As if directing a feature film was not hard enough, consider Andrea Dorfman, working out of both her native Toronto and her adopted home of Halifax. Dorfman was not only director on Parsley Days, but director of photography, screenwriter and coproducer as well.

The film follows pregnant Kate (Megan Dunlop), who has fallen out of love with longtime boyfriend Ollie (Michael Leblanc), curiously the ‘king of contraception.’ Not willing to wait three weeks for a clinical abortion, Kate enlists the help of a herbalist friend who recommends an ‘all-parsley, all-the-time’ diet to induce a miscarriage. But after a few weeks – and a lot of parsley – Kate makes the clinical appointment.

The feature is Dorfman’s first and has already garnered several awards on the Canadian festival circuit. At last year’s Atlantic Film Festival, Dunlop won best actor and Dorfman received the award for best cinematography. The film was also awarded best first feature at Cinefest in Sudbury, ON. But this isn’t exactly new to Dorfman, who was voted most promising new director at the 1998 AFF for her shorts Swerve and Nine.

Dorfman never went to film school but did attend the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

‘After I graduated, I wanted to make my own films, so I joined a camera union and worked my way up,’ she explains. ‘I was always shooting for myself and for other people, doing music videos, shorts and TV series. I learned traditionally.’

Dorfman recently took her name out of the camera union and has been doing independent freelance work as a writer and cinematographer. In addition, that is, to making an award-winning debut feature.

Parsley Days was shot predominantly in Halifax on a 16mm ARRI SRII camera. Working against both time and financial constraints, the crew shot the feature in 11 days.

‘[The short shooting schedule] could not have been done if I hadn’t been both cinematographer and director,’ says Dorfman. ‘Our [equipment] was light because we were moving around a lot. I had only two lenses – a zoom and an 8mm.’

Dorfman says she chose the 8mm since it is the widest that could be used in 16mm without distortion. The zoom she used was a 10-110mm.

‘Obviously, if you have a bigger budget, you can use prime lenses, which are fixed lenses, and even [have] a different zoom, but for low-budget it was a pretty great scenario, especially since I was getting a wicked deal at PS [Atlantic],’ she comments.

As if being her own DOP wasn’t enough, Dorfman also served as camera operator, explaining she couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. The film was shot with both a static and handheld camera, with a Doorway Dolly on hand. Dorfman describes this piece of gear as little more than a skateboard on tracks, but says it served its purpose, and that the equipment she had in general was more than sufficient.

‘I never thought, ‘Oh, I wish we had a crane,’ ‘ she says. ‘We just had to work creatively with what we had. The possibilities are endless – you just have to be creative.’

The entire budget was $65,000, most of which Dorfman won through equipment supplier PS at AFF. The small budget necessitated not only a short shoot but also the use of independent actors.

‘ACTRA wouldn’t let me use its actors because I couldn’t afford to pay what it wanted,’ says Dorfman. ‘The cast is made up of theatre actors, musicians who are actors, friends – a real spectrum, and a nice blending of the independent art community.’

The filmmaker believes the shooting process was probably most challenging for the actors. After some preliminary rehearsals, they were essentially left to their own devices.

‘I was working a lot with the technical crew, so the actors were pretty much on their own when we started shooting,’ says Dorfman. ‘Because of the time factor, we only shot three takes at most, but we planned it so thoroughly we knew exactly what we were doing.’

Dorfman says the cast and crew never went beyond 12-hour days, adding that on top of ‘working on a low-budget film, [who wants to get] mind-numbingly abused? I don’t think it’s necessary. It had to do with how well prepared we were, and the wonderful support we got.’

Local color

As the DOP, Dorfman envisioned a lot of color and color symbolism to make the film bright, saturated and whimsical and to give life to the community.

‘In the north end of Halifax, where most of the film was shot, there are a lot of brightly colored houses, and with a low budget we couldn’t afford to paint and build sets, so it fit well,’ says Dorfman. ‘We also used a lot of color in the wardrobe, and lit brightly.’

Parsley Days opens with a shot of someone seated in green corduroy pants, which we find Kate wearing throughout the film (she tells us they belong to Ollie). Hands with painted fingernails poke a safety pin through a condom, hence the resulting pregnancy. The viewer is left to wonder if the culprit was Ollie or Kate, as both have painted nails and access to the pants.

‘It makes it ambiguous and creates a little mystery,’ explains Dorfman. ‘But it was actually me wearing the cords, because it was a POV shot.’

One of Dorfman’s interesting writing and directorial moves was to leave the politics of abortion a non-issue.

‘[It] was absolutely intentional,’ says Dorfman. ‘It was not about the decision, but about getting the abortion as soon as possible. I wanted to show an alternative [perspective], because the stigma around abortion is really unfortunate.’

The film opened in Toronto on May 4 and will soon appear on the U.S. festival circuit. Wearing the hats of both director and DOP was something of a strain, but Dorfman insists that because of time and money, she could not have made the film any other way.

‘Also, it was a time in my career where I’m working with a low budget and I wanted to do it by myself,’ she says. ‘It was the perfect opportunity and I loved it. My first feeling when the film was finished was, ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to both shoot and direct [again],’ but really the only title I would drop would be producer. [That’s] a whole side of the business I don’t want to deal with. I think producers are incredible, but I don’t think it’s in me.’

Although, looking over the credits for Parsley Days, it seems everything else is. *