Scott Harper, producer of Sunday Night, being pitched at Banff’s Documart, says he could do either a commercial hour or a 1 x 90 on the $2 million- to $3 million-budgeted project.

Harper, who has worked on his Sunday Night pitch for the last seven years, says, ‘I think I can fill up more time easily no matter what, it’s just a matter of what the broadcaster will tolerate. I think it’s a better doc in a 90-minute slot, although it’s hard to sell something not in a one-hour block.’

The project looks at the world of work, and owes its title to that twilight zone in the weekend where free time begins to wind up and people turn their thoughts instead to what awaits them on Monday morning.

‘Ever since high school days, Sunday night is the time that reflects the changeover from leisure to work. It’s not a dreadful time, but it’s when people reflect on their working status. It can be a solitary time, and there’s a touch of malaise in there for some people.

‘What we want to do is follow a midsized company over the course of a year. What we’re trying to get a look at is how we behave at work – how personalities get warped at work. And we still use our jobs as a benchmark for who we are. This would be a documentary version of Office Space.

‘We want to illustrate some of the stereotypes about work, some of the general universal truths about working in an office. There are people who rely on politics to get by without any talent whatsoever, there’s the backstabber, the keener, the one who takes credit for someone else’s work. There’s all kinds of dysfunctional players at work and every office has one or two of the same type.

‘I think what happens is that it’s very difficult to be yourself at work….You’re forced to play a role and people deal with it in a sometimes embarrassing way.’

Harper’s plan would be to monitor a midsize company, with close-ups on the lives of four or five employees over the course of six or seven months.

Shooting would be done with both digital hand-held and static cameras: ‘It depends on the level of access we get.

‘We want to find out what some of the key events of these people’s lives are – there might be a major meeting one week and nothing the next. A lot of that would depend on the relationship we have with them – we would like to drop in without warning.’

And despite the seemingly grim nature of the project, Harper says, ‘I want this to be funny, lighthearted. In my mind it’s not a heavy-handed piece by any means, there has to be a playful element in it.’ *