off to a flying start

We could hear them but we couldn’t see them. Thousands of pounding buffalo hooves far off in the distance, but already the second ad was on the blow horn warning the crews with all the authority he could muster to, ‘Get the hell into those trucks and back up the hill! Only camera crew allowed,’ he roared for the fourth time. A reluctant herd of onlookers hustled their butts onto the backs of trucks and into four-wheel drives gunning their way to safer ground.

The cameras start rolling. Over the crest of the hill a storm cloud of dust ensnares these massive woolly beasts, blustering their way across the Southern Alberta foothills like a bloated tornado. Cowboys gallop into the fray. Unruly and independent-minded buffalo are a wrangler’s nightmare. Miraculously, the herd comes together and hits its mark.

A wrangler costumed as Buffalo Bill, sitting astride his horse with shotgun cocked, bolts off into the herd, firing as he rides.

It’s a big, big, big blue sky with not a cloud in sight to mar this postcard perfection. The smell of sweet grass wafts through the air as the cameras pan and zoom for a last shot of this premiere episode scene. Sidney Furie, the director, yells, ‘Cut! We’ve got it. That’s great.’

You bet it’s great, and on the first take no less. Corralling a few hundred buffalo to reshoot a scene is a lot more difficult than calling back a few hundred extras from the craft services table.

It doesn’t get any better than this. Already six weeks into production on Lonesome Dove: The Series – the largest tv production ever shot in Western Canada with a budget of $35 million for 21 one-hour episodes – and everything is clicking along. So well, in fact, that producer Jana Ververka, normally tense and drawn at this stage of the production schedule, stands fit, tanned and serene as she surveys the set.

‘It’s almost unnerving,’ says Ververka, fondling that ever-present cell phone as if counting the moments like labor pains before the next ring. ‘Everything is running so smoothly. I keep waiting for some nightmare to happen, but it doesn’t.’

For Ververka, producing Lonesome Dove: The Series was an ideal opportunity to start a project from scratch, and the fact that it was the biggest production she’d ever handled, not to mention the most eagerly awaited syndicated series since Star Trek: The Next Generation, didn’t deter her. ‘You never know what you can do until you tackle it.’

In 1986, executive producer Suzanne dePasse optioned Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning saga of the American West during the mid-1870s. DePasse and Robert Halmi Jr. had produced the two original miniseries and were interested in doing a series. With the favorable exchange rate, it made obvious sense to produce a series of this magnitude in Canada.

DePasse and Halmi hooked up with co-executive production partner Michael Taylor of Toronto-based Telegenic Programs. The series was then structured as 75% Canadian content with 25% foreign costs.

The CTV Television Network came on as the Canadian broadcaster and u.s. sales skyrocketed. Already more than 180 u.s. syndicated markets have been sold, representing coverage of over 90% of tv homes in the States.

Ververka was called in to produce. She had what they needed. She had successfully produced 52 episodes of the western family drama series Bordertown for Alliance Communications, during which time she oversaw construction of one of Canada’s largest western town sets. That was followed by 46 episodes of Adventures of the Black Stallion, filmed in Canada, France and New Zealand.

She obviously knew how to work with horses. But surprisingly, even though she loved the book and adored the miniseries, Ververka said no. After many years of constant work she had committed to finally taking that overdue vacation in Europe.

The day she returned they called again. They were still interested. This time Ververka said yes, and in October of last year made the move to Calgary with husband David Fischer, who had signed on as production designer.

Calgary, having just upgraded its credibility in the western department with the recent filming of the Academy Award-winning Clint Eastwood film Unforgiven, appeared to be a natural choice for locating the series. Ververka says she scouted extensively elsewhere, but she and Fischer just couldn’t find anything to match the wide-open spaces, rolling hills and mountain backdrops outside of Calgary that lend themselves so well to a classic western look.

Lonesome Dove was conceived to be set in Texas or Montana. ‘While we are playing it cross-border, with some stories taking place on each side of the 49th, it’s this kind of terrain we were looking for,’ says Ververka. ‘There’s nothing else quite like it in Canada.’

Although Unforgiven left the legacy of a well-trained crew with a western sensibility (including Oscar-nominated set decorator Janice Blackie-Goodin), Ververka laments that it didn’t leave behind anything in the way of a town or props.

But Fischer, whose production designer credits include the television movies A Mother’s Justice, Deadly Intentions ii and the abc television series Birdland, has cleverly designed two entire western towns for Lonesome Dove, striking both in their differences and in their attention to historical detail, right down to the seedy brothel bedrooms and the just-the-facts-ma’am tombstone inscription that reads, ‘Nathaniel Esterhazy died age 71. Choked on a sausage.’

Historical accuracy on a series like this is very important, says Ververka. Viewers who are western aficionados watch these details very closely and expect to see the right gun being used and right style of boot being worn.

For Fischer, having the freedom to define the scope and look of the sets and the opportunity to create two complete towns and the mood of an era out of nothing but grass and trees was a career high point.

But it wasn’t until the towns were completely built and dressed, bustling with cast and extras in period costumes, horses and buggies, that it finally came to life for him. ‘For almost a year and a half it existed only in my head, and now it was like stepping back 125 years, it was all around me.’

l.a.-based Canadian director Furie, who had worked with dePasse previously on Lady Sings The Blues but hadn’t shot any television since a series entitled Hudson’s Bay in 1959, wanted to bring a realism and naturalism to Lonesome Dove. To achieve this, he used multiple cameras.

‘At first when I told the dop I was going to use three cameras, he looked at me funny and said, `You mean outside?’ I said, `No, everywhere and sometimes even five.’ He raised his eyebrow again but now he loves it.

‘What I’m trying to get away from,’ says Furie, ‘is that standard over-the-shoulder close-up that’s always shot the same and looks so formula. By using three cameras on dialogue scenes, I get complete coverage, so I can place my people more naturalistically. I call it `au naturel’ shooting, it’s a whole different style.

‘People can walk around, they don’t have to be so static. Actors can do things they’ve never done before. With one camera there’s always a time constriction because you have to do setups for each shot. That takes time and money, so you don’t move people around much. This way everybody is moving and you can cut between cameras in the middle of a motion. It’s ideal for working with the unpredictability of animals. Look at that scene,’ says Furie, referring to the opening buffalo sequence, ‘we got it in one take. The audience won’t know why it’s good, but they will think it looks real.’

dop Ron Stannett had never shot a western before, so he jumped at the chance after spending the last few seasons shooting Top Cops. ‘It was a good cleansing of the mind,’ says Stannett. But after screening the two miniseries of Lonesome Dove, he asked himself, ‘What am I going to do that’s different? They had it in the bag.’

He started playing around with chocolate filters, which give a warm earthy tone but still retain the richness of the landscapes. ‘It gives a period look without going into the sepia tones.’

But the greatest challenge, he says, has been working with the multiple cameras. ‘Fortunately, it’s a lot of fun. It takes more time to set up initially, but once we’re shooting it’s great, and since we’re not using a lot of extra light to keep the interiors very close to the natural sources of light, it’s reduced the workload for the lighting crew. For action or stunt scenes it’s wonderful because we don’t have to worry about continuity, we can roll right through it, running from one camera to the next.’

Ververka says rather than being an inconvenience to be dealt with, making the production Canadian content turned out to be an advantage. ‘We looked in Canada first and foremost for our stars and we were lucky to find three absolutely extraordinary talents: Scott Bairstow (White Fang), whom she describes as a young Steve McQueen, Christianne Hirt (Bordertown) and Eric McCormack (e.n.g., Hat Squad).

‘As our three leads, not only are they dynamite singly, but together there’s a lot of heat. Even though I could have easily hired an American star, the Canadian content served me in good stead. We didn’t feel compelled to have an American lead when we have the talent here. And there was certainly no pressure from American executive producers Suzanne dePasse and Robert Halmi, they could see we have the talent here.’

Ververka explains that because of the Cancon point system stipulation that if you have an American writer you must use a Canadian director and vice versa, up to this point the story department has been almost exclusively American, with the exception of two Canadian story editors, Michael Mercer and Julie Lacey. As a result, it’s been a boon for Canadian directors but not writers. However, Ververka predicts the use of Canadian writers will no doubt increase as the series evolves.

Ververka herself entered the production business as a writer. She says like most people from the West Coast her first experience working in television was on cbc’s Beachcombers series, as a story editor. From there she progressed to coproducing the Airwolf series before stepping up to produce Bordertown.

‘Coming from a writing background,’ she says, ‘stories are the most important element in a film for me – certainly the part I care about the most – because without a good script to start with, you have nothing. The most difficult aspect of any series is to get the concept working and then to get good scripts.’

Ironically, while the daily production has been running smoothly, it’s those stories that have been the greatest obstacle in making this series work. Ververka confesses a number of American executive story consultants have come and gone already because it’s a difficult franchise.

‘Trying to maintain the integrity of the franchise, that’s been our greatest hurdle, trying to come up with the kinds of stories that will not only be true to the Roy McMurtry book but to the fact that it is a western as well. We also have to bear in mind that this is not a miniseries but a one-hour syndicated drama. So the reality is that integrity will only take me so far. It also has to be entertaining.’