In contrast to virtually every other program on television, CTV’s The Eleventh Hour, produced by Alliance Atlantis, isn’t awash in warm reds and browns. Instead, the show’s look is cold and hard-edged, emphasizing blue and green hues. Add lots of rich blacks and a raw, rough quality to the video, and The Eleventh Hour is visually jarring. It’s a look that fits well with the show’s dramatization of the goings-on behind the scenes at an investigative news program.

As the director of photography on The Eleventh Hour’s first season, 36-year-old Steve Cosens was instrumental in choosing the show’s distinctive colors.

‘We wanted something that looked a bit less polished and a bit more real,’ explains Cosens, who’s been nominated for best photography in a dramatic program or series for the Eleventh Hour ep ‘Not Without My Reefer.’ ‘We were aiming for a look that’s not typical on TV – one that is stylish but edgy, with a broad range of contrast.’

Directed by David Wellington, one of three Eleventh Hour helmers up for best direction Geminis, ‘Not Without My Reefer’ focuses on a man’s fight to legally use medical marijuana. (Like so many of The Eleventh Hour’s plot lines, it’s a story right out of the headlines.) The Toronto-based Cosens admits he doesn’t recall specifics about the particular episode, because his cinematographer’s focus was on the series overall.

‘With The Eleventh Hour using a series of directors during its 13-episode first season, my job was to ensure continuity in terms of the look and feel of the show, visually speaking,’ Cosens says. ‘As a result, I tend not to think in terms of episodes at all. I can’t even say which one was my favorite. What I can say is that I loved shooting this series, even though each six-to-seven-day episodic shoot was a real grind. Shooting TV series is like that – at the end of each day you’re utterly exhausted, yet so inspired and rewarded from doing so much shooting at a time.’

A hand in many genres

The Eleventh Hour is the second TV series Cosens has guided as DOP, the first being Decode Entertainment’s The Zack Files, which has aired on YTV and the U.S. Fox Family Channel. His feature credits include Flower & Garnet, which won helmer Keith Behrman the 2002 Claude Jutra Award at the Genies for direction of a first-time feature.

Add in credits for numerous music videos (54-40, Big Sugar and the Matthew Good Band), commercials (Disney, Rebellion Beer and PNE Playland) and short films, and it is clear that Cosens likes to push himself. This is why he did not stick around for the second season of The Eleventh Hour, which managed to survive the Canadian Television Fund cuts as well as mild ratings.

‘I want to pursue long-form filmmaking, rather than returning to TV and shooting the same thing again and again,’ he explains. ‘There’s just so much to shoot out there, and so many ways to do it. Besides, The Eleventh Hour will benefit from having a new DOP looking at the same sets with fresh eyes.’

Those fresh eyes belong to Malcolm Cross, a veteran of Canadian TV who has performed lensing duties on Due South, F/X: The Series, E.N.G., Street Legal and Night Heat.

Cosens was hired for The Eleventh Hour through Semi Chellas, the show’s head writer, co-creator and co-executive producer.

‘I had shot her short film Three Stories from the End

of Everything (nominated for a Genie in 2001) and she

had always liked my work,’ Cosens says. ‘After we talked about it, Semi brought me in for an interview with David Wellington, The Eleventh Hour’s creative producer. He had seen Flower & Garnet. It was soon apparent that we agreed

on the kind of dark, contrasty and cinematic look the series needed to stand out.’

To get the look he wanted, Cosens used a 16mm Arriflex 16 SR3 film camera, shooting Kodak 200 ASA film.

‘We wanted a fairly slow-speed stock that would have a fine-grain, clean look, but with lots of contrast that we could pump up in post-production,’ he says. Cosens shot most scenes using a single dolly-mounted Arriflex – sometimes with an operator, sometimes manning it himself – although there were instances when two cameras were needed to capture the action. ‘Occasionally we used Steadicam stabilizing systems as well, but usually we stuck to dollies,’ he notes.

Half of The Eleventh Hour is shot at Alliance Atlantis’ studios, and the other half on location. For the indoor shoots – mostly on the program’s newsroom set at the Downsview Air Force Base – Cosens used top-mounted tungsten-balanced fluorescent lighting combined with natural sunlight coming in through the windows. ‘I wanted a soft glow,’ he explains.

Outdoors, he tended to work with whatever light was there, boosted by some portable lamps. ‘I’m a big fan of natural light,’ he says. ‘I don’t usually like to add to it.’

Since wrapping at The Eleventh Hour, Cosens has shot the feature film Seven Times Lucky, directed by Montrealer Gary Yates, which he describes as a ‘film noirish heist/love story.” Seven Times Lucky was shot in Winnipeg, and Cosens is still there, shooting two MOWs for the Murdoch Mysteries series for CHUM and producers Shaftesbury Films and Original Pictures, with Michael DeCarlo directing.

As with Flower & Garnet, Cosens finds the pace of shooting Murdoch Mysteries easier to manage than episodic television.

‘Some days on The Eleventh Hour, we’d have to film five scenes, with the last two being squeezed into the end of the shoot,’ he explains. ‘In contrast, on Flower & Garnet, all the shots were planned in advance, and there was time to do them the way I wanted to.’

Still, Cosens doesn’t regret the high-pressure experience of being The Eleventh Hour’s first-season DOP. ‘The cast and crew were talented, fun people to work with,’ he says. ‘It was a really great production to shoot.’