* Director: Gary Burns * Writers: Gary Burns and Donna Brunsdale * Producers: Shirley Vercruysse, Luc Dery, George Baptist * Cinematographer: Stefan Ivanov * Diary by: Ian Edwards

Feature filmmaking in Canada is not for the faint of heart. In fact, the low-budget independent producer in Canada must be utterly fearless – in other words, the antithesis of the main character in this year’s Perspective Canada opener, A Problem with Fear, from Calgary director Gary Burns.

Burns argues that while Big Fear can be whipped into a frenzy by the media, it’s the small fears that occupy our thoughts and ultimately define us.

‘Most of us are in a constant state of anxiety,’ says the director of The Suburbanators (1995), Kitchen Party (1997) and waydowntown (2000). ‘We’re on edge because we live in a public world where we are constantly worried about what other people think.’

In Fear, the protagonist must overcome his fear of everything from elevators to spaghetti and intimacy in order to save the world.

1997 through 2000: Between stints making Kitchen Party and waydowntown, Burns conceives a film about an agoraphobic who can’t go anywhere by himself. A New Yorker article about a palm-top device that warns you about bad things happening, like a car accident or a shoot-out, gels the idea about the little fears that consume our lives – and how the media blows those fears into widespread panic.

October 2000: Diane Boehme, director of independent production for CHUM Television, is the first to put money into development of the script for A Problem with Fear.

February 2001: Telefilm Canada comes on board with three phases of script development.

September 2001: Producers Shirley Vercruysse of Calgary’s Burns Film and Luc Dery of Montreal’s micro_scope have their first meeting about Fear being an Alberta/Quebec coproduction.

January 2002: Burns works with Toronto-based story editor Carrie Paupst Shaughnessy from The Development House to fine-tune the script. Donna Brunsdale, Burns’ wife, is his co-writer.

April 2002: The interprovincial coproduction deal is signed. Because the story requires a subway and post-production calls for a 35mm lab, which Calgary doesn’t have, Quebec seems like a good choice.

CHUM, The Movie Network and Movie Central are all in with television licences. An unnamed Canadian distributor is in place – for now.

May 2002: While Vercruysse is at Cannes, Fear goes into Telefilm’s first national comparative selection process, through which the funder hopes to support more commercially viable films. The response from Telefilm is mixed: strong creative, but the distribution deal does not meet the new Telefilm benchmarks. By the end of the month, the Canadian distributor refuses to sign the P&A commitment and bows out.

June 2002: Shelley Gillen of Movie Central rounds out the development financing with much-needed final-stage monies. Under $60,000 is spent on development. A deal with a new distributor is brokered and the project goes back to Telefilm.

July 2002: Telefilm issues a letter of interest. Producers have until the end of the month to meet the conditions of the letter in order to secure Telefilm participation. Again, very late in the process, Canadian distribution begins to unravel. Telefilm gives the producers until the end of August to finalize the deal. Preliminary casting starts.

September 2002: Canadian distribution is back on and this time it sticks with Montreal-based Christal Films. Telefilm issues the letter of confirmation. It’s Sept. 12 and the team wants to be shooting by mid-November. With Telefilm on board, the Alberta Film Development Program confirms its participation as well.

October 2002: The CTF Licence Fee Program confirms. The Harold Greenberg Fund confirms, tax credits are calculated and confirmed, the Royal Bank agrees to interim finance and Film Finances becomes the bonder. The $4.5-million budget has a small gap, but it’s manageable.

Burns is casting in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Los Angeles. Ontario-born Paulo Costanzo (40 Days and 40 Nights) and Montreal’s Emily Hampshire (The Atwood Stories) are signed to play the two leads in a cast of 60.

November 2002: The shoot is scheduled to begin with 12 days of exteriors in Calgary. The weather breaks just in time and the exteriors are done without reported frostbite. The remainder of the Calgary shoot has to be split before and after Christmas, as it proves impossible to secure a large shopping mall location in mid-December. The production breaks from Dec. 18 to Jan. 3.

January 2003: Seven days of shooting left – three in a Calgary mall and four in the Montreal metro. The day after the film wraps in Montreal, the CanWest Western Independent Producers Fund confirms its participation. Fear is wrapped and fully financed.

‘Gary amazed me,’ says Vercruysse, ‘in how he works with the minutiae of everything. This was a way bigger film than waydowntown and it went really well with the coproduction and the post. It was Gary’s and my decision to fast track and we had to live with that decision, but it paid off. I can’t imagine having to wait. We just said ‘We gotta go.”

February to March 2003: Montreal-based editor Yvann Thibaudeau has been cutting the film since the beginning of the shoot in Calgary. He and Burns have a rough cut ready by early March. This is timely as Donna, Burns’ wife, gives birth to their son Henry on March 12. Picture lock comes by the end of the March.

April to June 2003: The film, shot in a wide-screen 35mm format, is transferred to high definition, color corrected with F/X added in, then blown up to a new 35mm negative. The sound mix, spearheaded by Gavin Fernandes and Philippe Pelletier, winds up just in time for the Perspective Canada programmers to see the film during their annual trip to Montreal.

September 2003: A Problem with Fear opens Perspective Canada at TIFF 2003.