It is the classic challenge in Canadian cinema: how to achieve quality results on a modest budget. To this end, smaller productions have traditionally opted for 16mm or Super 16 origination, and recently shooting on digital video has been in vogue. But in the case of Poor Superman, a $1.3-million feature shot by Daniel Vincelette for writer/director Brad Fraser, producer Ken Mead of realtime films insisted on the 35mm format. To make this economically feasible, he believed Multivision might provide the answer.

The Multivision process was developed in Australia by Movie Lab, which had previously performed Super 16 blowups for the cash-conscious local film community, and the Aranda Group, which modifies motion picture cameras. According to Montreal-based director of photography Vincelette, the two companies joined forces to revisit the Techniscope format of 1960s ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ such as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Techniscope provided a wide-screen image using a two-perf pull-down system whereby you are exposing two perforations where you would normally expose four, thus exposing two frames on the neg space that would normally be needed to expose one, halving film and lab costs.

The crew on Poor Superman also used this two-perf technique, although at a 1.85:1 ratio, and then had to do an optical blowup to go back to four-perf 35mm for release printing. This step is also taken in Super 16 origination, but in this case the filmmakers had originated on superior 35mm.

‘You have a lot more information on the negative [with 35mm],’ Vincelette explains. ‘It looks better than Super 16, and for now it looks better than high-definition video transferred to film, because you’re using a 35mm neg with more latitude. It is a bit grainier than straight 35mm, however, because you use less space on the neg.’

The filmmakers gained confidence in the technique after sending an early test to Australia.

‘It looked very good,’ the cameraman recalls. ‘[The difference with two-perf is] almost imperceptible to the layman. The DOP will see that it’s grainier, but [overall] it’s very good.’

The crew shot with a Moviecam camera modified in Australia, and they acquired lenses, legs and other attachments locally. Vincelette primarily used 5277 Kodak Vision 320T stock, which could handle interiors and exteriors equally well, and the new low-contrast 5284 Vision expression 500T for night scenes.

20-year veteran

Vincelette began in the industry 20 years ago as second assistant camera on various features and TV series, moving up the ranks to first assistant and then cinematographer. He collaborated with Quebec director Richard Roy on the feature murder yarn Caboose (1996) and Le Masque (1997), a TV series about a hockey goalie similar to Patrick Roy. Last year he shot the MOW stage adaptation Le Pays dans la gorge for director Gilles Noel and the thriller Tunnel for actor/director Daniel Baldwin. Rounding out his DOP credits is the Quebec TV series Paparazzi for director Alain Chartrand.

Poor Superman marks the cinematic directorial debut of Edmonton theatre writer/director/actor Fraser, best known to movie audiences for his screenplay for the Denys Arcand-helmed Love and Human Remains, based on Fraser’s own play. A thematic cousin of Remains, Poor Superman is a dramatic comedy about David (Troy Ruptash), a gay painter who has achieved artistic acclaim but is lonely in his personal life. He returns to his past gig of waiting tables to try to recharge his emotional batteries, and ends up having an affair with Matt (Vincent Corazza), his married male employer.

Vincelette qualifies his collaboration with Fraser as one of the most satisfying of his career. He was recommended to Alberta’s realtime films by Film Tonic’s Pierre Latour, who is distributing the film.

‘[Realtime] e-mailed me to see if I was free and interested, and I was very excited, because I like theatre a lot, and Brad Fraser is one of the great authors we have in Canada,’ the cameraman says. ‘So I sent my reel over. Brad looked at a certain number of reels, and mine was the one he preferred, so we hooked up over the phone and got along very well, and the decision was made like that. When we met and started to work together, it was almost like we would think the same thing at the same time.’

The film was shot in Winnipeg rather than in Fraser’s home province, which Vincelette attributes to the fact the Alberta Film Commission did not have much money for projects by young producers. Realtime producers Mead and Paul Stiles subsequently hooked up with executive producer Kim Todd at Winnipeg’s Original Pictures, and she was able to put together a feasible financial strategy to shoot in Manitoba. Fraser rewrote the script to set it in the ‘Peg, and Vincelette was more than happy to showcase the city.

‘Downtown Winnipeg is very pretty and not seen a lot [in features],’ he says. ‘It’s fun when [Canadian] cities get used for what they are, and not what they [resemble]. Montreal is always shown as New York City or Paris, and Toronto is shown like Chicago or whatever. Nowadays people are starting to use those cities as what they are, because they could be good settings for any story.’

Poor Superman began shooting on July 9 this year, wrapping on Aug. 4.

‘It went extremely smoothly,’ Vincelette says. ‘Everybody on the crew, from producers to PAs, was happy to work on a story that takes place in their city, because most of the crew was also from Winnipeg. They were all very happy with Brad, who understood very well and very fast how a film set and crew works. He had a lot of confidence in everyone. He knew his fortes and where he had to rely on other people.’

If Fraser was at all nervous about helming his first feature, Vincelette says that on the set the director acted like a natural.

‘He knew he was already great with actors, and directing the cast was what he wanted to work on the most, because that will make or break the story,’ Vincelette explains. ‘But apart from that he has a lot of knowledge about painting and art in general. In preproduction we had a lot of discussions about the look of the movie and how we were going to treat it.’

On each shooting day, Fraser, Vincelette and first AD Michelle Morris would show up one hour early to run through blocking. Fraser would bring storyboards, although he was open to improvisation on the set. When the actors would arrive, they would go through one rehearsal and then disappear with Fraser while Vincelette made decisions such as the order of shooting, lens selection and camera placement.

Although Winnipeg doesn’t see the same volume of production as Canada’s major centres, the DOP feels the crew he worked with was on par with his Montreal collaborators. He cites gaffer Michael Drabot, key grip Bill Mills, focus puller Bryan Sanders, and first-time production designer Craig Sandells as all outstanding.

Despite similarities to Love and Human Remains, Vincelette sees Poor Superman as stylistically distinct.

‘[In Poor Superman] Brad is directing his own material, which is one less person to interpret his universe,’ he says. ‘He had a strong hold on the way he wanted things to look, and production design and photography all worked hand-in-hand with him. We had a lot of input and preparation.’

Despite the film’s title, it is not a comic book adaptation. It is, however, a movie about a painter and painting, and Fraser treats it in a pop-art style. He and Vincelette tried to fill their palette with bright reds, blues, oranges, greens and yellows in terms of production, costume and lighting design. They used lighting styles that shifted from naturalistic to theatrical, incorporating such techniques as high-key illumination and lighting cues. They also categorized each scene as belonging to one of three seasons, imbuing each with recurring color motifs.

The cinematographer says that working on a lower budget not only forces filmmakers to adopt ingenious techniques such as the Multivision system, but it allows them greater visual freedom.

‘Brad and the producers were very open to trying things we would not do on a more expensive set, where everybody wants to work safely,’ he says. ‘We decided to work without a net – to just try things and live with [the results].’