is actually quite significant, and I know it goes for both producers and directors, is: “The producers have a responsibility to the network.” Directors sometimes feel they’re being smothered or micromanaged by the producer. I know the producers and writers often feel they’re also just smothered and micromanaged by the network. Finally, producers said in the survey, “Directors have to appreciate that the producers have a creative input to give and directors should be respecting the producers’ creative abilities and input.”

Clockwise from top right: Sturla Gunnarsson. Andrew Rosen. David Barlow. Audience at the Bell Lightbox. Chart courtesy Michael Kennedy

Below left: Michael Kennedy. Right, left to right: Sturla Gunnarsson, Brian K. Roberts, Adrienne Mitchell, Craig David Wallace, Warren Sonoda, Peter Meyboom

The third panel is about people who have combined the role of producer and director. It’s hosted by director Peter Wellington, who directed Slings and Arrows and has recently been working with his brother, David, on Saving Hope and Rookie Blue. PW: I was once in a predicament [on Slings and Arrows] where I had to get 14 pages at Centennial Park with a couple different scenes with different parts of the cast in one day. So I had to farm out two notable actors from our

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series to the assistant director. He did a great job. I was over at another part of Centennial Park shooting and they had a lens that I needed so I said, “I don’t give a shit what they’re doing. Get that lens here.” Then I thought, “What are you doing? This is your episode and he’s directing part of it. Presumably he requires the lens.” I got competitive with my own show. That was one time where I felt like I saw where the problems can be for director-producers. BKR: I’m a director first and I lucked in to a few situations where I found a weird niche for myself as a creative producer-executive producer on projects. I started as an editor, then I became a writer, and I hated writing because there was too much “butt plus chair equals writing.” Then I migrated into directing and then producing. I think having had a hat on in every single position contributes to understanding what a director’s role is. I’ve been fortunate enough to be at the head of some series where I worked with the writing staff all the way from outline to first draft to second draft to shooting draft to production draft and then all the way through rewrites—like, if that joke doesn’t work, throw in another joke or let’s pitch it on the floor and push the comedy a little. I’ve had the opportunity to do these kind of jobs so I have a greater appreciation for exactly what the producer

does. In series television, it’s all about servicing the vision of the executive producer. It’s out of your brain. On The Debaters, it was a show that was somebody else’s idea that I co-opted and adapted for television. In terms of the way a director is supposed to operate with a showrunner and writer, it’s about getting into their minds and finding out what it is that they’re thinking. I’ve been working on streamlining that process. AM: What’s great about being a producer-director is your control. You are able to have continuity from the early stages of breaking down the story and thinking, “That’s the one I’m going to direct. I’m already thinking of things to shoot.” To be able to have longer prep, being able to have more time to do very ambitious things in a more economic way because you’ve figured it out. And you’ve got the access to the DP [director of photography] and the writer to make it all work. You get to do your director’s cut and your producer’s cut. You get continuity of vision. I’ve had a wonderful relationship with Janis Lundman, who’s an executive producer on all my shows. We’ve had a company for 22 years, and she’s been an incredible support—and it’s her money I’m going to lose if I fuck up. The pressure of that, knowing too much about the financial situation and how little money you have and all the inner workings of those

problems, can be difficult. As a producer, you’re dealing with things that other directors would not have to deal with: personality issues, dynamics, cash-flow issues and cast. When I’m just producing, those are things that I protect directors from worrying about. It is negotiation. I find that directors are coming to us with propositions, saying, “I’d really love to do this and I know it’s going to be a production issue, but here’s what I’ve got in my back pocket to save you here so I can do this.” I think that’s an incredible skill to learn. To a certain extent, you need to be clear with them on what the parameters on the budget are, but that’s a very achievable and workable way for a veteran director to work with the production and a producer. CDW: Another thing that’s great about being a writerproducer is you’re there all the time. If you’re in a situation where certain scenes are in a very limited location and are only going to show up in two episodes really far apart, you can pick up for that show where another director wouldn’t be able to. You can just go, “We’re in here anyway, let me just go in, grab the shot after you’re done your scene and we can throw that back to the editor.” It really helps to clean up everything—knowing the visual of the whole series and being able catch those little bits that you need to make the show more efficient.

from your film and television tax incentive and payroll services experts

From top left: Peter Wellington; Wellington, Craig David Wallace, Adrienne Mitchell, Brian K. Roberts; Wallace and Mitchell; Roberts. Right: Mitchell and Roberts

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FALL HARVEST: THE NEW CROP OF DGC FEATURES by ADAM NAYMAN

Left: James Cromwell in New Brunswick. Photo Mongrel Media. Right: Cromwell and Geneviève Bujold. Photo Ken Woroner

STILL DIRECTED BY MICHAEL MCGOWAN

In Michael McGowan’s new drama Still, a hardy Maritimer decides he wants to build a new house for himself and his wife—a decidedly rugged endeavour considering that he’s in his mid-eighties. “It’s based on a true story,” says McGowan, who will be returning to TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) after memorably opening the festival with his 2010 comedy Score! A Hockey Musical. “There was a guy in New Brunswick named Craig Morrison who, at the age of 88, started building a home.

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He did everything from cutting the lumber to nailing the boards. And then he ran into problems with the authorities. It was a pretty crazy case.” McGowan says that he was drawn to Morrison’s tale partly because he’d once worked as a carpenter, and that he’d already been working on a script with similar themes. “I went out there and was charmed by him, and decided to make this the next movie.” The challenge was to keep the real-life narrative blueprint intact while making the necessary dramatic renovations. Art can only imitate life so far. “Some stuff in the film is obviously a little bit fictionalised,” says McGowan, “but all the major plot points are as they really

happened to Craig and [his wife] Irene.” To play his central couple, McGowan pursued a pair of Oscar nominees: James Cromwell and Geneviève Bujold. “It’s always a balancing act in terms of who you can get while staying within the budget,” says McGowan, who has generally tried to use Anglo-Canadian stars in his work (i.e. Joshua Jackson in One Week and the hoser-ish ensemble of Score). “We were very fortunate in this case. They’re both aging up in the film; they’re not as old as their characters. There aren’t a lot of working actors who can play these sorts of roles. It’s a small list, and we’re thrilled that they agreed to do it.”

Shot primarily in Northern Ontario with a few East Coast exteriors, Still was a small production. It was also shot remarkably quickly, in less than five weeks. McGowan says that’s nothing new for him, however. “It’s a good pace, but we had two actors who were up for it,” he says. “It didn’t feel crazy to me, considering that Score was shot in the same period of time.” It’s possible that critics will insist that Still is a change of pace in a different way, that after the big, crowd-pleasing thrust of Score it represents a shift into a more intimate register. McGowan isn’t so sure that this is the case. “One Week was really a film about

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN one character,” he says, “and the same was true of Saint Ralph. It is a small, intimate film but that said, it involved building a house, using different locations. No matter how small a film is, things happen to make it bigger. “It’s also not really a departure,” he adds. “I always try to do things that have some art and some humour, and some good story-telling—all those different elements. Hopefully they feel different each time but it’s still definitely something that I made.”

DIRECTED BY DEEPA MEHTA

In 2008, Deepa Mehta released Heaven and Earth, which juxtaposed realistically cluttered Burlington portraiture with the long, clean lines of an ancient fable. So it’s fair to ask if her adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children is evidence that the Genie Award-winning director has a thing for magic realism. As it turns out, she doesn’t. “I don’t agree that I have ‘become more interested in magic realism,’” says Mehta via e-mail a few weeks before the film is slated to make its

world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Magic realism, though an essential part of Midnight’s Children, is not all the novel, nor the film, is about. People tend to forget the ‘realism’ half of ‘magic realism.’” She says that her biggest influence in keeping the film grounded in reality was Japanese master Kenji Mizoguchi’s sublime Ugetsu (1953), in which she says the director “did the impossible, in my opinion: he created an unreal or ghostly world based totally on the real world.” That’s also the trick of Rushdie’s novel, which won the Booker Prize upon its initial publication and is considered one of the author’s

best works. It concerns a group of children born in the shadow of Partition. Its narrator, Saleem Sinai, grows up with psychic powers that seem connected to the exact date and time of his birth. The idea of a generation on the same tenuous telepathic wavelength has been interpreted by most critics as an allegory of Indian cultural solidarity, and Mehta says that she was struck by how Rushdie was able to “inventively personalise” an entire country’s post-colonial history. “Like most folks who I knew and were reading Midnight’s Children at around the same time, I was quite simply blown away,” recalls Mehta. It was like nothing I

Clockwise from bottom left. Left to right, Anita Majumdar (Emerald), Rahul Bose (General Zulflkar. Writer Salman Rushdie and director Deepa Mehta. Charles Dance (William Methwold). Left to right: Shashana Goswami (Mumatz/Amina), Ronit Roy (Ahmed Sinai). Photos Hamilton Mehta Productions and Mongrel Media

had read in the English language. In fact Salman Rushdie had reinvented it—in a way, ‘chutneyfied’ it, if you will. So it had enormous resonance for me and millions of others.” The specificity of Rushdie’s language and sensibility meant that Mehta wanted him to contribute to the film version. Midnight’s Children marks the first time that the illustrious author has produced a feature-length screenplay. “We worked on it closely, and it’s been the easiest, most fun collaboration I have been a part of,” says Mehta. She resists drawing any sort of parallel between her own struggles against religious fundamentalists after the release

of Fire in 1998 and Rushdie’s infamous situation when a fatwa was pronounced against him after the publication of his novel, The Satanic Verses. “Yes we have both had our share of persecution and condemnation by religious groups, and Salman’s, as the world knows, was horrific and despicable. To tout this link of misfortune is sort of a downer.” She says her connection with Rushdie has more to do with “our love for India, for Indian semi-classical music and growing up in India in a certain era. There are certain references that we just understood instinctively.”

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Clockwise from top centre. Left to right: Art Hindle (Ron Baxter) and Vincent Walsh (Callum). Tensions rise at a pop-up restaurant. Vincent Walsh (Callum), Joris Jarsky (Andrew) and Miranda Calderon (Jenny). The cooks preparing a dish. A nervous meeting with steak tartar. The pop-up restaurant table. Left to right: Richard Zeppiera (Michael Bardor) and Vincent Walsh (Callum). Photos Michael DeCarlo, Andrew Kowalchuk and Purple Pictures

TWO HANDS TO MOUTH DIRECTED BY MICHAEL DECARLO

Veteran television director Michael DeCarlo had two words in mind when prepping his new film Two Hands to Mouth. Those words were “lurid” and “elegant.” Set entirely inside a posh restaurant that comes to double as a sort of bare existential space— a sort of Sartrean dinner party—Two Hands to Mouth does justice to these seemingly contradictory impulses. For all of its highly stylized dialogue (the film is wall-towall talking) it’s easily one of the most distinctive-looking

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Canadian first features in recent memory. DeCarlo uses strong, dynamic compositions and boldly colour-coded lighting to bolster the underlying (and at times overwhelming) sense of claustrophobia and mania. It’s a crowded movie, and that also extends to the circumstances of its production. DeCarlo shot the film in 15 days with one camera, which is even more amazing when you consider that there are more than a dozen characters in it, all of whom are vying for screen time. “On some days there were 14 actors in the room,” he says. “It is very unusual to see a film with that many principals and more unusual to see them in a film

of our scope. This is an intense and demanding film for the cast. We shot a lot of 15- and 20-minute takes and then we would do it again. And then again. This is the most shooting I have ever done in one day. [And he did it again and again.] This was truly an immersive experience for the performers and crew. Also a consuming one.” DeCarlo says that he and ace DP Steve Cosens drew on the paintings of Francis Bacon for visual inspiration. He also name-checks Sidney Lumet, Luis Buñuel, Sam Peckinpah and Quentin Tarantino. (Now that would be a dinner party.) “I was aware of the cinematic tradition of violence,” he says. “The violence in the film,

both physical and emotional, is informed by character. I tried to create an emotional and physical world that explores intimate and tender moments as well as violence and cruelty.” Two Hands to Mouth is definitely violent, but it’s also about where violence comes from. Without spoiling the twist-filled screenplay it’s enough to say that DeCarlo is at least as interested in larger systems of economic brutality as close-quarters gunplay. “Certainly the economic chaos of the last few years informed the script,” says DeCarlo. “At the same time, this is a narrative and dramatic film, not a political soap box. The multi-character cast allows for many voices and personalities

to co-exist and interact with each other. And like any good dinner guests, they discuss politics!” One of the strengths of Two Hands to Mouth is that its characters rarely sound like they’re speaking in the same voice, which is also a compliment to the actors, a vivid gallery of faces familiar from Canadian film and television. If there’s a star turn, though, it belongs to that old pro Art Hindle, who slips into the skin of a well-moneyed creep with serpentine finesse. “Art is a wonderful guy and a passionate advocate of Canadian filmmaking and acting,” says DeCarlo. “We talked about the role. He had a previous life in the world of business, so he had some real

insight into the character. He’s an excellent actor. He’s handsome and charming and has the intensity to reveal the darkness that lurks within that character.” Adam Nayman writes for The Grid, The Globe and Mail, Montage and The Walrus and is a contributing editor to Cinema Scope

Twelve Years of Suite Service

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GARY HARVEY’S ROLE AS ARCTIC AIR’S EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OFFERS THE COMPLETE EXPERIENCE

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by NANCY LANTHIER With production of the television airplane adventure show Arctic Air’s second season going full-tilt right now (for a January premiere), you’re likely to find the show’s director/producer Gary Harvey calmly commanding umpteen projects at once. He’s probably manning the floor at the massive studio in Abbotsford, B.C. where interior scenes for the series are filmed, discussing a script change with an actor or approving set details. On his laptop are the next week’s film schedule in Yellowknife and a list of concerns about polar bears; his iPhone buzzes with texts about hailstorm special effects and aircraft availability for an imminent bomb-threat episode. To one of the dozens of crew members who approaches, the first thing he’ll say is, “How may I give you a hand?” Harvey, who has directed more than 115 episodes of television and has produced eight TV series, is now at the helm of the most challenging show of his career. Focusing on a Yellowknife-based maverick airline, Arctic Air relies on stories that depict a deep connection to the far north, a world where you can’t help but feel the land is greater than you. Constantly running the sizeable cast, crew and equipment load to Yellowknife to shoot all the outside scenes for a series where everything else is filmed in a studio near Vancouver demands some serious algorithms to maintain all manner of continuity. And with every episode thriving on a mid-air flight fright, whether it’s an onboard fire or a hijacking, much of the intense drama is set within the confines of planes soaring through the sky. And then, of course, he has to contend with a Canadian-sized budget, which must be carefully marshalled to ensure that the production works. As more than a few involved have admitted, the series could have failed in a truly spectacular way, but Arctic Air just happens to be CBC’s most successful series debut in 15 years, with an average audience of nearly one million. It earned nine Leo Award nominations (scoring one for best writing). And according to the CBC, the risks will be ramped up in season two, with stories dealing with everything from forest fires to hired killers. Harvey, who turns 50 this year, appears remarkably serene about it all. In mid-July, when I visit the vast, hangar-like set, situated on a farm an hour east of Vancouver, he is easy-going and generous with his time. Dressed in a crisp white shirt, jeans and designer glasses, his attire adds a hit of cool to his small

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Opposite: Gary Harvey on the set of Arctic Air. Photo Bettina Strauss

THE DIRECTOR FLIES EXECUTIVE CLASS

stature, good-times girth and boyishly round face. He tours me through the set’s wingless, but still awesome-looking, DC3, showing how every part of it, even the cockpit windows, can be removed or adjusted, to accommodate cameras, and then he points out ways that the hydraulics can make the plane appear to dive and sway. Around the corner, we drop into sets of Yellowknife’s Bullock’s Bistro and the Frontier Hotel. Throughout a day that includes several hours of film-set supervision, along with two meetings, one with his production team to conceptualise that polar-bear episode, the other to view location slides for one of two shows that he will direct this season, Harvey comes across as an organised, grounded team player. So it’s not surprising when he says his transformation from director to executive producer “came naturally.” He says the two roles meld together; they’re so interconnected that he finds “it difficult to separate them.” On set, the actors and crew don’t seem to differentiate the roles either. When the cameras are rolling, he’s a co-director. I see him requesting a hairstyle change, conferring with production designers about the sets, dealing with the director of photography about a monitor issue. When the star of the show, Kevin McNulty (who plays the co-owner of the Arctic Air airline), feels he needs to adjust his lines, and the episode director Anthony Atkins is otherwise engaged, he takes it up with Harvey. During a break between takes, McNulty says, “Some directors, it’s almost as if they have a shorthand with actors, which actors understand. A lot of directors don’t have that. But Gary has it.” McNulty, who has worked with Harvey several times in the 15 years they’ve known each other, says that dealing with him is “just really comfortable. He’s done everything on set. He’s come up from the bottom to the top, he knows what everybody does and he knows how to talk to people. He doesn’t pressure you.” Later, when I phone Arctic Air’s show creator, Ian Weir, to ask about the skills Harvey brings to his executive producer role, Weir is unequivocal: “All of Gary’s instincts for the job come from his talent as a director.” A few kilometres away, atArctic Air’s headquarters (on the drive to which, Harvey talks music the entire time; his collection is vast and eclectic and he’s known to spend hours making mixed tapes for parties), the director’s hat comes off and his executive producer (EP) role becomes more apparent. It’s a gig, Weir less than helpfully tells me, that “can describe any number of dozens and dozens of different functions. It’s one of those really amorphous terms. What really good EPs do is define the role in a new way for themselves.” As we walk the halls, Harvey points out all the show departments: costume, editing, special effects, writing, publicity and accounting, among them, several people toiling away in each (the show employs 152 people, of whom Harvey knows 90 percent by name). The building is a former elementary school and each unit has its own classroom. Harvey is like the principal, though his office is the kindergarten; class art still decks the walls. Harvey must have a “sense of the overall organisation, the overall production model,” Weir explains. “And he does have a wonderful understanding of the practicalities of what the TV machine actually is.” At a long table in his office, Harvey says his key responsibility at Arctic Air is to ensure aesthetic consistency in terms of such matters as storylines, characters (and the actors who portray them), the choice of locations and sets, and the style of the show—for example, the camerawork and the way special effects are treated. It’s a collaborative effort, he says repeatedly, especially involving the show’s two other EPs, Weir and Bob Carney, but this is where he essentially takes charge, “deciding what fits into the aesthetic and what doesn’t.” These days, the public, too, has a lot of input on the topic. CBC’s intensive marketing campaign for the series has resulted in a list of audience turn-ons the producers know well: more of first nations star Adam Beach, more Northwest Territories, more aviation. Conceptualising the whole system that governs the creative side of the series inspires Harvey because it allows him to see each episode through from concept to completion. “When you’re just a director, you prep your episode, shoot it, deliver it and you walk away. As executive producer, you don’t just prep the episode, you prep the whole show and see it all the way through post-production. It’s very much like directing a feature film. You have more control over everything. Taking that journey through the whole thing—that’s really of interest to me, and this position gives me the most ability to do that in television. If I decided tomorrow that all I wanted to do is feature films, I would be fully satisfied in that very same process.” Certainly, directing is Harvey’s first love. He started producing only as a trade-off so he could direct. He got lucky in the mid-’90s, working on Fore-

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front Entertainment’s Madison, where he did every conceivable job—likely even whipping up grub. His best friend, film and TV composer Daniel Ross, says Harvey is a “great, creative cook” who would make food for everybody on Indie film projects. When he was asked to be production manager for the series, his agreement was conditional on directing an episode, which ended up being nominated for a Gemini Award. Ross, who has known Harvey for 30 years, remembers discovering that his friend was dauntless. “When his peers didn’t know how to take the next step, he would just go forward and make it happen. You could just see this constant yearning and forward-leaning fearlessness in him.” For the same company the following season, Harvey produced The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, again with a guarantee of directing. He directed five of the season’s 13 episodes. Then he started to freelance direct on other shows, including Being Erica, The Border, Wild Roses, Exes and Ohs, Godiva’s and Traders.

Clockwise from top: Adam Beach (Bobby Martin) and Pascale Hutton (Krista Ivarson). Photo Ed Araquel. Behind the scenes in an Arctic Air plane. Photo Eike Shroter. Gary Harvey (right) shares a moment with Beach and Hutton. Photo Bettina Strauss. Beach and Hutton. Photo Ted Kotcheff at the DGC Awards Eike Schroter dinner, 2011

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He believes “that the tone of an entire operation starts at the top,” and that being calm and collected “is actually part of what I need to do to keep everybody on task. It’s not to say that I don’t stand firm on some things, and there are issues I’ll get anxious about, but I’m not one to bellow. I certainly don’t have that in my demeanour at all.” He would much rather foster an environment where ideas are freely brought to the table. “I think it’s the way to get the best out of our people, and they respond to it because they all feel like

Harvey’s path is part of an industry shift that recognises some directors can fill a niche in producing the creative aspects of a TV series He went on to be a director/producer for such critically acclaimed shows as Cold Squad, Alice, I Think and Robson Arms. Harvey’s path to producing represents a shift in an industry that now recognises the potential of some directors to fill a niche in producing the creative aspects of a television series, in the same way the industry embraced writers as producers and showrunners. Television production teams don’t just comprise number-crunchers. The best model includes representatives from the creative side as well. While Harvey is quick to admit that the part of producing that involves financing will never be his forte, he does enjoy meetings with CBC and Omni Film Productions, which owns Arctic Air (as well as its reality TV show inspiration, Ice Pilots). He says he likes figuring out how best to meld the network’s wishes and the writers’ aspirations “to create one cohesive package.” Weir comments that every good producer has keen people skills. “To me, it’s quite analogous to what a director does with actors,” he says, adding, “Gary is always collaborative but he never hesitates to speak his mind. Which I think is a perfect combination. You always know where you stand with Gary. He’s always forthright.” For directors, working with an EP who knows the chair as well as Harvey is a bonus, according to Anthony Atkins, who has worked with him for years. “You know going in it’s going to be a supportive and properly run environment. He’s used to taking something from the page, putting it on the floor and onto the screen. He brings that practical directing perspective to the behindthe-scenes operations, which really helps.” At the same time, Atkins says he feels he has complete autonomy on the floor. “Gary lets you do your thing. He really encourages me to put my own stamp on it. But he has good ideas in terms of putting everything together in the context of the overall series.” Harvey has given a great deal of consideration to the way he leads his crew.

they’re being valued in the process. It’s such a giant collaborative machine,” he adds. “There are so many moving parts in this entire thing. There’s not one right answer; there are several right answers.” It is doubtful Harvey would be disclosing leadership technique at all if it wasn’t for his gift that landed him his executive position: directing. His skills are flashed in just one episode of Arctic Air’s first season, the cliff-hanging finale, which features a deadly crash in the northern wilderness, complete with splayed plane parts, gushing arteries and a woman losing her mind. It’s a high-wire feat of bravura story-telling, directed with taut restraint and some breathtakingly real moments. “I was amazed by the emotional intensity that he managed to sustain over the course of four acts,” says Weir. “I thought it was going to be a real challenge, given the way [script writer] Sara Dobbs ramped up the emotional intensity very early on and then maintained it. It’s tricky for a director to pull off because you can tire out the audience. You can start to go one note. I thought Gary did a wonderful, musical job. That season finale was the culmination of the whole season. When I first saw a rough cut of the episode, in terms of the acting, the visual story-telling style, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the show we were trying to work towards all season long. And Gary’s pulled it off.’” Harvey, whose 22-year-old son, Dylan, works as an assistant in his office (he also has a 19-year-old daughter, Riley, with his high-school-sweetheart wife, Nicki), hopes it’s true what fans say—that Arctic Air is the new Beachcombers. That show lasted 19 seasons, a record in Canadian television history. “If we can keep this season on track and deliver the same way we did last year,” muses Harvey, “then I think it’s got a long life. I always consider that my biggest job every season is getting another one.” Nancy Lanthier is an entertainment journalist at The Vancouver Sun. She enjoys making short videos.

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DAVID in conversation with…

by MARC GLASSMAN

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Photo: Chris Chapman

David Wellington has built a career that is unique in Canada. Working with producer Ilana Frank and writer-producer Tassie Cameron, he is an essential part of a triumvirate of talent that has created two of the biggest hits currently running on television in Canada and the U.S., Rookie Blue and Saving Hope. The trio, augmented by such talents as cinematographer David Perrault, editor Tessa Hannigan, writer/ producers Esta Spalding, Ellen Vanstone and Morwyn Brebner and many others, have made some of the best Canadian TV in recent times, including the mini-series Would Be Kings and the well-liked TV drama The Eleventh Hour. Wellington started his career in the cinema auteur vein, scoring signal successes with I Love a Man in Uniform and a brilliant adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. He’s retained the skills he developed in cinema and has expanded his range as a director-producer for television. One of the first Canadians to take on the roles of series director and producer, Wellington’s work as a leader relating to other members of the producing team as well as to heads of art and costume departments, cinematographers, editors and, crucially, actors has been exemplary. Montage spoke to him at Technicolor, a post-production facility in downtown Toronto, where he was working on Rookie Blue and Saving Hope.

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David Wellington filmography Director/producer, TV Saving Hope, series (2012-) Rookie Blue, series (2010-) Would Be Kings, mini-series (2008) The Eleventh Hour, series (2002-2005) Director, TV Queer as Folk, series (2001-2005) Blessed Stranger, TV movie (2000) Restless Spirits, TV movie (1999) The Kids in the Hall, series (1994 Director, Film Long Day’s Journey into Night (1996) I Love a Man in Uniform (1993)

M: Marc Glassman, Montage editor DW: David Wellington M: Directors have always said that casting is the key element in making a film work. As the director-producer, you have a say in the casting on your shows. How important is casting for TV series like Rookie Blue and Saving Hope? DW: It’s a huge deal, especially finding the leads. For Rookie Blue, [the producing team of] Ilana Frank and I and Tassie Cameron spent five months casting just those five kids [leads Missy Peregrym, Gregory Smith, Charlotte Sullivan, Enuka Okuma, Travis Milne]. On Saving Hope we had less time because when that show got ordered, it was [snaps fingers], let’s get going! They wanted it right away. Scripts and casting are about 80 percent of what makes a show work. If you look at the shows Ilana and I and Tassie have been doing, going back to The Eleventh Hour (2002-2005), we’ve been going to the same actors a lot because there’s a comfort level with them. They’re really good—competent and fun. Usually, when we’re looking at actors, whether it’s a lead role or even a small role, we’re looking for somebody who can deliver the dialogue in a reasonable facsimile of a natural manner. But we’re also looking for somebody who’s got a little something special, a quality they can bring to the part. In the audition, one of the things Ilana, Tassie and I try to do is make the actors relaxed. It’s a matter of giving the actor permission and time to show you what they have. If an actor leaves an audition and feels like they showed you their best thing, that’s good for them and good for you. We take more time than a lot of people do. M: As a director, how do you work with actors? DW: A lot of directors, who are really, really good with actors will shoot a lot of takes. I used to shoot lots of takes when I was young but as I get older I shoot fewer and fewer. I’m less inclined to force an actor into a place where I think the scene should be and trying to have my eyes open a little bit more and let it be what it wants to be. Not in a wishy-washy way, but just being open to telling the story in a slightly different way. Ideally if the casting is on, the actor is going to bring something that I didn’t expect. It’s going to be great for me and everyone else. M: I find that in a lot of successful TV series, the actors develop chemistry over the first year. They begin to gel into a team. Do you find that? DW: I found that in the extreme on Rookie Blue when we shot the pilot and the actors didn’t know each other. They’re all incredibly smart, fun, charismatic

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M: Setting the tone for the show always seems to be the crucial element that a director-producer brings to a show. Going back to The Eleventh Hour, you’ve been involved in creating the visual style and pace of a show. Can you talk about that how that actually works? DW: Yeah, I’ve done it a lot. When we did The Eleventh Hour I think I was really green. I’d only been a director up to that point and hadn’t had the responsibility of giving the show a look. I found it a bit overwhelming at the time. Fortunately I had great people supporting me: an amazing production designer, John Dondertman, who built the most glorious set with basically no help from me, wonderful scripts by Semi Chellas, who is now writing for Mad Men, and great DPs [directors of photography], David Franco, who shot some early ones, and then Steve Cosens, Malcolm Cross and David Perreault. Now, in a job that very easily gets complicated, I try to do things as simply as possible. The first thing I started off with was just literally a palette of colours that I arrived at after talking to the designer and the DP. I wanted something on paper that could be circulated to the departments saying, “These are the tones we’re looking for, this is what the show is going to look like.” On Rookie Blue, I pulled about 2,000 reference pictures of people on the street and cops and all sorts of other visuals that appealed to me and boiled it down into a colour photocopy of a pot of honey, a rose and an ink spill. So it was like blue, gold and red. It seemed like a long, Byzantine journey to come up with the show’s colours, but we still use those as the kind of heart of it. I started there and went to wardrobe. Because Rookie was a cop show we wanted to know what they were going to be wearing. Again, there were a lot of pictures. Tassie and Ilana and I talked with Anne Dixon, who was the costume designer for the first year, and came up with something that worked for us. Then there was the set layout. James McAteer is really experienced and into his own dangerous methods so he didn’t need much help from me. When I look back at The Eleventh Hour, Rookie Blue and Saving Hope I feel that I’ve been a bit of a one-trick pony because it’s glass, glass, glass all the time. There’s a lot of glass on the set of Saving Hope. It’s really hard to shoot in because it’s just like shooting in a giant mirror. We try to go departmentally and work up from the general palette. We go from a human being out to the space they’re going to be in. As I’ve developed, I’ve realised that on TV the look is a really big deal. So it’s been interesting doing this new show [Saving Hope] and we’ve been taking some chances with the look of it. We made a bold decision to put flares all over it, which some people like and some people don’t. That’s important, especially for somebody who might be giving your show a 10-second look to see if it’s for them. You have to give them something to look at for those 10 seconds. M: David, what about pace and rhythm? Do you find that things have gotten faster over the decade in terms of the pacing you have, even inside a scene? DW: I admit sometimes, maybe because I’m 50, it’s even a little too fast for me. I do sometimes go at a more cinematic pace, but I’m often dressed down for that and reminded that’s not what’s supposed to happen on TV. The pacing is relentless but that’s what we’re striving to achieve. You’ve got to make a 43-and-a-half-minute show in seven days. It’s quick. We shoot a minimum of eight pages a day. They’re complicated pages too. On Saving Hope, there’s all this medical equipment and there are prosthetics and injured people and machines all over the place. We’ve had incredible medical advisors and consultants on the floor all the time helping us. It’s a hard thing to do quickly.

Tassie Cameron, Ilana Frank and David Wellington

Photo: Chris Chapman

Selected Filmography

kids and as time went on they became really good friends. I mean, several of them started to live together. They’re that tight now. So we ended up reshooting the beginning of the pilot of Rookie Blue five months into the season, and of course you can see in that first scene that they’re all friends. That’s something that you didn’t see for the first couple of shows. We encouraged this camaraderie on Saving Hope. You try to have dinners, “Let’s go out to dinner, let’s hang out,” because you want the cast to be together so they can get to know each other and try to get some of that chemistry which inevitably translates on screen.

M: Did you do that for Rookie Blue, too? Do you have cops around? DW: As much as we have time for, we have police around. But you’ll find even with the cops on Rookie Blue and the doctors on Saving Hope, if you talk to two police officers you’ll probably get two pretty different opinions about how to handle a certain situation. Likewise, for doctors. I don’t know if I’m fall 2012

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surprised by that. You try to be as real as possible but also, quite frankly, more than trying to be real you’re trying to be entertaining. I mean the reality of a police officer’s life is not like any TV show. Especially in the early going, Rookie was criticized for being light and fluffy and not gritty, but of course we did that on purpose. Tassie was very clear on this early on and she was right about it. She wanted to make a fun, summer show. So that’s what we did. M: You’ve been working as a producer-director with Ilana Frank and Tassie Cameron for a decade. Other key creatives include Esta Spalding, Ellen Vanstone and Morwyn Brebner. How do you divide up your roles?

Left, from Rookie Blue: left to right Charlotte Sullivan (Gail Peck), director David Wellington and Travis Milne (Chris Diaz). Photo Chris Chapman Below, from Rookie Blue: left, Ben Bass (Sam Swarek) and Missy Peregrym (Andy McNally); right, Gregory Smith (Dov Epstein) and Peregrym. Photos Entertainment One/Caitlin Cronenberg Bottom, from Saving Hope: left, Erica Durance (Dr. Alex Reid) and Michael Shanks (Dr. Charlie Harris); right, Durance and Daniel Gillies (Dr. Joel Goran). Photos Entertainment One/ Ken Woroner

DW: Ilana, Tassie, Esta and I had done Would Be Kings together, and, of course, Tassie and Ilana and I had worked even earlier on The Eleventh Hour so when we came out with Rookie Blue, we didn’t have to meet to discuss how it was going to work. Our roles just sort of evolved organically. Ilana is the overlord of things. She is the closer—she gets the shows made and does all the incredibly complex and difficult things that are involved in that. But Ilana is also really intuitively, creatively great. Ilana has great instincts about things and she’ll weigh in if she thinks things don’t feel right, which might be a hundred times a day or once. Tassie is the big brain that thinks up all the stories and is involved in all the scripts and I just fell into being the visual look, shots, editing and music guy. Of course we do all those things together, too. The music is a big part of television, and David Hayman is our music supervisor. He picks songs that I listen to. After I choose one or two that I think will work best, Tassie and Ilana will get involved and once we all agree, we send it to the networks. There’s lots of overlap, and it’s hard for me to define, because it feels like I’m either in pre-production on the show or directing a show or giving a set of notes with Ilana on every script, just to track the arc of the season. For me, it’s a lot of post for me, post, post, post, post. Cutting picture, doing network notes, temping in music, putting in songs, colour grading, effects, titling, all that stuff.

are all smart, thoughtful, forward-thinking people and will usually ask questions or, better, make suggestions about where a character might go. I know I’m starting to sound like Pollyanna—all team, team, team—but it really is. It’s what’s great about the job. I love collaborating with people, I love sitting in a room and throwing ideas around and I’m thrilled when somebody has a great idea and it makes something better. I find that there’s something fundamentally joyful in the exchange. M: What happens if it isn’t going right? Who goes back to the head writer or to the group of writers and says, “We’ve got to change this”? DW: Well, this is one of the unique things about the producer-director job. It’s difficult for an episodic director to come in and rip the script apart. But I can make changes. The big difference between just being a director and being a director-producer is that I work here all the time. I get a lot more input into scripts—even the ones that I’m not directing. It’s tricky, if you’re coming on a TV show and you’re not there all the time, to ask for a lot of changes. You’ve got to figure the producers know what the show is that they want to make. But I am able to take those things for granted because I’m here all the time. I’m fortunate enough to have a sense of what the show is, since I’m sending notes on all the scripts and tracking the kind of overall arc of the 13 episodes. M: So part of that is, in advance of the shooting, getting the script absolutely honed down? DW: Oh, yeah. A good script shoots very easily, more quickly, more cheaply. Challenging scripts are just hard to do. You need to solve more problems, they take longer and cost more money. Nobody likes that. M: Assuming that you hit a challenge, what do you do? Maybe one of the leads isn’t feeling like it’s going in the right direction. What happens then? DW: Happens all the time. That actor will, depending on the heft of the complaint, talk to the showrunner. Maybe the actors don’t have all the information. Maybe this is episode seven and they don’t know in episode 11 they are going to be marrying this character. They go, “Oh, I’m marrying her, I get it.” So that goes right back to the showrunner and the writers. The casts on both shows are so respectful of the writing because it’s the hardest thing. It’s really, really hard.

David Wellington & Tassie Cameron on the set of Saving Hope. Photo Entertainment One/Rafi

M: What happens when you introduce a new character, not a guest, but someone new, into a series, which you’re doing—for example, in Rookie Blue? M: In terms of script, how does it all evolve? DW: Tassie’s the showrunner on Rookie Blue, and for Saving Hope, it’s Aaron Martin and Morwyn Brebner. They have a writing room, arc the season, break all the stories and come up with the scripts. Usually, Ilana and I see things once they’re outlined, as do the networks. If there’s something that’s seems hinky or I’ve got an idea, I throw it in. Then I’ll try to track it down right up until it starts shooting. Once it starts shooting, it’s out of my hands. I watch dailies. M: What sort of control do you exercise with the directors hired to do episodes that you’re not shooting? DW: When we engage a director to do the show, the director does the show. We have a tone meeting, usually if the director hasn’t done it before, where we walk through the script and make sure everybody’s on the same page. We cover a lot—the simple things like ‘This is supposed to be funny and this is not,’ to make sure that everybody kind of knows what’s going on and gets a rough idea of what the shooting is going to be like. We’re pretty hands off after that, especially because the directors we have—John Fawcett and T.W. Peacocke and Steve DiMarco, and my brother, Peter, and Sturla Gunnarsson— are all really experienced people. Once you hand it off, it always seems insane to manage them from behind, and also not that much fun. M: Do the episodic directors get a sense of the arc of character over the season, or is it really more in the actor’s head? DW: Yeah, that’s a good question. If we know, they’ll know. If someone is coming to shoot episode six, they’re going to get to see the first five shows, so they understand: “This where we were and where we’re headed for.” These

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DW: It’s really fun and stressful because you’re looking for somebody, especially on Rookie Blue, who is going to fit in to the gang. A lot of what Ilana and I do in episodic casting and with Tassie on casting the leads, is say, ‘Don’t spend so much time on reading the scene.’ A couple of times is okay, but sitting and talking to the actor, the person, and getting the sense of what they’re like is, for all of us, hugely important. Eventually you want the actor to read the scene because the network’s going to look at it and that’s all-important, but getting a sense of what kind of person they are gives you a long term understanding of the kind of character they could do for you. M: Do you try to find actors who at least have known each other a bit? DW: I don’t think we’ve ever consciously done that. A lot of times they do know each other because they’ve worked together, but it’s not the same as being together for 13 hours a day, at least, every day. These guys in Rookie Blue usually hang out for the entire off season, then come back and do it again. So they really are insanely close-knit. But Peter Mooney stepped in and in just three days was a part of the gang. So that was a good one. It’s really hard looking for that special thing. M: Is your relationship mainly with the key creatives in each department? DW: I mostly deal with the keys in certain departments. I deal with the production designer, the art designer, set designer, costume designer a lot. Benno Tutter [the production designer] is an amazing guy and is always great with ideas and solutions; so is Bruce Mailing. As a producer, Ilana and, on Rookie, Tassie and I will get a picture of all the wardrobe options for every character and look at that stuff and Jenifur [Jarvis] fall 2012

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M: What about the DPs? You must work with them very closely. DW: The DP is on the floor every day, going “Lighting, lighting, lighting.” When you look at dailies, if there’s something unusual or something that seems strange or something that seems fantastic, you know that the DP has been working. For Rookie Blue, that was David Perrault; for Saving Hope, it’s Steve Danyluk. M: And editors? DW: When you send shows out to networks, they need to basically look and sound almost finished. They want to hear—they want music and effects, everything. You’re trying to make sure it’s moving right along and the tone is right. Sometimes you have to take an episode, rip it apart and put it all back together again. That’s tiring but it happens. All of that depends on the editor. If I find it’s going well then I don’t have to do that much—I don’t even have to look at it until it’s been assembled. A lot of big decisions about performance and the like are made by the editors, as they should be. Having been there myself, I occasionally do it because I can’t help myself but I try not to second-guess too much because it’s counterproductive. The big part of being an editor at this level is being able to defend choices. And they always can. We’ve been working with some of the best—Teresa Hannigan and Paul Day on Rookie Blue and Wendy Hallam Martin, David Wharnsby and Tad Seaborn on Saving Hope. Left: Tom McCamus (Edmund) and William Hutt (James Tyrone) in Long Day’s Journey into Night. Right: Welllington on the set of I Love a Man in Uniform. Photos TIFF Film Library

DW: That was, no question, the most fun, rewarding, incredible shooting experience I ever had. That came about because of my association with Tom McCamus, who had been the lead in my film I Love a Man in Uniform (1993). He’d gone to the Stratford Festival to do O’Neill’s tragic autobiographical play, and through him, I met Richard Monette [then the artistic director at Stratford]. Richard said, “You should make a movie out of this thing, it’s an unbelievable play,” so I took it to Niv [Fichman, Rhombus Media producer] and he said, “Sure, I’ll do that with you.” Here’s what I had to start with that had nothing to do with me: an unbelievable play and a perfect cast put together for stage by Diana LeBlanc. [William Hutt was the patriarch, James Tyrone; Peter Donaldson his older, alcoholic son, Jamie; Martha Henry his morphine-addicted wife, Mary; and Tom McCamus the consumptive younger son, Edmund. All won Geminis for their film performances.] John Dondertman [production designer] and I went to New London, Connecticut to see the O’Neill family home. We built a replica, since the film had to be restaged. The Stratford version had been mounted on a thrust stage; it wasn’t a real place. But the real thing was that on day one, I shot page one, on the last day, I shot page 180. M: Migod, you went in sequence. DW: Yup. We did an exact, slow-motion version of the show in the room. It was so great for everyone to go in there. We did a 30-day shoot, six pages a day. I got to be one of the few film directors, along with my brother [who made the Stratford-based TV series Slings and Arrows], who got to work with Bill Hutt. M: What was that like?

M: It wasn’t “Let’s go big, let’s go small”? M: What’s the advantage in having a director-producer who will shoot a number of key shows each season?

M: And the networks? You’re dealing with U.S. and Canadian broadcasters for both Rookie Blue and Saving Hope. DW: We’ve got Global and ABC on Rookie Blue and CTV and NBC on Saving Hope and I can say, unequivocally, they’re great. I had heard, coming into TV, that the network was the boogeyman who was going to come in and micromanage and do terrible things. With ABC, we deal with one man, Quinn Taylor, who is so smart, so prepared, so on top of it that everything he says makes sense. If there’s something that’s not working for him and you can’t fix it, there are no hard feelings and he moves on. At CTV, Trish Williams and Corey Coe are fantastic and again, when you’re talking to them about scripts, they know them inside out and are great at facilitating fixes and changes. They’ve been really, really supportive of Saving Hope. CTV really have pushed to make the show popular and Global too. Sure we occasionally disagree about things and I’m going to lose some-

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M: You directed the Canadian film version one of my favourite plays, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night (1996). I was wondering if you had some memories of the film and working with that cast.

DW: Bill Hutt was a force of nature and one of the most incredible men I ever met. He was a guy who made his life exactly as he wanted it to be. The way he acted! He made the transition from theatre to film appear to be absolutely seamless. He didn’t change anything.

DW: You get a continuity of tone, of look, of feel and I think that’s good for a TV show. It’s weird because you’re trying to make a new, fun show week to week but at the same time, the show needs to be consistent. That can start to drive you nuts. But I think that it’s a good problem. You just have to be up for the challenge. Ideally, the shows a director-producer handles become a touchstone for other directors to look at and say, “Hey I see what’s going on here.” They should understand your approach: how you shoot, the kind of ways you’re covering scenes and the lighting you like.

times. That’s okay. I’m old enough to know that even though I think I’m right, I’m not necessarily actually right.

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DW: No, he didn’t think in those terms. He only thought about true or false. That wasn’t a movie where I was ever shooting more takes for a better performance. What you’d get would be just different, finding different colours, trying different things. Literally the last shot we shot is the last shot of the movie, pulling out of the house and wrapping it. It’s probably the only thing I’ll ever do that I really love. M: I went back to your film I Love a Man in Uniform and it hit me how curious it is, considering your career. There you were at the Toronto film festival with a feature that deals with the idea of a cop show and actors and TV. DW: A dumb cop show. It is curious. That movie was about a guy who, in a very reductive way, is consumed and seduced by the puerile morality of an insipid cop show. The most fun I had on that movie was writing those cop show scenes with my brother, Peter. My brother has a real gift for writing dumb-cop show lines. It was a riot, sitting there, thinking up dialogue that would be as dumb as possible. Here I am now, making a fun, fresh, cotton candy cop show, which I adore. Mostly, as I got older I became less of a snob. When I was young, I thought I knew everything and it turns out I didn’t. I’m fortunate enough to be making my living as a director. And I direct a lot. I love being able to execute the craft that I do, to practice whatever art there is in it. I direct 60-70 days a year, and I’ve done so pretty consistently for 25 years. We’re about to roll out, me and Ilana, our hundredth hour of television. For myself as a working director, that’s something in which I feel pride. Marc Glassman edits Montage, lectures on documentary history at Ryerson University and is the artistic director of This Is Not A Reading Series, a literary event programme in Toronto.

THE FINE DESIGNS OF STEPHEN STANLEY

by JANIS COLE The backlots and studios at Epitome Pictures in Toronto, the producers of Degrassi and The L.A. Complex, are a creative marvel. Their function as exteriors, with fully dressed attached interior sets make them unique in Canada, and arguably North America. A complete interior and exterior Toronto high-school environment is authentically recreated on the property and so is a milieu for job searching hopefuls in Los Angeles—complete with a motel and in-ground pool. Epitome’s producers reap the huge cost-savings that studio shooting offers them compared to going on location. But time and economy aside, it’s the far-reaching artistic prowess of the space that astounds. To achieve the high production value that Epitome Pictures strives for, on their admittedly tight budgets, a measure of magic is required. As it turns out that magic is production designer Stephen Stanley. Stanley has been with Epitome Pictures for just over a decade. Originally hired to design Degrassi (formerly Degrassi: The Next Generation), he has overseen the show for 11 of its 12 seasons, picking up where savoir-faire season-one designer Tamara Deverell left off. He simultaneously designed Instant Star (2004-08) and replicated Los Angeles last year for The L.A. Complex, which has increased from six one-hour episodes to 13 this season. Two years ago Degrassi doubled from 22 half-hour episodes a season to 45. Stanley presently designs 58 segments for the two series, juggling his art department teams, studio spaces, both schedules and multiple deadlines. Working in film wasn’t Stanley’s career plan when he trained as a painter in visual arts at York University. “I learned all about colour,” he says, “and gained further knowledge by working as a high-end painter to pay for school.” His first job after graduation was as head of a team involved in huge restorations of Torontoarea Ukrainian Byzantine churches. “Restoration taught me about gold-leaf, architecture, building construction, interior design, design history and working with different materials,” says Stanley. “When a contract for a restoration job fell through, a friend encouraged me to try out for the scenic department of a film shoot.” He got the job. “I quickly moved to key scenic [the person responsible for all painted surfaces on sets, and who oversees all the painters] and worked in that role for 10 years before moving to art director. That’s where I really learned the trade of production design,” recalls Stanley. And learn he did, to the degree that he makes it look easy to oversee two series, creating and rotating 25 wall-to-wall fully dressed sets plus multi-function backlots for both Degrassi and The L.A. Complex. He is consistently lauded for delivering more than writers, producers and directors request.

Photo: Self-portrait by Stephen Stanley

who does both shows will say, “I like this,” and 99 percent of the time we’ll agree and that’s it. Or there might be an issue so we tweak it. All those things have to be looked at, but the keys, for sure, are very important. We approach each series as a process of discovery where we believe that the thing exists out in the ether in its perfect form and we get together as a group to find it. I find that’s more fun and the whole enterprise isn’t limited by one or two people’s imagination. We’re trying to create an environment where everybody has permission and is encouraged to contribute and weigh in and ideally that makes the show better

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Top: exterior Hollywood back lot set for The L.A. Complex. Photo Stephen Stanley Below: shooting Degrassi: The Next Generation. Photo Stephen Scott for Epitome Pictures

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Design is one of the key creative roles and one of the most demanding positions in television or film. Designers contribute to the look, economics and scheduling logistics of a production. Along with working long hours, it requires skills ranging from construction to props, plus the ability to manage large numbers of people. Stanley’s co-workers unanimously echo that he far exceeds expectations in every category. “In 10 seasons working with Stephen, he’s always delivered and he always gives something extra,” says director Eleanore Lindo. Stanley has acquired a reputation for supporting directors. He’s on set at call time to check that directors have what they need and he’s flexible to changes. Directors sing his praises for his creativity in helping them achieve their vision, while executives do the same for his imagination in keeping 95 percent of filming at the studio, and assistant directors for his design efficiency that makes scheduling a breeze. Stanley is equally outspoken and appreciative of his co-workers. “It’s a team atmosphere here,” he offers as we enter the Epitome complex. “Linda [Schuyler] and Stephen [Stohn] are incredible leaders. The space we have here is unique, and many on the team have been working together for a long time. There’s a real team spirit here.” That spirit can be seen during a visit to the set, and felt in Stanley’s sentiments for the producers, “David [Lowe, producer] and Stefan [Brogren, producer/director] have supported me as long as I’ve been here, and Martin [Gero, executive producer of The L.A. Complex] is a real joy to work with. It’s a fun place to work.” Schuyler is the CEO and executive producer of Epitome Pictures. She and Stohn have been building the digital state-of-the-art, 140,000-sq.-ft Epitome domain since 1997, when they purchased it to shoot their CBC prime-time soap Riverdale (1997–2000). “We’re all under one roof here,” Schuyler enthuses. “Writers are on site, production teams and post-production. If a writer gets an idea they can go down the hall and ask Stephen if it would be too wacky to build.” Epitome has grown from one warehouse to two, housing seven large studios with standing schoolrooms and home environments for Degrassi, and a strip club, comedy club and various offices and movie environments for The L.A. Complex. Most sets have wild walls, and several sets can be rotated between the shows. For instance the strip club was dressed as a beauty pageant for Degrassi, a motel room became a nursing station and the Degrassi school cafeteria, which doubles as the crew lunch room, has recently been converted to the soup kitchen of the 19th Street Mission. “It’s an amazingly accurate set Stephen has made of the 19th Street Mission, but the lunch room, which looks nice when it’s dressed for Degrassi, is a dismal yellow this week,” Schuyler says. “It’s also where we all eat. It will be a relief to get the old lunch room back.” Stanley calls this type of set-juggling “figuring out the puzzle,” and he’s a master at it. Generally backlots are façades for exteriors, and interior shooting moves to a set away from the backlots. Epitome backlots replicate Queen Street, a residential street and Yorkville to film exteriors for Degrassi. They get redressed to become Melrose Avenue or a Hispanic street in L.A. The crème de la crème is a two-storey motel, complete with a 40-foot pool and palm trees that Stanley had shipped up when the plastic ones didn’t catch the wind right for authenticity. Some rooms in the motel are dressed so that filming from inside to out, or vice versa, can be fluid, without breaking the shot. The Dot Café in Degrassi is another fully dressed set where filming from street to indoors happens on the backlot. With a complete makeover, it doubles as the café where an L.A. Complex character works. “Degrassi is about teenage life,” notes Stanley as we tour the school sets. “It’s an issue-based show that starts with the scripts. They’re very well written [by head writers Yan Moore, Aaron Martin, James Hurst, Brendan Yorke, Sara Snow and Sarah Glinski]. My job is to build as big and as real a world as possible, where teenagers believe the world and can see themselves in it.” The front of the Degrassi School set is built off the parking lot where school buses can congregate. Inside the front doors is a fully dressed interior hall, allowing filming to be continuous for entering the school or leaving. Once inside the building there is a series of standing hallways, ready for filming.

Among the standing sets is a fully dressed science class, media room, gym, music class, newsroom, workout room, food concourse and numerous home environment lofts, all receiving immaculate decorating detail to individualize each character. The creative freedom of Stanley’s diverse design scheme is not lost on Epitome’s directors. They appreciate the flexibility that his designs give them to create movement on tight shooting schedules. “Stephen never says no,” says director Phil Earnshaw. “He just makes things happen.” Earnshaw has directed more episodes of Degrassi than anyone else, and he has been with Schuyler and the show through its various incarnations since the start of The Kids of Degrassi Street in 1980. He concurs that the efficiency of the one-roof-houses-all set-up and Stanley’s designs make shooting a dream. “It’s a streamlined schedule, just two-and-a-half 11-hour days per episode, and it all runs smoothly. Stephen is Linda’s secret weapon.“ Director Eleanore Lindo has been working for Schuyler since graduating from the AFI in 1985 and she directs eight episodes of Degrassi a season. Both Earnshaw and Lindo give a lot of credit to Stanley for Degrassi being a well-oiled machine. Lindo adds, “With the addition of L.A. Complex there are two well-oiled machines. The versatility and creativity Stephen brings means we don’t have to go on location more than a few times a year. No matter what they write, he’s able to create it on the lot. He’s very good at finding a way within budget and schedule to build it.” Schuyler agrees. “Stephen was the person we had to sit down with to make sure it could all work when we wanted to shoot two shows concurrently. And he’s so incredibly inventive, he always makes it look easy. He is a big part of our new scheme to film 45 episodes of Degrassi a year, beginning in season 10, instead of the original 22. After a pre-concept meeting, he’ll say that we can do all this, we can make it work. I can’t speak highly enough of his talent.” Left to right: Degrassi: The Next Generation: Charlotte Arnold (Holly J. Sinclair) and Annie Clark (Fiona Coyne). Munro Chambers (Eli Goldsworthy) and Alex Steele (Angie Jeremiah). Photos Epitome Pictures. Building The L.A. Complex set. Photo Stephen Stanley

“Stephen never says no,” says director Phil Earnshaw. “He just makes things happen.” One way that Stanley gives the sets a more realistic and open feeling is with layered window placement. Windows allow action to go on behind what’s being filmed. While filming inside a room at the motel there can be action on the balcony and a different kind of action in the pool, creating dimension, interest and authenticity. Filming inside a classroom and seeing through to another class has similar results. Mark Pancer has been in the business 27 years, and has worked as an assistant director on Degrassi for 10 seasons. He says, “Stephen is the kind of guy who treats each thing like it’s fresh. He is always teaching, always creative, always thinking and always cool. He doesn’t lose it.” These are sentiments everyone repeats about Stanley. While production design is weighty and Stanley’s load is weightier with two shows, he makes it all look weightless. “Stephen designs in such a way that we can have the camera start in the science class, move through the halls and end up in another class. His attention to detail is meticulous, and he gives individuality to each character’s personality,” Pancer says, adding, “He’s also really amazing at thinking on the fly. Stephen raises the bar and invites you to join him.” An example of Stanley’s quick thinking was displayed moments before a Degrassi wedding shoot at Lake Ontario. Schuyler was on set and calls it “the day we shot in the Toronto tsunami,” Pancer recalls. “We arrived [in weather conditions] just shy of a hurricane, with tabletops and props flying everywhere. In a heartbeat Stephen started moving the wedding inside a tent with the flap open to catch the windstorm outside.” Stanley downplays the adventure in his calm, low-key way. “It was the usual in film, where nothing goes the way you want it to go. The whole team pulled together and we came up with a solution that didn’t hold up production.” fall 2012

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Pancer chalks it up to Stanley’s miracles, which he relies on to make his schedule work. Another potential last-minute crisis that Stanley solved popped up when a roof garden on the building couldn’t go ahead as planned. “We were about seven days from filming a roof-garden scene and Stephen came to me,” recalls Schuyler. “He’d had the structural engineer in and that guy had recommended a different, more expensive engineer to analyse the strain on the building. It would cost way too much money. “Stephen said to leave it with him. Before you knew it, he’d moved a dumpster from an underutilised corner outside the school and built an amazing garden. In the end it was even better than we’d originally planned, because Mark [Pancer] told me how much time would be saved by not moving the unit to the roof. That’s the type of stuff Stephen gives you on a regular basis.” Stanley chuckles when I ask how he manages the pressure of two shows and constant deadlines. “I have my team,” he says. “It’s not just me and my interests. It’s everyone. Murray Lowe is my construction co-ordinator, Gabriel Lamb my head set decorator and Rod James my key scenic artist. My 1st assistant art director is Sean McLoughlin. These guys are great! It’s fantastic what they do.”

The L.A. Complex. Far left, top to bottom: on the set; photo Stephen Scott. Jonathan Patrick Moore (Connor Lake). Andra Fuller (Kaldrick King, left). Near left: Brett Drier (Brandon Kelly), Megan Hutchings (Laura Knight), Cassie Steele (Abby Vargas) and Alan Thicke (Donald Gallagher). Photos Epitome Pictures

He also shrugs off any hint of the workload being a burden. “People in design like to build things. With two shows the opportunity to build things doubles.” He shows me a floor plan, noting, “We have two buildings of significant size and we use every available space. We’ve built to the walls inside the studios and to the property lines outside. We’re thinking about the puzzle all the time.” On any given weekday between April and November, two main unit crews will be shooting The L.A. Complex and Degrassi, and numerous people in the art department will be building and dressing sets for the next day. On the day I toured Epitome it took a solid hour, walking at a good clip with Stanley, to see the entire grounds. We passed by Degrassi shooting in one building and The L.A. Complex in the other, and several construction crews building sets. “It’s a busy place, we’re building and adjusting sets all the time,” he says as we pass crews of about 30 people in construction. “There is always something to do.” “Every year Stanley adds to the sets,” Schuyler says. “He built an entire wall of windows in the Degrassi school gym in season five, and added a glass courtyard in season six.” He also talks to Epitome’s directors of photography, Alwyn J. Kumsy and Mtchell T. Ness, to see what could make their lives easier and then designs storage to bring their tools closer to set. “He built a 360-degree turnaround on the Queen Street backlot,” says Pancer. “It’s a dream for directing background cars. Stephen thinks about the efficiency of everyone’s job and then designs something to make it that much better.” Epitome is in production 10 months a year. Stanley takes a month off to recoup and another to work at different design jobs, sometimes in community settings outside of film. The secret to keeping him happy is to constantly keep him challenged and always keep him busy. It’s a sure way to satisfy his endless drive to build things that continually delight—and deliver more than anyone has asked of him. Janis Cole holds an MFA in documentary media from Ryerson University. She is a Genie Award-winning documentary filmmaker, freelance writer and professor at OCAD University.

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PARADIGMS A DOZEN: by PETER WINTONICK

WHITHER THE LONGFORM DOC?

As I jump around the world, producing documentaries in China and Scandinavia, or assisting emerging producers in disparate spots like Guangzhou or Durban, I realise that film professionals elsewhere believe that we Canadians have the best, most efficient system for financing screen media in the world. Apparently, we live in an Arcadian paradise. But on my return home to Montreal from international forays, I hit reality square in the face. Yes, we do have a system. But sustainable production and distribution financing

is a big issue in Canada. Despite 40 years of instigating and tweaking policy, it is not always working. In the case of documentary— beautiful, glorious documentary—it’s actually breaking down. In the 13th century, Dante described nine rings of Hell. They included limbo, lust, gluttony, the hoarding of material possessions, wrath, sloth, heresy, violence, fraud and treason. These are all qualities that any good Canadian producer must exhibit. The Canadian media funding system bears an uncanny resemblance to Dante’s Hell.

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ELIZABETH RADSHAW

CAROLLE BRABANT

BOB MOORE

PAT FERNS

NEAL LIVINGSTON

JOHN WALKER

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Every day we deal with nine levels of application form-filling. If handlling bureaucracy was an Olympic sport, Canadian and European film athletes would be striving for the Gold. Broadcasters—the necessary component for any doc production—trigger a quixotic quest. Producers need to find eight other partners who all must say, “Yes!” simultaneously to a project before it can proceed. Alas, it’s nearly an impossible dream. Have you ever tried to get nine film people to agree where to have dinner, let alone where to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce something as ephemeral and undernourishing as a film? In addition, there’s another structural problem with our existing system. Producers have grown co-dependent on the largesse of public agencies in a climate of free-market governments that distrust those left-handed people who make media and culture. Public television casts its haughty eye at the public. Many support systems are fragile and endangered. Then there’s the question of how to protect Cancon in an increasingly warmed up, borderless world. So either Canadian producers make Faustian bargains with existing funding systems or we help them invent new ones. I will not lament here about the loss of national identity to the global forces of Hollywoodian dreams, Internet invasions or domestic conservatism. Although we have all the tools we need to create a better screen world, we lack the will. For example, as a collective, we have been unable to design a quota system for the exhibition of our screen arts to match those that have made airplay the backbone of our illustrious and internationally acclaimed music industry. In jurisdictions like Quebec, where I live, a provincial funding agency like SODEC (Société de développement des entreprises culturelles) still is proactive. However, all along the watchtower there are signs of crisis, but also examples of innovation and adaptations for recovery. I personally believe that outside of our First Nations’ creative culture, the long-form creative documentary is the only original Canadian art form. For most purposes, the term documentary was invented here. From Flaherty’s incursion into the north, to the National Film Board’s creation threequarters of a century ago, through to the development of an independent doc sector three decades ago, Canadian documentaries have exhibited flair with care. They mark the push forward of social agendas like no other endeavour born here. Documentaries are the way that the whole world comes to know about Canada. They are vehicles for diversity, education and action. They are works of art—the art of information. As they march around the world to festivals, theatre screens or are broadcast internationally in a multitude of languages, docs also return more money, per dollar invested, to the public purse than their fictional brothers and sisters. Docs are a living Canadian institution and should be supported. But in light of economic meltdowns, will works within our great art form still continue to be produced? Will broadcasters, producers and the public

begin to recognise that docs are productions of national interest? Over the last few years since the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) proposed changes in its policy on the licensing of large English-language private television ownership groups (Broadcasting Regulatory Policy 2010-167), the Commission pushed forward an expenditure requirement for programmes of national interest (PNI). These include programmes that belong to category 2(b) Long-form documentary, and category 7, Drama and Comedy, which are primary vehicles for communicating Canadian stories and values, as well as specific Canadian award shows that celebrate Canadian creative talent. The industry standard generally defines longform documentaries as original works of non-fiction, primarily designed to inform. However, they may also educate and entertain, providing an indepth critical analysis of a specific subject or point of view over the course of at least 30 minutes. These programmes—say the rules—shall not be used as commercial vehicles. Moreover, the regulatory definitions generally distinguish factual TV and reality-type TV from creative docs. The adoption by sectors of the industry to policy changes in Canadian Programming Expenditures and the creation of more Programmes of National Interest may mean that private broadcasters may start funding docs again. Of course, there’s always a cautionary proviso, depending on what side of the stakeholder fence you are on. Many believe that the public, through its government, should protect the people’s culture through proactive regulation. Others think that an über-national cultural protection policy is a bedroom that governments should stay out of. Some believe that traditional protective policies and requirements for being “visibly Canadian” are offensive, arguing that Canadians want an international view on the world. Nevertheless, there is now time for debate. Many guilds, organisations, agencies, free-range producers and giant stakeholders should, and will, all weigh in. I did a canvas of a small group of key industry and filmmaker players. I asked them to help redefine a future for creative documentary funding that would not only preserve but also extend the rightful place of documentaries in our society. Pat (Patterson) Ferns is the long-standing éminence grise of Canada’s production scene. For 40odd years, he’s been producing, running television festivals in places like Banff, hosting innumerable markets and presiding over the now ubiquitous public pitch systems, which he helped to initiate. Pat offered me this: “While I often subscribe to the paradox that less is more, I suspect that producers of long-form creative documentaries will be dealing with less resources from more sources than ever before. As the broadcast television market fragments and the number of screens proliferates, independent producers will have to scramble further, faster and with more imagination to make it to the financing finishing line. Yes, broadcast licences will still form a central core of funding, as will grants and subsidies through public agencies and private foundations. Governments will rely on tax credits rather than their own diminishing revenues, and we will lean more heavily on the generosity of others. “Films will be seeking crowd funding, corporate sponsorship, brand integration and goodness

knows what else in an increasingly complex matrix of moving parts to keep the machine in motion. More time will be spent in scavenging for money at the expense of devoted work on the documentary itself. High-quality work will always require sensible budgets, so we will need to use our technology with maximum efficiency to keep costs down while encouraging audiences to remain faithful to the genre. Ultimately, it is the passion of the producer that will fuel the future of this sector of our industry. That’s always been the case and always will be.” Elizabeth Radshaw runs the Forum and Industry section of Hot Docs, North America’s premier documentary festival. For Elizabeth, “Filmmakers and audiences are more closely connected than they ever were before. The relationship between filmmaker and audience has changed, based directly on the tools and interconnectivity of social media and our online reality. Throughout every aspect of the pillars of production, filmmaker and audiences have the opportunity to be directly and deeply connected. It is this connection that filmmakers must leverage with an entrepreneurial spirit and creative execution to take the path of documentary film finance forward. “Audiences’ consumption habits of media and documentaries will continue to change in the coming years, especially as technology can connect and shift values in the viewing experience. When habits change, the astute filmmaker observes and addresses the shift. The filmmaker will operate within changing trends, industry and market forces. But how will filmmakers respond to that change? This will require innovation in the core business models of financing film while balancing the audiences’ perception between logic and emotion across efficiency and value. It will take an entrepreneurial spirit and calculated risk to define the new model. This model must remain nimble and responsive. Here is the added challenge—each model will be bespoke for each film. I don’t believe it will be a total reinvention of the wheel, however. Be it for whatever approach, system or strategy, it will require a particular and unique approach. Over those approaches will stand a set of values. “At Hot Docs 2012’s Doc to the Future keynote address, producer Ted Hope defined ‘pillars of cinema,’ in a way that truly spoke to me. This group of words serves as a value set for defining the future models of documentary film finance: discovery, development, authenticity, production, distribution, marketing, participation, collaboration, appreciation, presentation; platforms, curation, experience, evolution, community, value, transition, experimentation and willingness to fail.” I met Telefilm chief Carolle Brabant at a reception for Canadian filmmakers earlier this year at the Sundance festival in Park City, Utah. She told me that Telefilm was adapting to the new financing paradigms. Later, at Primetime in Ottawa this year, she offered this up: “Canadian screen-based content is too good and too important not to succeed. We have a strong international reputation—and we have consistently punched above our weight class in both artistic achievement and commercial success. But just like the pressure on traditional media-distribution models, we are going to see continuing pressure on traditional funding models. “Telefilm’s corporate plan is our declaration that we believe in the entrepreneurial spirit of our industry, and its ability to adapt to this new reality. In other words, our industry is mature enough and

Far left, top to bottom, photos courtesy of Elizabeth Radshaw, Telefilm Canada, Bob Moore and Eyesteel Film, Pat Ferns, Neal Livingston, John Walker Productions Ltd. Top centre: from Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Jennifer Baichwal, director; Dam #3, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze RIver, China, 2005., photo Edward Burtynsky. Below from left to right: from Manufacturing Consent (1992), Peter Wintonick, director; photo Mongrel Media, from Mighty Jerome (2010), Charles Officer, director and writer; photo Bill Cunningham

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Opposite, clockwise from top left: from Pink Ribbons Inc. (2011) by Léa Pool; photo Léa Pool. From The Battle at Our Shores (2002) by Neal Livingston; photo Neal Livingston/Black River Productions Inc. From The End of Time (2012) by Peter Mettler; photo Grimthorpe Film and Mongrel Media. From The Corporation (2003) by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott; photo Mongrel Media. From China Heavyweight (2012) by Yung Chang; photo Hot Docs. From A Drummer’s Dream (2010) by John Walker; photo the National Film Board

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resourceful enough to develop relationships with alternate sources of financing. First, we were extremely pleased to see that Canadian private-sector investments and foreign participation doubled in our last fiscal year to account for 26 percent of total production budgets. “Our ability to stretch and adapt really represents a larger commitment from Telefilm to work at peak efficiency. We are streamlining our programme structure to free up operating budgets that can be reinvested in our financing programs for the industry. It’s a simpler and more flexible approach to our business, focused on client needs and automation of processes. I believe that the challenges of a poor economic environment can be tempered by emerging opportunities in the current social and technological environment—opportunities such as audience-building, and ultra-low-budget production. “Personally, I believe that our industry is flourishing and we have much more to gain by adapting our funding model to the economic realities we face today. Our corporate plan is also committed to finding and developing new sources of financing for the industry. “[With our new private donation fund] Canadian corporate and individual donors will have an opportunity to support audiovisual content through a donation to film production. When we get the new private donation fund up to full operating capacity, we plan to disburse about $5-million per year in two programming streams: one stream supporting first films by emerging filmmakers and another stream supporting films by our experienced and award-winning filmmakers to extend their global reach.” Bob Moore, an award-winning producer (Rip: a Remix Manifesto, Last Train Home, Inside Lara Roxx) at Montreal’s acclaimed doc shop, Eyesteelfilm, says, “I can only tell where I hope funding will be, and that’s in the hands of the most disinterested parties possible. By this, I mean predominantly from the state [governmental institutions]. As a producer I’ll explore any which way to get a film financed, and variety is always a good thing for sure, but I’m probably less comfortable with crowd funding and especially special-interest [NGO] funding than most. I do not think that many great docs would get financed if their financing model was all pre-buys from individuals on Indie-go-go. “On a much larger scale, I think what we’re seeing in the past little while, notably here in Quebec, is the start of a pushback from citizens looking for more control over their money in terms of state spending, which generally reinforces the role of the government in being the vessel through which the public will is expressed—as opposed to, say, the marketplace. This is, in my opinion, a good thing for doc filmmaking, because it so often requires that critical or challenging voice. I’d like to see strengthened, documentary-centric versions of national funding bodies like Telefilm. A well-funded and refined NFB model, in a sort of full-service creative version, would be great to have—but now I’m starting to just dream a bit.” Neal Livingston is an independent doc-maker who lives in paradise. No, not in some trendy loft

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in central Canada, within the shadow of the Bell Lightbox condo cinema complex in Toronto. For 20 years he’s been making films on his organically powered maple syrup farm in Nova Scotia. He says, “I live in rural Cape Breton Island by the sea, and write this from a Newfoundland fishing outport. I have said for years that any funding system must work for a moving-images-maker just as well here in rural/regional Canada as it does anywhere else, like downtown Canada. If you design a public funding policy that works both for us here and for you there downtown, then it works for us all, like democracy is supposed to work. “I have thought about it, and it is very simple. What you do is fund the creator. By funding the creator, you move the power position to that individual. Who has the money is in the power position, so you stop the stupidity of giving public funds to the TV programmers—or to groups and agencies with rules that kill creativity. Ideally, the creator holds the cheque book and then hires the team and no one can bully her or him. Many in the doc field may not be able to understand this as they have never worked outside of a bullied environment without broadcaster control over what they make and how it looks. “Then you make Canadian content rules such that TV will need to pay properly for our creations. Long-form docs would access theatres by renting them at preferred rates and the creator can hire the publicity team in each town to get the community out. My tax dollars now subsidize a broken model, created on an imaginary industry that would not exist without public funding. The government and industry support this model. They prefer to deal with a few producers made rich by this funding system. “We also need to provide the creator with funds for distribution so that he or she holds a power position relative to distribution. The Internet has broken the distribution model and opened it up, and this is a confirmation that funding the creator is and has always been the best way to forge the link between the public and the artists. Don’t forget, though, that it has to work both in Mabou, Nova Scotia as well as in Montreal, and then our creative links to each other as a creative family can grow.” John Walker is one of Canada’s most respected documentary filmmakers. He is leading the inspirational charge, in energized campaigns by the Documentary Organization of Canada, l’Observatoire in Quebec and others, to revamp the system or envision other models. He says, “Let’s hope Canadian broadcasters’ interest in long-form documentaries will be revived by the CRTC’s rules for PNI. If not, let’s move on to some alternatives. You can’t find a broadcaster to trigger funding? No problem. Become one. That’s what ISUMA did, the filmmakers that made Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, one of the best Canadian films ever made, in my opinion. If you haven’t tuned in to these filmmakers work, check out ISUMA.TV. And guess what? They qualify as a broadcaster to trigger CMF (Canadian Media Fund). It’s a model worth looking into. You create your own network of people around the globe to watch your programmes in your language. It’s that simple. “Here’s another model that could be applied to other agencies like the CMF. Film Nova Scotia allows producers to trigger equity funding with any acceptable distributor or broadcaster anywhere in the world. If Canadian broadcasters don’t want to

trigger the CMF funds, then let us trigger them with our international partners. Culturally, Nova Scotians always looked to markets around the world long before they joined Canada. Maybe it’s time to give up on a narrow definition of what defines a Canadian filmmaker and let our imaginations run free. Give us an incentive to roam the world and see who will engage with our work in the broader international marketplace. We already have a proven track record. Why do we allow Canadian broadcasters to hold us back? It’s time to move on, with or without them.” Over the last 30 years, since I first started writing for the dearly beloved film magazine Cinema Canada, I have always thought of myself as a cultural nationalist. In the tsunami wake of the media mastadon washing over us from south of the Canadian border, it has always been a hard position to defend. But at the same time I have developed a sense that we have to redefine what it means to be a Canadian. Successive federal governments, whether from the centre or right wing of the spectrum, have allowed neo-liberal free marketeering and commercial industrial prerogatives to replace any notion of saving the culture of the country. Or allowing Canadians fair access to our own stories. This can now only come through quotas, through such externalities as Cancon regulations for screen media, PNI initiatives and new mechanisms, which must be developed soon. Now, I am the first person to defend the right of producers to tell any story they want to tell. I hate the idea of state-determined proactive propaganda, of politically correct domesticated Canuckism for its own sake. The idea of ‘country’ is only a few centuries old, and I believe that it’s a concept that has run its course. Nations, languages and cultures are flexible, changeable, amorphous things. In this century, countries can only grow by adopting and adapting neighbouring and faraway cultures into a new interNetionalist, borderless world. But this doesn’t mean we need to demean our own culture at our own expense. Canadians are interested in the world. And so if a Canadian director or producer makes a film here, there or anywhere, it is innately a Canadian film. It’s innately in the national interest. Let’s not take our audiences, nor audiences anywhere, as fools. It’s not naïve to think that there is a Canadian Identity. It’s as unique as the Quebecois identity. It is subtle, foaming with talent, proud, funny, innovative and expresses itself through a thousand other adjectival tags. A film or documentary doesn’t have to be visibly Canadian. Beavers on skates playing shinny on a frozen lake of maple syrup. Programmes in the national interest only have to reflect the diverse nature of the values that their Canadian creators imbue in their work. With our survey of professionals concluded, I finally offer this to our beleaguered policy-planners. In other countries, broken systems are getting fixed. In Brazil, they have conjured a system where corporations receive direct benefits for funding screen culture. In Britain, a new report has been issued, attempting to tackle similar problems. It’s our time, Canada. It’s our time. Shift paradigms to shift minds.

Peter Wintonick is an international producer and member of the FIPRESCI-affiliated Quebec Film Critics Association fall 2012

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Director and production designer David Hackl on the set of Saw V with Costas Mandylor (Mark Hoffman). Photo Lions Gate Films

by CHRIS ALEXANDER Rare is the talent that can successfully juggle two careers in the arts. But Canadian production designer turned director David Hackl has done just that. The Toronto-born Hackl’s reputation is rooted within the confines of grisly commercial horror cinema, sculpting both the physical worlds the characters in the blockbuster Saw movies live in and the flesh-and-bone-destroying clockwork traps they are almost always ultimately dispatched by. So essential were his designs that he managed to leverage designing and performing second-unit direction on the third and fourth pictures (Saw III and Saw IV were both helmed by Darren Lynn Bousman) into taking over the central directorial reins for the fifth movie (2008’s Saw V). Critics weren’t particularly kind—but they weren’t generally fond of any of them. Still, the picture opened strongly worldwide, eventually grossing well over $100-million (U.S.) while costing approximately $10-million (U.S.)to produce. “By the time I got to direct Saw V,” says Hackl, “I had directed all the key cast on second unit and the returning crew had all worked with me as a director and gave me great support. The biggest difficulty was that the franchise was getting a little long in the tooth and we were straining to find new story lines. Darren killed off our main villain, Jigsaw [Tobin Bell], in Saw III with the intention that it would be the last one. So by Saw V we were hard-pressed to not be redundant and I’ll be the first to admit it was not one of the better scripts.” Quality of screenplay notwithstanding, Hackl’s thirst to direct was temporarily sated and he began immediately searching for the right follow-up film to expand his vision and skill set. Now, after years of development hell, Hackl’s Red Machine will soon hit the screens. It’s a movie that spins a classic man vs. nature conflict into a survivalist horror story that echoes both Jaws and this year’s surprise killer-wolf hit, The Grey.

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“I was working with the writer Jack Reher on another script called The Butcher Bride, based on a novel by Vince Churchill,” says Hackl. “We were talking about scares, what makes a great scare. I mentioned that years ago, I was production-designing a mountain-biking film out in Jasper and we interviewed a biker who was attacked by a grizzly bear, and I was like, ‘That’s the kind of primal horror I want to explore—not supernatural, not werewolves, not paranormal but real.’” As it turns out, Reher had an existing script he had written called Red Machine, a story of a malevolent, murderous bear set in the unforgiving cold of Alaska. Smitten, the two shifted gears to focus exclusively on the Red Machine project, a three-year journey that saw various players and backers come and go before it finally found a home with producers Stuart Pollok (The Conclave) and Dominic Iano (Soul Surfer) at Indomitable Features. The pair stepped up and put the picture, which stars James Marsden, Scott Glenn, Billy Bob Thornton and Thomas Jane, onto the front burner. The film eventually went to camera in January and February of 2012, in Vancouver “I really pushed the producers to shoot in the wilderness all around Vancouver,” the director recalls. “The old growth rainforests are so beautiful and lush, even in winter. Our winter shooting schedule made it impossible to shoot Alaska for Alaska but I was actually thrilled. Of course the forests around Vancouver don’t look like the harsh Alaskan landscape, but we decided that we would refer to our settings as being Pacific North West. I was really looking for forests that could give us the feeling of the Grizzly Maze where our story takes place. My production-design sensibilities always push me towards loca-

Top: Hackl directs Joris Jarsky (Seth) on the set of Saw V. Photo Lions Gate Films. Below, left to right: Piper Perabo, James Marsden and Hackl on the set of Red Machine (2013). Photo James Dittiger Red Machine LLC

Production design drawings for Saw II Left: head-trap design. Right, from top: gun rig and small drawing of a gun; shotgun collar details; view of Jigsaw’s warehouse lair

tions that look great on film as well as tell the story. But the problem with most spectacular nature photography is that to get the beautiful shots, you generally have to bust your ass to get to the locations. Many of our locations were deep in the forest, miles up into valleys that were normally closed in winter. We rarely had cell-phone service, which I kind of liked, but at the same time it made it difficult to run a production. Any time you have to strategically plan when to change your socks and rain gear each day, you know it’s a hard shoot.” After locking his location, Hackl’s next and most vital task in pre-production was to find his monster. The movie needed its bear. After auditioning several shaggy beasts, his quest led him to trainer Doug Sues and his famous star, Bart the Bear, the successor to the first Bart, who had gained fame starring in JeanJacques Annaud’s The Bear and the Anthony Hopkins vehicle The Edge and who died of cancer in 2001. As soon as the director laid eyes on the 1,500-lb grizzly, he knew he’d found his Red Machine. “We went to Utah to see Doug, his family and Bart,” Hackl says. “We sat with them, met Bart and we all got along instantly. Doug is like your grandfather, y’know, if your grandfather owned a huge grizzly bear.” Working with buckets of fake blood, dungeon-like studio interiors and Rube Goldberg-esque death traps in the Saw films was a far cry from the open-air settings of Red Machine. No matter how intense the subject matter got in those films, nothing could have prepared Hackl for directing a living, breathing, snarling bear. Hackl admits from the outset, Bart terrified him. “He has a cage that’s kind of like a big trailer that he hangs out in on set. But he loves to perform and when it gets close to showtime he gets really excited. So on our show, when people would walk by the trailer, he could hear them and he’d start banging, banging, banging on the trailer walls. It sounded like something from a horror movie, like a monster trying to escape his confines. But then he gets out and— I should also mention that we were all instructed to greet Bart when he came on set—he’s just the greatest animal. An incredible, beautiful animal. He has over 60 tricks and he can string together six to eight tricks together in a single scene, which is actually incredibly impressive. But when he’s done, he’s done. When he wants to back in his cage, he goes. You don’t argue with him.” Because directing is relatively new to him, Hackl still has deep ties to his first trade. His credits in production design do not lie exclusively with Saw but rather span decades, in such works as the grandiose, syndicated, R-rated sci-fi show Lexx, the erotic drama Zebra Lounge and the cult-rock musical Repo!

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Chris Alexander has eaten, slept and breathed strange cinema as long as memory serves. He is the editor-in-chief of NYC-based horror magazine FANGORIA, which he runs from Toronto, and has just finished his first feature, Blood for Irina, an arthouse vampire film coming soon from Autonomy Pictures. Visit his weird world at www.chris-alexander.ca.

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BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD STURSBERG’S STURSBERG’S TOWER OF BABBLE TOWER OF BABBLE by MICHAEL ALLDER The Tower of Babble is an entertaining cri de coeur, an impassioned self-defence, the mythic story of a visionary leader who is suddenly and unjustly deposed. As the saga unfolds, we learn how Richard Stursberg, the head of CBC’s English services from 2004 to 2010, sets out to reinvent the CBC as an entertainment juggernaut, focused on ratings and audience share. We hear how he seeks to make programming more suited to a younger audience, an audience that better matches the target demographics of advertisers. We’re told, somewhat discreetly, of a new push for sponsorship, a linkage to the corporate world that would previously have been distained. The CBC, it appears, is not just going to produce Dragon’s Den. It is going to move right in. But the key message, the gospel as it were, of The Tower of Babble is that the CBC, as Stursberg finds it, has “a deep misunderstanding about the nature of television. Television is fundamentally about entertainment.” If entertainment is Stursberg’s guiding principle in leading the country’s public broadcaster, his definition of entertainment was somewhat vague. He opens a chapter with a quote from an American writer who tells us that “any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting than 90 percent of the poetry or drama or fiction ever published.” When seeking examples closer to home of what he means by entertainment, Stursberg inevitably cites his successes, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Heartland and Battle of the Blades. Somewhat surprisingly, given that his father was a distinguished foreign correspondent for the CBC, Stursberg has no interest in the national broadcaster’s history and legacy. The modest but popular CBC museum and other exhibits in the atrium of the Broadcast Centre are dismissed as “a shrine” and a massive revamp is ordered. There is a sense that, brand recognition aside, the successes of the past are not just irrelevant, they are now counterproductive. Soviet-like gigantic blow-ups of CBC’s on-camera celebrities are suddenly hung from the walls. There is a shift in referring to the CBC itself. I was personally struck by Stursberg’s repeated public reference to the corporation as a “company.” Given the new creative policy, there are inevitable casualties. Amongst the first for the chop is Opening Night, the Thursday evening performing-arts show. There are, of course, a few cultural imperatives that have to be reinterpreted. With an Orwellian touch, Stursberg quickly excises the word “mandate” from the corporate lexicon, since, as he explains, “It conjured up the pompous, self-important CBC we wanted to end.” That mandate is, according to the CBC’s charter, “to

inform, enlighten and entertain.” Here, and throughout the book, it is difficult to make out a meaningful distinction between public and private television. While Stursberg doesn’t reflect too much on the “enlightenment” potential of TV, one phrase that crops up often is the importance of fast pacing. Just about everything on the CBC, it appears, is too slow. The news is too slow, documentaries are too slow. Everything is better faster. More like ads perhaps? Cancelling drama series like Intelligence (too dark) or This is Wonderland (too odd) are relatively straightforward. There are murmurs in the press but opposition such as it is, proves slight in comparison to Stursberg’s attempt to breach what he terms “Fort News.” He begins the onslaught with cunning by suggesting he be given his own desk in the newsroom. The head of news at that time, the widely regarded and experienced Tony Burman, demurs. “That’s a terrible idea,” a response that would have met with approval in any newsroom. The battle is to continue until Burman leaves the Corporation to take on one of the more prestigious posts in television journalism, the managing director of Al Jazeera’s English network. There are other departures not mentioned in the book, Stursberg having quelled dissent and ousted the unappreciative. Full disclosure here— to some degree, I count myself in these numbers. There are changes, too, in documentary at the CBC. All long-form non-fiction is piled into a new catch-all department under Mark Starowicz, one of few CBCers who earns Stursberg’s unbridled praise. Award-winning series like The Passionate Eye and Rough Cuts are cut back or cut completely, and Stursberg vents his distaste for “esoteric subjects or obscure auteur-driven efforts,” applauding “mainstream fare.” By now readers might have discerned something of a pattern. It doesn’t really matter whether you are talking of drama, comedy, news or documentary. This is not just a man with opinions but one who was able to enforce his will with impunity. All appeared to be sunny while Robert Rabinovitch was the president of the CBC. Both men had been high-level bureaucrats at the Department of Communications and had worked together when Rabinovitch was deputy minister and Stursberg head of policy and strategy in Ottawa. Both later left the civil service to take senior

jobs in the media industry, Rabinovitch for Charles Bronfman’s holding company Claridge, Stursberg for Star Choice and the funding agency Telefilm. Stursberg describes the meeting when Rabinovitch offers him the job. According to him, concerns are expressed that “soft-left, anti-business, Torontocentric, politically correct cultural assumptions created significant problems for the Corporation.” There’s also tough talk laced with revealing humour: “We were certain to be resisted within, attacked without and made generally wretched. It was an appealing prospect.” Rabinovitch’s legacy, other than to hire Stursberg and to reassess the CBC’s real-estate portfolio, proved to be the infamous labour dispute of the fall of 2005, when producers, reporters, studio and location crews, and on-air presenters were locked out of their offices and studios. Little is said about the dramatic fall in ratings that ensued. Critical to the future of the CBC, Stursberg describes persuading Rabinovitch to abandon his “transformation” strategy built around the concept of distinctiveness, a plan that the president had previously championed. Later, there are rumblings of disquiet, mostly it appears from the Board, and particularly from the two members with the most direct experience of public broadcasting, Peter Herrndorf and Trina McQueen, who tells Stursberg that he has a ”tin ear” when it comes to public broadcasting. There are growing tensions over Strursberg’s suggestions that the CBC run infomercials and political ads. Sadly for Stursberg, things take a turn for the worse with the end of Rabinovitch’s term as president. There’s a new sheriff in town, a Quebec lawyer, Herbert Lacroix, who, “in our private conversations… reflected [a] desire to reintroduce the high arts on television and return to the CBC’s mandate…that I detested.” There’s a suitably terse final scene: “We are parting ways,” Stursberg is curtly told by Lacroix.

“Television is fundamentally about entertainment.” Richard Stursberg “Really?” Stursberg replies. ”Are you leaving?” The reign of terror is over. The Tower of Babble is a provocative book, and the personality of its author, smart, funny and determined, is clearly evident. It is indeed an entertaining read. But at its heart, almost by default, it raises some stark questions. Will we see, as suggested in the book, a shift in policy, a return to earlier ideals, or will Stursberg’s legacy endure? To this observer there’s an irony in that what is touted as the author’s new vision is as old as the medium itself. A quiz show likely always drew a larger audience than the play of the week. But public television is not only about numbers. It’s about purpose. Otherwise, it doesn’t have much point. I won’t bother mentioning the virtues of quality Canadian culture driven by something other than advertisers. But in an age of media conglomerates, there is an even greater need for the independence of thought and expression that a public broadcaster permits, one that truly informs, enlightens and entertains. As for the book, it entertains, but I am less certain of its power to enlighten on the subject of our public broadcaster. Michael Allder is the former executive producer of CBC’s Science & Natural History Unit and its flagship programme, the multi-award-winning series The Nature of Things with David Suzuki. fall 2012

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Photo Douglas & McIntyre

From top: elevator/kitchen concept; closer look at the elevator/kitchen; view to elevator/kitchen. All drawings and sketches courtesy David Hackl

The Genetic Opera. So it goes without saying that when directing, he finds it difficult to separate the two roles. “With Red Machine we had a guy named Tink [Far Cry, House of the Dead] from Vancouver handle the production design,” Hackl says. “Tink is a crafty guy who understands this kind of film. He found us some great locations and did a few small builds. But listen, I’m always very hard on production designers. I can’t help it. And I can never quite take my hand off it, it’s just impossible. So there’s a lot of me and my design work in this film, for sure. As a director, I think production design helps me. I want to be like Guillermo Del Toro or Ridley Scott, filmmakers with design in their backgrounds that they exploit to help support their stories.” Wearing many hats is something Hackl was required to do while working in the Saw camp. The films were relatively low-budget affairs, shot quickly and with a tight, multi-tasking team that transferred from sequel to sequel. In fact, Hackl’s own family was part of his professional world. His young children grew up in the environment (“ At school, the teacher would be like, ‘And what does YOUR daddy do?’ and they’d say ‘My Daddy does Saw!’) and Hackl found that their crude drawings inspired the designs of the traps in Saw V. “I do miss the Saw family, I miss working on those films,” Hackl admits. “They were so deliberate, such an established franchise. It wasn’t like working on studio films that can get out of control. These were carefully, exquisitely controlled films. I helped develop the Saw traps and every day was like a crazy brainstorm session, researching and trying to think of fun, cinematic ways to torture and kill people. And as a little bizarre side note, my wife actually had cancer in her right ankle and had to make the decision to cut her foot off below the knee, similar to Dr. Gordon in Saw, only she didn’t have to do it herself! Happily, she has been in perfect health ever since the amputation. Saw was a tight-knit world that was a dream to be a part of and that opened the doors for me. But Red Machine is…well, having a movie of this calibre, with this incredible cast, squarely puts me on the map.” Red Machine has recently been secretly test-screened, to generally positive audience response. Taking their comments seriously, Hackl has made a few trims, may go back to shoot a few more scenes and is left to choose one of several radically different endings that were filmed. Surprisingly, the biggest criticism received from the test crowd, however, was attributed to the rather elegant, lyrical title. “We’re not sure, but we may end up changing the title,” the director reveals. “People seemed to be split evenly, 50/50. I mean, I love the title. You have ‘Red,’ which signifies the bear’s anger and the feel of the movie itself, and ‘Machine,’ which calls to mind something powerful, mechanical and without consciousness.” Riding that statement, there’s an element of legitimate controversy inherently coiled within the existing confines of the film itself, one felt recently by The Grey. In that Liam Neeson-starring vehicle, a man is confronted by a pack of slavering Alaskan timber wolves who hunt, torment and devour his comrades one after bloody one. The film portrayed the wolves, who in reality have very little recorded history to support fears of them being threats to humans at all, as murderous, calculating monsters. Because of this, animal-rights groups were vocal about how irresponsible the film was, creating a false portrayal of an otherwise magnificent and misunderstood creature. Will Red Machine, with its tale of terrified men trying to survive becoming bear chow, court similar dissent? Hackl has feared this since the beginning. “I am definitely concerned,“ he reveals. “I had several conversations with Doug about bears and how they act in the wild. In Red Machine, we have an environmental aspect, however, about nature fighting back, that’s the central theme of the film and justifies certain things. Man is doing stupid things—we know this—and nature is resisting. This is actually true to life. “In fact, the name Red Machine came from a phrase Timothy Treadwell, the famous Grizzly Man profiled in Werner Herzog’s documentary, coined. The Red Machine was the one bear he just couldn’t connect with. My film is not just about people trying to kill a bear. It does have a social conscience. But remember—this is a genre film, after all. You have to portray certain things, and first and foremost you want to rouse the audience and make them feel that ‘the evil beast must die.’”

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10/08/2012 12:09

on 50 years of advancing the rights of Directors and their teams.

Taylor Hackford - President Steven Soderbergh - National Vice President Michael Apted - Secretary-Treasurer Jay D. Roth - National Executive Director

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Imagine Imagine your world Panavision your world in in Panavision

INSPIRED BY THEINSPIRED PAST. FOCUSED THE FUTURE. BY THE PAST.ON FOCUSED ON THE FUTURE.

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PARTING SHOT 50

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Home Again By MARC GLASSMAN

Sudz Sutherland’s new film dramatises the often calamitous results of reverse immigration—when people raised from infancy in Canada are deported “back home” to Jamaica. Sutherland and Jennifer Holness, his producer, co-script-writer and life partner, come from the Caribbean and were inspired by real-life stories to create Home Again, their powerful, multi-character narrative. Montage celebrates Sutherland’s film with this startling Parting Shot.

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Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve gone to the edge of the earth to capture your

Image ÂŠ courtesy of MacGillivray Freeman Films

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