The film and television industry seems to spawn globe-roving craftspeople whose careers take them across continents and through genres without any discernible past pattern or predictable future plan.

Such is the case with Robert Saad, a Palestine-born director of photography who’s up for a 2000 Gemini in the category best photography in a dramatic program or series. He helped create the Canadian, American, British and German ambiences on the set of Sullivan Entertainment’s Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story (aka Anne 3) without ever leaving Canadian soil, but with a little help from computer-generated magic.

To create the pre-First World War milieu for Anne 3, Saad used Kodak Vision stocks – 200 asa and 500 asa – to shoot scenes set in p.e.i. since he wanted to match the look established in the first two Anne movies. He wanted fast film, he says, since ‘I knew the days would be very short because when we shot it was nearly winter.’

But when the script called for a European look, he switched to Fuji film, both 125 asa and 60 asa. Matching the look of the two manufacturers’ film stocks wasn’t too hard, he adds, since the plan was to release on tv, so the matching was done during tape-to-tape transfer.

Most of the shoot was done in Toronto and environs, but during a one-week stint, Montreal stood in for London, New York and Germany. cgi came in handy for eliminating such modern background elements as street traffic or street lights, and to add period buildings into streetscapes that didn’t naturally include them.

The road to this Gemini nomination has been long and winding. Saad got his start in 1952 in Egypt, working on feature film sets conforming to the ‘strict’ British production model. On to Montreal in 1967, he worked at the National Film Board during a renaissance period of verite doc production known as Direct Cinema. Serving mainly as a focus puller, Saad worked with such renowned talents as Georges Dufaux before moving to Toronto to continue doc work with what was then called oeca, now tvontario.

Dufaux lured Saad back to Montreal to pull focus on his first feature project, The Fortune In Men’s Eyes, which led Saad to a series of Ivan Reitman features in Toronto, including Cannibal Girls, Saad’s first dop gig. He later landed a dop assignment on David Cronenberg’s first feature, Shivers.

A slackening work schedule led him to serve as camera operator on several u.s. shoots in Toronto. And, when the original dop on Police Academy 1 left the set, Saad took over.

It was in Vancouver that Saad met Kevin Sullivan, a meeting which led to a steady stream of projects, including second unit camera on three seasons of Road To Avonlea and dop duties on seasons four, five and six. Sullivan moved Saad off Avonlea to shoot the first year of Wind At My Back. After three cycles on Wind, Saad shot the Sullivan tv movie Under The Piano, starring ‘wonderful’ actor Megan Follows. *