Cape Breton, N.S.: dop Vic Sarin has halted production temporarily. The light just isn’t quite right for the shot he needs. He’s waiting for the sun to lower itself across the ocean and reflect warmer tones onto the house perched on the edge of the cliff. Magic hour will color the mood romantic. That’s exactly what he needs to capture the sensuous love scenes between stars Helena Bonham Carter and Clive Russell.

The sun is welcome now, but the beautiful weather Cape Bretoners enjoyed this summer and fall was almost a liability for director Mort Ransen while shooting his feature film, Glace Bay Miner’s Museum. It is a love story set against the grim backdrop of a coal-mining community during the ’50s. The script reads gray and blue; the weather brings mostly sunshine.

If Sarin was a preproduction fanatic – planning each shot weeks in advance – the weather might have created headaches for him. Instead, he prefers to make lighting assessments the day of the shoot to accommodate weather changes and last-minute set alterations.

Also, one can never predict what the camera will pick up from the actor, says Sarin. ‘I didn’t expect Helena to project such vulnerability. But I loved that and wanted to emphasize that.’

Sarin’s approach requires a lot of flexibility on the part of the director – a leap of faith, in fact. But the divide is not really dangerous; Sarin has over 20 features and countless television projects under his belt.

Now that the seven-week job on the feature is finished, Sarin is off developing his own script. But director Ransen is not. He can be found in the bowels of the National Film Board in Montreal with editor Rita Roy. It is here that the laborious work of putting the story together begins.

‘We are currently experimenting putting music to different scenes,’ says Ransen. The music Ransen is playing with originates from the East Coast. ‘There’s a wealth of talent there,’ he says.

A real Glace Bay Miner’s Museum does exist in Cape Breton. It displays historic photographs of the eight mines that existed in the region, old mining equipment, and an actual mine shaft for visitors to explore.

Ransen’s movie is not about the building erected as a monument to the coal workers. His dramatic film is a living museum; a chronicle of miners’ struggles against poverty and fear of death in the pits.

Ransen, who cowrote the script with Gerald Wexler, chose to recount the Cape Breton legacy through a love story between a feisty daughter of a miner (Bonham Carter) and a principled man (Russell). The script remains true to Sheldon Currie’s short story on which it is based.

Ransen was adamant about accurately portraying the region. In addition to ensuring that all the props and set designs were the right period, he insisted the actors nail down the Cape Breton dialect.

Finding the props and locations was the easy part. Fred’s Creamery on Sydney’s main drag, Charlotte Street, was vintage coffee shop, and location scouts also turned up a dusty old hardware store that hadn’t seen a customer in years but still had plenty of old merchandise from the ’50s. It was as if the shop had been waiting all these years for the film to be made.

Perfecting the accent proved to be a little more difficult. It was one of the toughest assignments British dialect coach Julia Wilson-Dickson has ever encountered.

‘The dialect is difficult, first because it exists only in a tiny pocket of the world, and second because it is comprised of a mix of sounds,’ says Wilson-Dickson. ‘The rhythm is curious and bouncy with many stretched words, like in the construction, `The moment I saaaw the bugger.’ It is very Celtic. We can hear a large amount of the tuneful Irish, the `outs’ of the Scots and the hardness of the Canadian language. The accent also varies between males and females and age.’

Wilson-Dickson worked with Bonham Carter for several weeks in England, using voice tapes of Cape Bretoners sent over by Ransen. The tapes were not enough. In fact, when Bonham Carter arrived in Nova Scotia for preparation, she ended up accosting locals on the streets to listen to the varied accents.

Eventually, Bonham Carter, a Brit, was able to travel around Cape Breton with complete anonymity. The petite actress, known for her work in the Merchant Ivory pictures A Room With a View and Howards End, even got away with her prank to gain admittance into Fort Louisbourg as a child under 15.

But the big attraction for the local miners hanging around the set was a Canadian male actor.

‘Is that the big star over there,’ asked one veteran miner standing outside Fred’s Creamery one afternoon watching the lighting crew assemble equipment.

‘Oh yes, that’s her sitting on the folding chair,’ I replied.

‘No, no. Isn’t that Kenneth Welsh, the guy who played that politician Colin Thatcher?’ continued the miner, pointing to Welsh who was lounging near the coolers.

Welsh, not at all reclusive, came over to chat ‘with the boys’ and practice his accent. When he left, the miner turned to me and said: ‘Not bad.’ An a-plus grade for dialect from an authority.