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Canada’s caribou–Imax style

Weekend Post Entertainment, Saturday, August 21, 1999
Padma Viswanathan

[At the time of publication the working title of Great North was Symbol of the North. The following article has been modified to reflect this change.]

The filmmakers behind Great North knew the impact of 10,000 migrating beasts stampeding across screens eight stories high would be extreme. Finding the cinematic language to go along with it was their real challenge.

It's a beautiful day for a birth. Outside, northern Quebec steams, while inside, four men keep their ears cocked toward the beepers at their waists. But this is not a hospital on the shore of denim-blue Lac St-Jean, it's an open-concept zoo, and these nervous, excited guys (zoo director, film director, producer and biologist, in descending order of suntan) are making Montreal-based Motion International's first Imax feature: Great North. Their camera will be up close and personal on a caribou birth, an event rarely seen even by those who spend their lives following Canada's caribou—among the largest of any migratory animal herds in the world.

"Things always happen the last day before you leave a place," sighs Martin Dignard, the producer, speaking about the frustrations and rewards of their peripatetic shoot. Dignard and his crew are sleeping with their beepers beside the caribou holding pen at the St-Félicien (Wilderness) Zoo, but this is actually a respite from the countless helicopter hours they have logged trying to film the beasts along their crossing and diverging migratory routes. After a disappointing day of tracking and chasing in Labrador, for example, he and the crew were packing up when "a biologist in camp told us there were 10,000 caribou who had got stuck on an island five minutes from base camp. We were filming, surrounded by a constant flow of caribou. They just kept coming and coming and coming." The awe in his voice is almost tangible. "Ninety-eight per cent of the people who see this film will not have the chance to visit the North. We want to give them the feeling of having been there surrounded. That's what the Imax experience is all about."

What creates the "Imax experience" for the average moviegoer? An eight-story screen, a one-ton projector capable of illuminating an object 16 kilometres away, six-channel surround sound, and theatre seats set on an extreme slope to ensure, with no shadowy heads between you and the screen, you are fully "in" the movie.

"But we know that when people go to see a movie, they go to see a good story," says Great North's executive producer André Picard, aware that Imax emphasis to date has been on sensory impact rather than on script and performance. This has resulted in some rather stiff, textbooky films, perhaps a hangover from the medium's original use in educational settings. Picard and Motion International have shown their commitment to storytelling by hiring Montreal novelist and literary translator David Homel as a co-screenwriter on Great North (Homel's most recent novel, Get on Top, came out this spring; he's also an award winning literary translator of Haitian-Québécois novelist Dany LaFerrière and others).

Both Picard and Dignard have strong personal connections to the project: Dignard suggested the subject for Motion International's first large-format film, having fallen in love with northern Quebec on a high school exchange. As a boy growing up in Montreal, Picard spent the entire summer of '67 soaking up the Expo site where prototype Imax models were first showcased (Imax was created and developed by Canadians). Whether for reasons of logistics, cost, or marketing, though, the form is still in its infancy, and these men talk like pioneers.

"You have to remember, in the 30 years since this technology was invented, there have been fewer than 200 Imax films made," points out Picard, who has made nine films to date in the format. "The cinematic language really has yet to be explored." And, as Dignard can attest, exploration is at its heart. In the course of research and shooting, Dignard and his crew have helicoptered up and around majestic icebergs and fjords, been tailed by curious black bears, and helped researchers tag and capture caribou, including the pregnant females flown down to the zoo. Dignard, as producer and co–pilot, spends hours every day in calculations and consultations for route planning. Once he decides on the next move, though, they just have to hope for the chance at some footage. They are currently in Kuujjuak, on Ungava Bay, waiting for the mosquitoes and black flies that are the caribou’s most serious predators. "A caribou can lose up to a litre of blood daily to bugs. Its fur equips it for the cold, but the way caribou defend themselves against the bugs is to aggregate, press together so tightly that only the outside caribou get bitten. The animals take rotations." Dignard is hoping to film a 15,000 to 50,000-strong caribou huddle before he and his crew are themselves driven nuts by the bugs.

Imax shoots are usually very physically demanding. An Imax reel is immense-each frame of Imax film is 10 times larger than a conventional 35–millimetre frame. It only holds a maximum of three minutes worth of film, which creates a logistical nightmare for crews struggling to reload film without missing precious shots.

Imax movies are famous for being shot at high altitude, extreme temperatures or from risky angles. Dignard wasn't fazed by having to learn caribou tackling techniques, although his turns on polar bear alert seem to have been a bit nerve–wracking. The greatest personal danger he has faced so far was when, on a solo detour to take a photo, his snowmobile sank below ice, almost a meter into the Labrador Sea.

Luckily, Dignard had a satellite phone with him, and a rescue crew (headed by their Inuit principal, Adamie Inukpuk, the grandson of the actor who played Nanook in the classic film Nanook of the North) got to him before hypothermia did.

Dignard hastens to assure me that crew safety and caribou safety have been equal priorities on this shoot. The film has the support of the Canadian Wildlife Federation. A biologist and other wildlife consultants monitor the animals, and Dignard is proud that the process of making the film has contributed in some way to their work. He's also hopeful that the grandeur he is putting on screen will inspire greater respect for the North. "People in Quebec will be amazed that there is this kind of natural beauty right in our own backyard, fjords that could compete with Norway, the iceberg highway of the Labrador coast.

Parts of the film look at the life rhythms and legends of Canada's Inuit (a portion of the film is also being shot with another caribou–centric culture, the Saami, in Sweden). "The caribou allowed people to survive in the North. The animal is like a grocery store to them. They use every part."

The movie shows caribou being born—will it show them being killed? "No. You really have to take the medium into account, there, and be subtle." Nothing is finalized, but Dignard thinks the kill might be imagined by an Inuit character during a long wait by an ice hole. "Even with birth," he continues, "think about how a newborn looks and imagine that on a screen eight stories high. It could be a bit too much."

Maybe Imax will become a sanitized—and affordable—version of ecotourism. Maybe it will lead the way to fresh cinematic terrain, breaking ground in visual narration. At the St-Félicien (Wilderness) Zoo, the four tanned men are passing around chocolate cigars. An eighth caribou fawn has been delivered on camera.

Great North will be released in June 2000.