Fred Einesman

The transition from medical man to directing may not seem all that obvious, but Fred Einesman has impeccable credentials to make the jump.

When interviewed, the good doctor was resting up for the 4 p.m. to midnight emergency room shift, having returned to L.A. after a week in Toronto looking for projects to direct. ‘I can always be a doctor,’ says Einesman. ‘The passion for me is directing, that’s what I want to do.’

Einesman is a Montreal native who moved to California to pursue the then-emergent ER specialization. ‘The great thing about emergency medicine was that it was incredibly intense while you were there, but when you were gone, it was gone. When you were there you were on and adrenalized and making big decisions. When you walked out the door, that was it.’

And ER doctors can walk out the door 50% of the time: the typical ER schedule is composed of 15 days on and 15 off. ‘Most people use the time to decompress. I decided I loved film so much that I applied to USC and was accepted to the masters program [graduating in ’94].’

Einesman was chosen as one of four filmmakers in his year to direct the senior class project. ‘It was a big deal: George Lucas did one, Robert Zemeckis did one and I did one. So I always go around saying I’m in that illustrious crowd.’

His time in film school also resulted in Einesman acting as a technical advisor on the hit TV series ER, then in its first year.

The culmination of his time as an ER technical advisor came with his stint in the director’s chair for the episode ‘How the Finch Stole Christmas,’ which aired at Christmas 1999 and again in 2000. The episode included a moment when Carter, having spent the show gathering guns as part of a seasonal toy-gun swap, finds himself caring for a small child shot in a drive-by shooting.

‘It was a great scene, it had happened to me in real life and I transported it to the show,’ recalls Einesman. ‘You see everyone working on something and you come up and see this kid shot in the head. So much of that stuff had happened to me, it was great to translate those stories into an episode.’

Einesman has also busied himself offering technical medical advice on other shows, for example, The West Wing (when the president was shot), Friends (he showed how to deliver Phoebe’s babies), and Murphy Brown (he consulted on the matter of her breast cancer).

As a doctor with directing experience he is uniquely placed to give technical advice that ensures the shoot runs smoothly.

‘I’ve directed so I know what they want. They’re concerned that the technical person will come in and ruin everything. The difference is I don’t get in the way. I make it simpler and get through on schedule.’

The recent shoot for sci-fi/comedy movie Evolution was a case in point: Einesman used only one of the two and a half days scheduled to block and shoot the scene where a creepy-crawley alien has burrowed under a character’s skin.

‘Within an hour we had the scene lit and ready to be shot. They were thrilled. They came over to me and said, ‘You clearly know what you’re doing.’ They were pleased because they picked up two days, and in the movies that is a big deal.’

Because of an in-house rule at ER, Einesman is faced with having to leave the series if he directs a second episode, which he plans to do sometime in the new season. As a result, he now finds himself looking around for other projects to direct.

‘What I really love is directing. When you’re a doctor you spend a lot of time worrying about the negatives. Your job is to make things not disintegrate; you’re fighting against entropy. You start off with something and want to make sure there’s not nothing. Being a director is the exact opposite. In visual terms, you don’t have anything, and at the end of a shoot you go, ‘Oh, my god, there’s something.’ The yin and yang is something I love.’

The recent trip home to Canada has resulted in ‘a few’ directing offers, one in particular that Einesman is excited about, but ‘I have to trade four shifts away [to take the job].’ -Fiona MacDonald

Helen Lee

Although she has almost a decade of formal film studies behind her, Helen Lee says she learned filmmaking ‘by doing.’

Lee, fresh from her feature directorial debut on the The Art of Woo, started her undergraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario where she balanced business studies with artier subjects before transferring to the University of Toronto ‘because they had a cinema studies program.’ New York was next, with Lee signing on for a masters degree in film at NYU, an experience she calls ‘an eye-opener.’ This was followed by curatorial studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

But all along Lee was turning out her own work. Despite her concentration on theory, Lee was able to incorporate enough technical courses to equip her to write, direct and edit her first short film, Sally’s Beauty Spot, which screened at the Toronto Festival of Festivals in 1990.

‘It was during that time I felt most torn, because when I should have been writing essays I was more interested in going to an editing suite and cutting my film. It was where I [thought I] should go with my life,’ she says.

Back in Toronto in the early ’90s, a stint as director observer on Atom Egoyan’s Exotica helped make up her mind, and she enrolled in the Canadian Film Centre. More study was to come: Lee had a Nomad Residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and a director residency at the CFC. And then school was out.

‘I was so glad to be out of institutions; it was like being released or something. At the same time, I enjoyed my time there. I learned a lot about dramatic filmmaking at the centre.’

Two other films from Lee during this period were My Niagara, a dramatic short, which she directed, cowrote and produced, that won a Special Jury Citation at the Toronto International Film Festival, and Prey, a comedic drama that was an official selection at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.

After a five-year hiatus spent in her native Korea (‘It was a long period of rejuvenation’), Lee returned to Canada last year with a feature film in development, a romantic thriller called Priceless. Interest was forthcoming from Alliance Atlantis and Citytv, and Sienna Films was on board for development. ‘But it didn’t really get off the ground,’ says Lee, although she still harbors hopes of getting the project made.

Something else did get made though. Approached a year ago by Anita Lee, a friend from her CFC days, with a premise for The Art of Woo, the two began work on the script Helen would direct. The romantic comedy follows Toronto art dealer Allessa Woo as she searches for the perfect man. The two Lees managed to cast such luminaries as Sook-Yin Lee, Adam Beach, Alberta Watson, Don McKellar and Kelly Harms.

‘We were really lucky. We approached the actors and they all seemed to like the script. It’s a funny story and all the parts are across the board.’

With editing just completed, Lee looks forward to submitting the film to this year’s TIFF.

‘It’s all been done in a very fast time line,’ she says of the $500,000 project, produced through ArtStar Pix and the CFC’s Feature Film Project. -Fiona MacDonald

Alan Resnick

Alan Resnick got his start in the film and television business directing music videos for such rock stars as Jeff Healey. Now an established comedy director, writer and producer, Resnick retraces the career path that has earned him three Gemini Awards for best writing in a comedy series and a Gemini nomination for best directing.

‘[Through music videos] I learned the musicality of camera movement in relation to performance,’ Resnick says. ‘The camera has a rhythm to it. I think all comedy is musical and there’s a musicality to the comic beats.’

Resnick’s big break came when he responded – no kidding – to an ad in Playback. It said: ‘Comedy Director Wanted.’

‘It didn’t have the name of the company. I had put together a reel of material in a very comedic way, so I sent my reel in and the next thing I knew I got a call from [Salter Street Films’] Michael Donovan,’ recalls Resnick.

Donovan offered Resnick the opportunity to write on the inaugural season of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. It was with the popular comedy series that Resnick also got his start directing ‘short [comedy] segments.’

Says Resnick: ‘It opened my eyes to comedic performance. Here I was working with the best performers in the country. I was learning about the rhythms of comic beats on the page.’

Resnick’s wildly successful experience on 22 Minutes lasted for more than 50 episodes and helped propel his career as a director. He went on to create and direct Y B Normal?, a 13-episode, half-hour comedy series on The Comedy Network.

Most recently, Resnick directed all 13 episodes of Creative Atlantic Communications’ Liography, another show for Comedy, starring Leslie Nielsen. Working with Nielsen was an exciting challenge for Resnick, who ‘learned a ton about trust between performer and director.’

On set, Resnick believes collaboration between director, producers, performers and crew is the ‘fuel’ of the creative process. ‘I focus a great deal on creating a nurturing creative environment,’ he says.

Currently Resnick is completing a feature film script. He is also in development on three new series, working with fellow comedy writers Ed Macdonald and Alex Ganetakos alongside producer Deanne Foley. -Dave Lazar