Director/cowriter: Gary Burns * Cowriter: James Martin * Cinematographer: Patrick McLaughlin * Producer: Shirley Vercruysse * Diary by: Fiona MacDonald

Calgarians are familiar with the ‘plus 15’ system of skywalks that started connecting buildings throughout downtown in the ’70s and are still being built to this day. And at least one loathes them.

‘They’ve always been a thorn in my side,’ says director and writer Gary Burns of the architectural feature that inspired his film Waydowntown.

‘I grew up here so I saw how it transformed downtown – it’s sucked the life out of downtown. It’s an architecturally bad move. It’s modernism gone wrong. The idea was for walkways so that people didn’t have to put their coats on when they went from building to building. They’ve taken coffee shops and any stores that would be accessible to everybody and put them in the center core of office buildings. Calgary’s a ghost town on Sundays. For the size of the city and the size of the downtown core, it’s spooky.’

Many residents can go back and forth from work to shops and home without once setting foot in the outside world – and it is this aspect of the city that gave Burns his premise. Four office underlings make a bet: he who lasts the longest without going outside wins a month’s salary.

November/December 1998: Burns applies for a Canada Council grant based on his idea. He then applies for development funding from Citytv and before Christmas gets the news he will get the money.

Jan. 15, 1999 to March 1999: Burns cowrites the script with journalist and author James Martin. ‘I came up with the premise and bought him on board.’

February 1999: Shirley Vercruysse comes on board as producer.

March 1999: Burns and Vercruysse send the script to Odeon Films, which seems very interested.

April 1999: The two apply to cfcn, Telefilm Canada and the Harold Greenberg Fund for funding.

May 1999: Odeon comes on board contractually; a ‘comfort letter’ to the Alberta Film Development Program goes out.

June 1999: The Telefilm application is met with interest, particularly since the film already has a distributor attached. cfcn and Telefilm funding comes through.

July 1999: The production is notified that it qualifies for afdp monies, administered through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Mid-August 1999: Burns’ producer, Vancouver-based first-timer Shirley Vercruysse, relocates to Calgary for the production. ‘By the time I went to Calgary in mid-August we were committed to go ahead. In retrospect, now that I know what we did, I’d never do it again,’ says Vercruysse.

September 1999: The Harold Greenberg Fund okays the project for funding. ‘It’s always about momentum,’ says Burns. ‘If Odeon didn’t come on board right away nothing would have happened. You’ve got to get a few people interested first. It’s come together super fast. We were shooting within eight months of starting [the project].’ October to November 1999: The film is shot in Calgary on one camera over 22 days. ‘I think that’s the way film should be: you come up with an idea, you write it and bang it’s done! Yay!’

December 1999 to January 2000: The film is edited, with the picture’s first cut being locked up towards the end of January.

Late January/early February 2000: Color correction is completed. Following this stage, the film is blown up for the transfer to film from video. At eight seconds per frame, this is a lengthy process.

February to March 2000: The sound is mixed at the Banff Centre For the Performing Arts. Part of this coincides with the blowup.

Late April 2000: Waydowntown is ‘done, done, done!’

‘We’re holding off for Toronto,’ says Burns. ‘Odeon only has the rights for Canada. The u.s. and the rest of the world are still open. It’s a small Canadian film; we can’t presell based on stars so we have to sell based on audience reaction.’

September 2000: Waydowntown has its world premiere at tiff. *