Montreal: It’s a sunny Friday afternoon in Montreal and the only sign of life at Mirabel, the city’s seemingly deserted cargo airport, is the cast, crew and some 60 extras belonging to the mow Task Force: Caviar.

Talk about your perfect airport location shoot.

A mix of French-Canadian and East Coast accents mingle within the airspace of the sun-filled waiting room as director Richard Ciupka (The Hunger) sets up shots and the producers suck on Lifesavers supplied in gross abundance in exchange for product placement.

A $3.28-million coprod by Halifax-based Big Motion Pictures and Montreal’s Motion International for Global and tva, Task Force is a fictional account of the real investigation that led to the infamous 22-ton hash bust in Montreal in 1996.

Written by Wayne Grigsby (e.n.g., North of 60, Black Harbour), a founding father of Big Motion Pictures, who is also exec producing with partner/cofounder David MacLeod (The Songspinner, Black Harbour) and Motion’s Andre Picard, the film chronicles the story of Brian Hogan, a hard-working narcotics detective on the Montreal police force who discovers ‘The Prince,’ one of the world’s biggest drug dealers, has been operating under his nose for years. Determined to track the drug lord down, he teams up with the rcmp to form a joint task force they code name ‘Caviar.’

The production team has been in Montreal for five days and much of that time was spent in Old Montreal, where Amsterdam was recreated. The first three weeks were shot in and around Halifax, where, of all places, Montreal was recreated.

Today, however, is the final day of shooting and everyone is calm on set, especially Grigsby, who humors a small crowd with some simple ballet moves. Action is limited, dialogue is rare and the shots are mainly exteriors, but it’s exceptionally interesting to see Ciupka, a prolific commercial director and former dop, work his magic.

He always doubles as camera operator and he never works without his dolly grip Matthew Sharest, his first ad Marc Larose and his dop Marc Charleboise.

‘Being the camera operator permits me to give it a visual style. If I had to explain exactly what I wanted I would lose a lot of time…. Nobody sees actors better than the operator, especially when the camera’s moving, so this way, I’m the first spectator,’ says Ciupka.

In Task Force, as in much of his work, Ciupka is continously moving the camera, which enables him to execute extremely long shots where perspective changes and actors move. ‘It’s difficult to choreograph that, but once you have a good grip you can do it,’ he says. ‘Otherwise, you do two shots, give them to the editor and he decides.’

The best experience Ciupka has had with the film is working with the cast, which is made up of award-winning actor Alex Carter (Black Harbour), Clark Johnson (Homicide: Life on the Street), Patrick Goyette (Le Confessional) and Richard Robitaille (The List).

‘There is a chemistry between them that made for a lot of laughter, so much sometimes that I’m having a hard time with continuity.’

Task Force is comprised of 140 scenes, which Grigsby says made for fuller days. ‘We didn’t have a lot of room for if the weather goes,’ he says, but fortunately production, which wrapped Oct. 29, ran smoothly.

Recreating cities without the use of special effects was a challenge, as was creating a polished feature on such a modest budget, but the only major incident that Grigsby recalls is a day when a suicidal extra showed up with a gun in his pants.

Task Force is the first project from the newly formed East Coast prodco, which holds a 70% interest in the coprod partnership.

The mow is slated for delivery Feb. 4, 2000.

Alliance Atlantis is distributing internationally.