Gail Tilson is a Saskatchewan girl through and through. Even though the Gemini-nominated producer of Rockie hopeful The Dinosaur Hunter is technically from Ontario, she boasts about the high percentage of the film’s cast, crew and production staff who are from the Prairie province that she now calls home.

‘Life in Saskatchewan is about roots and family, and that’s what keeps me here. These elements have an influence on the work that I do and are depicted in this story,’ she says.

Filmed in Saskatchewan and set during the drought-stricken Depression of the 1930s, The Dinosaur Hunter is the story of siblings Julia (Allison Pill) and Daniel Creath (Bill Switzer) and their adventures in hunting for a Jurassic skeleton. Based on the award-winning children’s book My Daniel by Pam Conrad, Dinosaur stars Simon MacCorkindale as paleontologist Jack McCabe whose offer to a town of desperately needed reward money is threatened by unscrupulous adventurer Hump Hinton (Christopher Plummer), who is prepared to kill for the artifacts.

‘I knew the book really well from having read it to my children,’ recalls Tilson. ‘I was very passionate about the story even before we got to the scripting.’

‘I approached Edwina Follows who I knew from a quasi-involvement on another project. Based on some other things she has done (Emily of New Moon, Ready or Not), in my mind she seemed to be the perfect writer for this project. When I sent it to her, she really liked it and was glad to be involved. So it was two mothers with children working on a show.’

As mothers, Follows and Tilson each read the script to their children to gauge their reactions, making changes as the diminutive focus group suggested. With the script in place, director Rick Stevenson (Magic on the Water) was chosen for what Tilson refers to as ‘his phenomenal ability to communicate with young people.’ Stevenson loved the idea from the start and ‘saw the whimsy in the story.’

Tilson also secured Jay Semko and Ross Nykiforuk of the Saskatchewan band The Northern Pikes, to compose the score for the production.

In fact, Tilson was very involved in every aspect of the production. ‘Everybody in this show was handpicked.’ However, finalizing the 100% Canadian cast was a collaborative effort. Decisions involved many phone calls back and forth with the broadcaster, wic, the Winnipeg-based distributor, Credo, and Tilson, discussing who was appropriate, who was available and who would fit their budget.

Financing for the Independent Moving Pictures imp production was developed over a period of three years with ‘huge support from the broadcaster.’

‘They are fabulously supportive financially as well as creatively,’ says Tilson. ‘They were also a very good broadcaster to develop this because they are close by in Edmonton.’ Although the script team spanned the country, the project was driven from Saskatchewan, so Tilson appreciated having the broadcaster close by and the distributor only one province away.

Location, location,

location

With $3 million to make a period picture, 21 days of shooting time, and only a small window of time when early spring in Saskatchewan can pass for drought-like conditions, Tilson had to know exactly how the locations would look at the time of shooting. ‘I had found places a year or two years in advance of shooting, so when the director [Stevenson] came out here to look at it in February, it was on faith that he believed what lay beneath the snow.’

Another reason Tilson scouted the sites so far in advance was that there were certain places in Saskatchewan that would work creatively with the story and certain views of the province she wanted the world to see, one of them being the Sukkanen village, which is a private museum complete with vintage buildings, equipment and period vehicles. Production designer Hugh Shankland calls it ‘more than a museum. It’s like a Hollywood backlot.’ On a more personal level, Tilson wanted to include unexpected vistas such as the dig sites at Nicole Flats to show off the province’s diverse beauty.

The National Film Board-trained Tilson has also started to develop a historical television movie about settlers in Saskatchewan. ‘It’s an unusual pioneer’s story because it’s not about hardship and clearing the land and keeping the wolves away from the door. It’s a magnificent story about a community where the settlers also created a cultural centre with the first rural library.’

Reflecting on her career, Tilson agrees that much of her work to date has focused on Prairie life. ‘When imp was launched in 1993, it was with an award-winning one- hour documentary called Lost Legacy, about the state of the family farm in the face of globalization. It was sad – a heartbreaking documentary to do. But I guess whether it is conscious or not, the Prairies are an inspiration. There is a certain understanding of this part of the country that goes into the pictures.’