The summer of 2004 may not go on record as the busiest this country has ever experienced in terms of production, but there are nonetheless a number of intriguing projects underway from coast to coast. For this year’s Studio Facilities & Location Services report, Playback has selected five of the most notable productions shooting across Canada to see what studios they have booked and some of the key service providers they have hired. The list, which reflects the diversity of the national production sector, includes Hollywood and domestic features, as well as a major miniseries and English Canada’s favorite indigenous comedy program.

Elektra

Genre: Action feature
Location: Vancouver
Shooting dates: May 3 to July 16
Studio used: Lions Gate Studios
Costumes: Lisa Tomczeszyn
Set design: Graeme Murray
Special effects management:
Dave Gauthier
Wolf handling: Action Animals
Theatrical and stage lighting:
Paramount Production Support
Prosthetics design: Toby Lynn Bauer
Props master: Dan Sissons
Camera crane rentals:
Geo Film Canada,
Eagle Camera Support

In one of the pivotal sequences in the feature Elektra, based on a Marvel comic character, the heroine, played by Jennifer Garner, does battle with her foes in an elegant, two-storey mansion living room, during which the dust-covers on the furniture are whipped up into the action.

The set and elaborate rigging used to move actors and sheets are housed in a soundstage at North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Studios, which has played host to the New Regency/20th Century Fox spin-off of Daredevil, with an estimated budget of $50 million.

In the film, Garner stars as Elektra Natchios, a hired assassin who begins to have doubts about her employer when she learns more about her intended target.

For his part, Vancouver-based production manager Simon Abbott has no doubts about Lions Gate’s studio support. ‘They have been very helpful and easy to accommodate,’ he explains. One of the benefits of being the biggest feature in town when feature production volumes are tepid is stage availability.

Crew members – some weaned on The X-Files and recruited by former X-Files director Rob Bowman for Elektra – were able to set up carpentry in Stage 4 and hold standing sets a few weeks longer than scheduled in other Lions Gate stages. Production was scheduled to wrap July 16 after a 10-week schedule.

Another standing set – the interior of a cabin, which involved exteriors shot near Britannia Beach north of Vancouver – was also rigged for high-impact action sequences, says Abbott. The production also painted the exterior side of a soundstage, creating a giant blue screen in the parking lot to film action that will be composited later into segments involving a skyscraper’s roof-top garden and an explosion at the mansion.

Local Dave Gauthier, another X-Files alum, was hired to manage all the stunts. Ian Edwards

Corner Gas 2

Genre: comedy series
Location: Regina and Rouleau, SK
Shooting dates: May 17 to Sept. 10
Studio used: Canada Saskatchewan Production Studios
Costumes: Brenda Shenher
Sets: Sara McCudden
Props master: Jay Robertson
Equipment: PS Regina

Through its first season, CTV’s Corner Gas quickly became Canada’s number-one homegrown comedy series, bringing in audiences of more than 1.3 million viewers. The $9.3-million production of season two (18 half-hours) is now underway in Saskatchewan.

Saskatchewan-born comedian Brent Butt, the series’ writer and creator, stars as the proprietor of a local gas station in the fictitious small community of Dog River, SK. Producing the series in Saskatchewan was important for both Butt and producers at CTV as a means of adding authenticity to the stories and characters.

Approximately 55% of the production is shot on location in Rouleau, SK, where an empty field in the town of 400 residents has been transformed into a permanent gas station set. Interior sets such as the house where Butt’s parents Oscar and Emma live, Ruby’s diner and the local police station have been constructed at the Canada Saskatchewan Production Studios in Regina, where the remaining shooting takes place. For the duration of the production schedule, Corner Gas occupies three of the four studios at the soundstage and, according to production manager Mark Reid, the series would be very difficult to shoot in Saskatchewan were it not for the new facility.

‘Our production offices are right down the hall from the studios at the soundstage, and the services are all right there,’ he says, adding that the tight team and intimate production environment created in Saskatchewan goes a long way toward making Corner Gas the success it has been.

The series is produced by Prairie Pants Productions, a partnership between Regina’s Verite Films and 335 Productions, which Butt formed with partner and Corner Gas producer/director David Storey. Laura Bracken

The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio

Genre: Dramatic feature
Location: Toronto and southern Ontario
Shooting dates: July 19 to Oct. 8
Studio used: Cinespace Film Studios
Costumes: Hala Bahmet
Props master: Chris Pellegrini
Screening facility: Deluxe Labs
Transport coordinator: Mark Van Alstyne
Lighting and grip rentals: William F. White
Camera rentals: Clairmont Camera
Catering: By David’s Catering

Written and directed by Jane Anderson (Normal), and starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson, the period drama The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio spans from the 1930s to the 1970s, with the bulk of the story unfolding in the ’50s. Moore plays a housewife who, in a time when few women were breadwinners, manages to support her family of 10 children and alcoholic husband by winning jingle-writing contests.

The film is based on memoirs written by the supermom’s daughter Terry Ryan, titled The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less.

Five weeks of shooting will take place at various locations around Ontario July 19 to Oct. 15.

One of the main challenges for art director Andrew Stearn was making present-day Ontario look like Ohio in the 1950s. It was this challenge that took the production team to Paris, ON in search of houses that fit the look of the era. Five additional weeks of interiors will take place at Toronto’s Cinespace Film Studios.

The production took up digs at Cinespace about a month before the start of principal photography and will stay until the end of November. The film is using about a third of the studio space at Cinespace – approximately 60,000 square feet.

Cinespace VP Steve Mirkopoulos is obviously delighted the feature is shooting in Toronto, rather than in Defiance, OH, where Ryan’s childhood actually unfolded.

‘[The producers] struggled with the decision of whether to shoot there or here,’ explains Mirkopoulos. ‘We are trying to keep the show low-profile because of all the sentiment that production should stay south of the border, but we’re very happy to see them up here.’

Jack Rapke, Steve Starkey and Robert Zemeckis of L.A.-based prodco ImageMovers (Cast Away, Matchstick Men) produce the film. ImageMovers and DreamWorks optioned the book, with DreamWorks distributing in the U.S. and Revolution Studios handling international sales. Laura Bracken

Trudeau: The Prequel

Genre: Dramatic miniseries
Locations: Montreal, Halifax
Shoot dates: May 16 to July 14
Studios used: None
Costumes: Martha Currie
Physical FX: Special Effects Atlantic, Gary Coates
Stunt coordinator: Randy Bolivar
Props master: Sasha Sergejewski
Camera rentals & grip electric: PS Atlantic
Catering: Action Catering, Lisa Barry

After a four-day shoot in Montreal, the production team on Big Motion Pictures’ $8-million miniseries Trudeau: The Prequel descended on Halifax and set about transforming the city into various faraway locations, such as the streets of Paris in the 1950s.

‘The wonderful thing about Halifax is it’s so diverse that you can sell it as a lot of different places,’ says production coordinator Ginny Duzak on day 36 of the 40-day shoot. ‘This is a very big production and has been one of my bigger challenges, no question.’ Duzak has been working with BMP as production coordinator for more than 10 years.

The miniseries, executive produced by BMP’s Wayne Grigsby and David MacLeod, with Tim Southam (The Bay of Love and Sorrows) directing Montreal actor Stephane Demers (The Aviator) as the late prime minister, explores Pierre Trudeau’s early life before he entered politics.

Shooting 80 different locations with two cameras over 40 days meant a lot of work for the 12-person art department, especially considering that the story spans more than four decades. Set decorator Darlene Lewis, backed by a team of five crew focusing entirely on research and reproduction to give the miniseries historical authenticity, and six scenic painters transformed East Coast homes into locations such as the offices of French publishers and Universite de Montreal professors.

One of the key props that helped place scenes historically was a fleet of picture cars. Coordinator Lorne Taylor rounded up antique cars from collectors around Nova Scotia and Montreal, including Trudeau’s signature MG sports car, which was found in Montreal and later shipped on a flatbed to Halifax. Duzak says that renting picture cars, most of them prize possessions, cost the production approximately $250 a day per vehicle.

With a crew of over 90 people, and base camps, tech villages and lunch halls sprawled across Halifax, Duzak says she depended on tight relationships with her crew, the core of which she’s been working with for years. Laura Bracken

Etoiles Filantes

Genre: Feature comedy
Location: Montreal
Shooting dates: June 26 to Aug. 15
Studio used: Mel’s Cite du Cinema (prod. office only)
Costumes: Francesca Chamberland
Special weather effects: Guillaume Murray
Animal handling: Pro-Film Animal
Video feeds & graphic visuals: Zed Axis
Theatrical & stage lighting: Bruno Rafie
Video projection & effects: Nova Lux
Camera crane rentals: Gripworx

The French-language feature Etoiles Filantes (‘shooting star’) is currently in production, starring comedienne Claudine Mercier as four different women each vying for the top prize on a fictitious TV talent competition a la Canadian Idol, called Idole Instantanee 2. Under the direction of Yves Desgagnes, the shoot will run for 36 days, and if the success of Star Academie is any indication of how French Canadians love talent-show content, Etoiles Filantes could prove a big hit. Cinemaginaire’s recent track record, including The Barbarian Invasions and Mambo Italiano, also bodes well.

Much of the film is being shot on location, with the exception of the stage for the Idole competition.

‘The Idole set is being built at a Montreal theater called Usine C, as it has the space and [some of the] equipment,’ says producer Daniel Louis. ‘Other locations are also being used in and around this site. We are not using any studios per se.’ The Etoiles production office, however, is nestled within Mel’s Cite du Cinema.

Production manager Helene Grimard says that production designer Patricia Christie’s set is a departure from what TV viewers have come to expect from the real Canadian Idol-style programs.

‘We don’t want that,’ Grimard says. ‘This is our own show.’

The Idole stage requires specialized lighting to be provided by Montreal’s Bruno Rafie and as many as nine other technicians.

The film is produced by Cinemaginaire’s Louis and Denise Robert, and will be distributed by Equinoxe Films, which promises a 120-theater opening in early December. Dustin Dinoff