Creating an “ambitious” project like director Chelsea McMullan’s Swan Song required several years of work and a creative financing strategy to get two distinct versions off the ground.

The first is the feature that made its world premiere during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Sept. 9. It will also screen at other festivals, including the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), the Calgary Film Festival, and the FIN Atlantic Film Festival ahead of the Sept. 29 theatrical release. The second is a four-part CBC miniseries that debuts a month later on Nov. 22.

“It became clear as we were putting it all together that we needed to create both versions in order to pull together the financing,” producer Sean O’Neill, who co-wrote the project with McMullan, tells Playback Daily. “Within the context of Canadian docs, it’s really ambitious. It’s expensive shooting in these big union houses. So we embraced the challenge of it.”

Swan Song takes viewers inside The National Ballet of Canada and its legacy-defining production of Swan Lake, directed by Canadian dance icon Karen Kain on the eve of her retirement as the organization’s artistic director. It is produced by Visitor Media in association with Mercury Films and Quiet Ghost. McMullan, O’Neill, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, Anna Godas and Oli Harbottle are executive producers alongside Canadian actor Neve Campbell.

It’s a project three years in the making: McMullan and O’Neill reached out to the ballet three weeks before the pandemic hit in 2020. They also approached Baichwal and de Pencier at Mercury Films to work with them, knowing this project was bigger than anything they’d ever done and that they wanted experienced filmmakers “who would support our creative vision all the way.” But then the pandemic delayed Swan Lake again… and again… and again.

“We went into this not knowing if we would even make it to opening night,” says O’Neill.

At the time, the pair was in development on the project with CBC as a four-part docuseries, and had picked up support from funders such as the Canada Media Fund and the Rogers Cable Network Fund, and distributor Blue Ice Docs, but more financing was needed.

“CBC originally commissioned a four-part series version of Swan Song because we wanted the space to develop the characters and storylines, and to spotlight the dancing and choreography,” says Jennifer Dettman, CBC’s executive director of unscripted content. “The production team and distributor decided to produce a feature film from the material in order to complete financing, providing the distributor with a feature film version for international sales purposes.”

To help attract financiers, the team shot a proof of concept with some characters in 2020 during lockdowns, and those materials convinced London-based Dogwoof to board as the film’s international sales agent in August 2021. Telefilm Canada came on board as well, and principal photography kicked off in spring 2022. It was then that McMullan and O’Neill decided to reach out to Campbell.

They knew her history as a student at Canada’s National Ballet School, and Robert Altman-directed ballet feature The Company (2003), which Campbell conceived, produced and starred in, was a major inspiration for Swan Song.

The pair got in touch with Campbell with help from Canadian producer Miranda de Pencier, and after one virtual meeting Campbell jumped on board. What they didn’t know was that Campbell’s stepmother worked in the ballet’s costume shop for decades and that her father regularly performs as a supernumerary for the company, and was already in this particular production of Swan Lake. In fact, viewers can catch a brief glimpse of him in the film.

“She was generous with her time and feedback, she came and spent a day at the Four Seasons Centre during our shoot, and watched every single cut of the series and feature, always giving notes that gave us a more subtle and nuanced understanding of the life of a dancer,” recalls O’Neill.

To manage the feat of a TV series and a feature film, McMullan and O’Neill pulled from more than 450 hours of footage—shot in the verité style of the film. Then they set to capture an average of eight or nine hours of daily rehearsals, all on Alexa cameras.

“They’re heavy, expensive and have high amounts of data. Our head of media has worked on Marvel films and in big post houses, and he said we shot more data than a Marvel movie,” O’Neill says. “Our DPs each lost 20 pounds over two and a half months running around with these easy rigs and Alexas.”

McMullan says there is a lot of overlap between the projects, but they each have a unique tone and feel. “There are different characters in the series and film,” they reveal. “The film innately allows for a bit more spaciousness and is less prescriptive. In a four-part series you need to guide viewers a little more because you want them to stay engaged and leave them curious about what will happen next.”

“It was kind of like a high-stakes film school exercise,” adds O’Neill. “For us to be doing that, at this scale, was not just a very big challenge. It was a huge craft-building exercise in terms of us understanding what works in a cinematic language versus what works in televisual language.”

He notes some elements worked well in the series but made no sense in the film, and that they had to change the language of the storytelling.

“Karen Kain is still the director and the arc is there. But if you watch them both I think people will be quite surprised about how different the tone, the feel and the style are in particular.”

Dettman says the TIFF and VIFF debuts will help generate interest in the series come November, while reaching the widest possible international audience.

“TIFF is really a beautiful way to launch,” O’Neill says. “Partially because we made it in Toronto and the National Ballet is in Toronto and there’s such a groundswell of built-in enthusiasm and knowledge about who Karen is and familiarity with the dancers and the company. But they’re this global company, and we hope the film can go many places, starting at home.”

Image courtesy of TIFF