* Director/writer: Rodrigue Jean * Producers: Rodrigue Jean, Ian Boyd, Phyllis Laing * Cinematographer: Yves Cape

Add the stress and heartache that go into making just one film in Canada and multiply that by three. That’s what sophomore director Rodrigue Jean (Full Blast) and his cohorts went through to make Yellowknife, a road movie that drew cash from – and had to file a great deal of paperwork with – funding agencies in New Brunswick, Quebec and Manitoba.

The story is of a brother (Sebastien Huberdeau) and sister (Helene Florent) who leave their East Coast home on a cross-country drive, in a Winnebago, to the remote Northwest Territories capital of Yellowknife. ‘It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years,’ says Jean. ‘Instead of going south, like people usually do in these sorts of stories, their aim was to go north.’ Jean also executive produced along with Ian Boyd and producer Phyllis Laing.

All three recalled the development and triple-province coproduction in recent interviews.

July 1999: Jean finishes post-production on Full Blast and immediately starts writing Yellowknife. He wants to be a more ‘hands-on’ director this time.

September 1999: Development is expected to cost $105,000 and Jean applies to Telefilm Canada and New Brunswick Film, receiving $30,000 and $35,000, respectively.

January 2000: Jean shows an 85-page rough draft to Boyd, a producer at Montreal’s Les Films De L’Isle with whom he worked on Full Blast. A co-development agreement is signed and both go looking for more money. Quebec funding agency SODEC kicks in $5,000, followed closely by $10,000 from Radio-Canada. Development proceeds with $80,000.

March 2000: Jean finishes the third draft and wants to go into production, but Films De L’Isle talks him out of it, doubting he can finish the script by summer.

May to June 2000: Jean takes Full Blast to festivals in Vancouver, Seattle and San Francisco. He continues to write Yellowknife and returns with a final draft. Boyd and Jean apply again to Telefilm, this time for production funding, which is budgeted at $3.2 million. Telefilm cuts a cheque for $1 million.

September 2000: Boyd plans to use rural Manitoba for the scenes set in the Far North, and contacts Laing at Winnipeg’s Buffalo Gal Pictures. All three meet during the Toronto International Film Festival to discuss the project and she signs on. SODEC is also approached for more funding during an impromptu meeting in a hotel lobby.

October 2000: Laing brings in $175,000 from Manitoba Film & Sound. New Brunswick Film offers another $300,000 – to be spread out over the next two fiscal years – and Boyd squeezes another $300,000 out of SODEC. ‘All these provinces have different labor laws and tax credits,’ says Jean, recalling the endless paperwork. ‘So to harmonize all that is a nightmare. It’s nearly impossible.’ Boyd notes that for ‘reasons still unclear’ the second half of the New Brunswick money never materializes.

November 2000 to January 2001: Negotiations run almost non-stop through the winter as the trio searches for distributors and TV presales – eventually selling to SRC, Super Ecran, The Movie Network, Showcase and, thanks to Laing’s connections out west, Movie Central. Montreal-based K Films Amerique signs as the distributor for French Canada.

The budget is topped off at $3.1 million and casting begins. ‘By January we had most of the pieces together,’ says Boyd.

March 2001: Jean is again eager to start shooting, but heavy snowfalls in the Maritimes force a brief delay. Belgian filmmaker Yves Cape (Ma vie en rose) is hired as DOP.

April to May 2001: Production starts near Moncton, runs smoothly for four weeks and, after a two-week break, is scheduled to resume near Winnipeg. Most of the original crew are to be replaced by Manitobans, in keeping with that province’s funding restrictions. Props and equipment will be driven west in the Winnebago.

June 2001: Cast and crew reconvene, but the Winnebago is missing and it takes a while before the moving company can locate its wayward driver, who is apparently in nearby Hearst, ON. ‘We thought we were going to be okay,’ Boyd recalls. ‘Then a day later we found out it was in Bathurst [NB] and the driver had only gone, like, 150 miles north of Moncton.’

The Winnebago arrives eight days late. Preparation is rushed and further complicated by last-minute crew replacements; the expected SAG strike has doubled the usual number of U.S. productions in the province and skilled crew are hard to find. Yellowknife is forced to fly in help from Quebec. Shooting wraps after 10 hectic and expensive days.

July 2001: Yellowknife goes into post, with editor Mathieu Bouchard-Mallo (Full Blast).

August 2001: A rough cut is done.

January 2002: Post is finished.

March 2002: Yellowknife plays at Rendezvous du Cinema Quebecois in Montreal, followed by a limited release there and in Moncton.

Spring 2002: Montreal-based Domino Films and Television International agrees to distribute in English Canada, but a release date is not set. ‘Things have just been moving too fast,’ says Boyd. ‘We haven’t had a chance to sit down and really look at that.’

September 2002: Yellowknife plays in Perspective Canada at TIFF.