Ten steps to no-budget moviemaking
by Susan Walker

The road to making a first feature film is paved with good credentials. From New York's School of Visual Arts to the Canadian Film Centre to a festival favourite short film, Toronto director Paul Fox earned his stripes directing episodes of Canadian TV series such as "Degrassi: The Next Generation". But his heart was set on making movies.

"I was one of those kids who was making Super-8 films for school projects and little horror movies in the backyard with friends and family." Twenty-odd years later, he is directing his first feature, inside the Scarborough studios where the TV shows "Road To Avonlea" and "Wind At My Back" were made.

"Head Games" is a psychological chiller about a psychiatrist, Samantha Goodman (Kate Greenhouse), and her entrapment in a winter cabin with a patient, a dangerous sexual offender named Harlan (Aidan Devine). Harlan wants to know what she's been doing to him with her experiments in the psychiatric ward, and he devises a series of mental tortures to worm it out of her.

The production process of "Head Games" illustrates 10 steps to making a low-budget — is there any other kind? — Canadian movie with an 18-day shooting schedule:

STEP ONE: Cut out the whole tiresome business of raising money for your film. Fox avoided going to the funding agencies, cap in hand. He applied to the Canadian Film Centre's First Feature Project, "a fully mentored, hands-on opportunity to train and develop the creative, technical and business skills of filmmakers."

The project is uniquely designed to make the sort of indie films that are pretty much the only films that get made in Canada. The project awards funds in two budget categories: low ($500,000) and ultra low ($250,000). Head Games is merely low.

STEP TWO: Pull in your favours and your friends. Join forces with a producer who a) shares your vision; b) knows exactly how many takes and how many minutes of film footage will put you over budget; c) attended film school with you.

Fox, relieved that no major disasters have occurred with only days left in the 18-day shooting schedule, has come to rely heavily on producer Brent Barclay, a producing partner in Sienna Films. The two men met at the Canadian Film Centre, and advanced their working relationship by producing Reunion, a short film based on a Guy Vanderhaeghe story. One of Barclay's major tasks is to keep Head Games on budget.

As for the rest of the crew, including director of photography Steve Cosens and production designer Aidan Leroux, "Everybody is working for far less than they would usually make. It's almost an honorarium," says Fox. He'll do the same for them someday.

STEP THREE: Locate a script you can shoot for $500,000 in less than three weeks. Go for something that works. Don't write your own script.

Screenwriter Wil Zmak, a Torontonian who did a stint in Los Angeles "getting on the meetings circuit," was working in Calgary on the CBC dramatic series Tom Stone when he met Fox. They decided to apply for the CFC grant with his script. "All I knew was it had to be done for half a million; it would probably take place at a cottage and it was going to be a horror movie."

Zmak wrote the first draft in a week. Typically, Canadian directors write their own scripts, usually a formula for confusion, if not disaster. "A lot of Canadian movies all feel the same," Zmak says. "If there is all this independent vision, how come they all feel the same? The mediocrity of the American industry is the mediocrity of the circus. With the Canadian industry it's more like the mediocrity of an amateur poetry reading."

STEP FOUR: Find a script you actually want to make into a movie, and a scriptwriter you'd actually like to work with. Cast it from the ample Toronto pool of skilled TV, film and theatre actors. "You have to have something very specific to the (budget)," says Fox. "Finding a script that I would be happy to make but would also work within those parameters was a trick."

Zmak has set high expectations: "In a lot of ways this movie is a blend of Straw Dogs and Repulsion." Getting the right actor to play the master of head games was key. It is the menacing presence of local TV actor Aidan Devine that so impresses Zmak, who likens the actor to Robert Mitchum. "His physicality is almost carnal. He could be telling you a joke but he could be leaping at you at any moment."

STEP FIVE: Shoot in the dead of winter, when you can conscript the best crew, because they're available. Like bears, most Toronto TV and movie productions hibernate.

"We were lucky. The big shows haven't cranked up yet. But people want to get back to work. We were able to get the real cream of the crop," says Fox.

Fox's crew includes director of photography Cosens (Flower And Garnet, the first season of Eleventh Hour), production designer Aidan Leroux and editor Marlo Miazga.

Of course, you might lose top talent halfway through the shoot to a better-paying gig. That's standard. "Head Games" first assistant director David Manion had to leave partway through but he replaced himself with another first AD: They're the cattle herders on a movie set.

STEP SIX: Find an empty studio where you can shoot most of your movie without expensive location set-ups and the wearisome problem of ensuring snow remains on the ground when you come back to shoot more outdoor scenes.

Through past connections with film and TV projects, Barclay and Fox got the use of Sullivan Entertainment's studio in the far reaches of Scarborough. The Avonlea main street is still in place out back. The cabin in which all but a few outdoor scenes take place was erected inside the converted warehouse. "It was a very good deal," says Barclay.

STEP SEVEN: Do whatever you can yourself, including overseeing editing. Plan for expensive mistakes. Fox will work hand in glove with editor Miazga and has helped shape the script. It is Barclay who worries about spillage.

"Every budget has a contingency fund for things such as damaged equipment. Ours was really low." Head Games didn't run into any of the standard problems — a scratched negative, say — because they couldn't. "There was no room in our schedule for a re-shoot," he says.

STEP EIGHT: Hire the best cinematographer, sound technicians, gaffer (lighting guy) and music composer to build atmosphere and suspense and disguise the fact that your thriller was made on the cheap.

"A movie like this, where tone and mood and darkness are important, demands a film look," Fox says. He prizes cameraman Cosens. "His aesthetic is very bold and very dark it was very appropriate for this. We needed somebody who wasn't afraid to let black be black and let night be night and not bathe everything in a bluish TV glow. He has a very sophisticated palette. Every time I look at the rushes, it's better than I imagined it."

Composer Eric Woodley (Rhinoceros Eyes) and sound designer Daniel Pellerin were particularly important. They can do a lot to give a low-budget movie a convincing feel of suspense and claustrophobia.

STEP NINE: Submit early, and often, to film festivals (where you can flog your movie to distributors and other festival directors and reach for the brass ring: a U.S. distribution deal).

"We have a whole marketing strategy," says Barclay. A Canadian movie producer has to choose between one of two things. Show your film to a Canadian distributor — from the ranks of Mongrel Media, Seville, Lion's Gate, THINKFilm, TVA, Equinox or Odeon — and hope they can get it into festivals and secure exhibition and TV deals. Or, submit your movie directly to the top festivals, starting with the Toronto International Film Festival, every hometown director's first choice. If you can make it there or into Sundance or — very unlikely — Cannes, then your product is exposed to all the American and European buyers.

STEP TEN: Hope to avoid the nearly inevitable one-week run in Canadian cinemas. Graciously accept the consolation prize: a Genie nomination.

"So much depends on how the film is initially marketed," says producer Barclay. "It's pretty much a business decision for the exhibitors whether they'll leave your movie on the screens." He and Fox have secured P.R. services for the Head Games' production phase. They will be doing everything they can to get a buzz going around the film and get a distribution deal.

On this budget, they can forget about a snappy screen trailer.

"Head Games". Coming this fall to a theatre near you. That is, with any luck. roduction services film and video production services film and video production services film and video production services film and video production services film and video production services