March / 2010

Jason Tan csc Fell for the Charms of the Rock
while Filming Adriana Maggs's
Grown Up Movie Star

by Tammy Stone

Julia Kennedy. All images courtesy of Mongrel Media.

The sole Canadian entry in official competition at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Grown Up Movie Star also boasts another distinguished first - it's the debut feature by television and film writer Adriana Maggs, who also wrote the script. The film sits comfortably in the tradition of a number of innovative Newfoundland-set films to be released of late - among them Justin Simms's Down to the Dirt (2008) and Sherry White's Crackie (see the February issue of Canadian Cinematographer). Grown Up Movie Star, like its predecessors, is a no-holds-barred, heartfelt portrait of desolation - both environmental and emotional - striking in ways that indicate the two are intertwined.

"When I first read the screenplay," said director of photography Jason Tan csc, "I was only halfway through before I had to put it down. It was just so raw and honest and the characters were just leaping off the page. I had the feeling this screenplay was coming from a place that was powerful and passionate and real." A deeply likeable Shawn Doyle (Big Love) stars as Ray, a former NHL star forced to return home in shame following a drug conviction in the U.S. His wife Lillian (Sherry White, luminous in a cameo role) rapidly tires of their meager lifestyle; deluded stars in her eyes, she soon flees with another guy for California. Not only is she acutely unstable, but unwilling to look after their two children. As it turns out, teenaged Ruby (the astonishing 24-year-old Tatiana Maslany playing a very convincing 14-year-old) is quite a handful. Feisty and precocious, confused and razor sharp, she's inevitably going to see through the house of cards that her father is attempting to establish for the household.

Director Adriana Maggs

As the film unfolds, we are witness to a very fragile series of events involving an extended family of sorts, including Ray's bigoted, loud-spoken father (Andy Jones) and best friend 'uncle' Stuart (Jonny Harris), in a wheelchair ever since he had an accident caused by Ray's negligent behaviour. Stuart's always around, and in her boredom, Ruby starts to spend more time with him. Stuart is an amateur photographer, and Ruby, often told by her mother that she would also be a star someday, wants headshots for her desperately desired escape to the U.S. Meanwhile, Ray's so busy chasing women around town he doesn't notice what's going on - until Ruby catches him in a sexual act that sends the family into a tailspin they will not easily survive intact.

An intimate family drama set on the Rock necessarily relies on mise-en-scène to quite literally set the stage for the quagmires confronting each character. "I am a writer mostly," says Maggs, addressing her take on the film's visual look. "I was interested in pictures that reinforced what I felt were themes, for example, Ruby brightly dressed against the bleak but striking Newfoundland winter. I talked to Jason a lot about these themes, but really let him go when it came to most things. I really believe in collaboration, and he brought so much of himself to the film, I loved it."

Tan met Maggs through Shawn Doyle, who worked with Tan on a short film a few years ago [Just Visiting, 2006], and who is one of the producers on Grown Up Movie Star. He prepared himself by reading the script several times before heading to pre-production in St. John's, where they "ate cod tongues and traded notes," Tan relates. "We talked about some different movies that we could use to find a common frame of reference, and I remember getting excited because names like Fargo and American Beauty and Adaptation were popping up, which are some of my favourite movies.

Tatiana Maslany, who was awarded a Special Jury Prize for her Breakout Performance at Sundance.

"When we were in pre-production meetings, we found very often that my ideas were lining up nicely with [Maggs's] vision. I think that this spoke to the strength of Adriana's writing because I could feel what she was after. There were certain details and tone, the things that were important to her were layered in the subtext of her writing."

For her part, Maggs attributes her background in acting as a catalyst to putting her in touch with the talented actors she feels privileged to have worked with on the film. The fact that she wrote the script only added to her ability to align her directorial vision with those of her actors and to Tan. "The benefit of having written the script," she says, "is that I always knew why the characters were saying what they were saying and what the subtext was. The benefit of video, and the fact that Jason is so … fast, was that we could try different takes of things, try a restrained take, try an emotional take, try it like you just got home from therapy and your therapist gave you tips on how to control your anger, try it like you just won the lottery but you don't want anyone to know, try it like every line is a come on. We actually had a lot of fun with all that."

Tan agrees that it was a sheer joy to work with this talented cast, and notes the interesting challenge involved in the scenes where Ruby has to light up on camera as she poses for Stuart and dreams of being famous one day. "Tatiana," Tan says, "is so talented, she's scary. She's also a bit of a chameleon when it comes to her appearance. Which was great because the same thing is supposed to happen to her character when she's being photographed. Adriana and I talked a lot about whether the audience should 'see' the photography, as in whether it should be shown full screen. And also what kind of photography is it? Is it good or mediocre? We decided to show the photos full screen and in the way Stuart perceives his own work. In other words, it's a little more glamorous than real life."

The shoot was Tan's first on the Red; it didn't come without its tribulations, weather first and foremost."I had never even visited Newfoundland," Tan says. "I don't think I was prepared for how different the environment is there. You really are hanging out there in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which makes for some spectacular vistas but also crazy weather systems. The one thing that became a factor was that we were shooting in February in St. John's and it was typically minus 15 degrees Celsius and very windy. Sometimes between takes the wind would fluctuate from dead calm to 80 clicks per hour and this would change the internal camera temperature, which seemed to influence the materials used in the lens mount and sensor."

Overall, though, Tan says he found the experience of shooting on the Rock immensely rewarding. "I think Newfoundland is one of the most beautiful places to shoot in the world. It's the combination of the brutality of the Atlantic, the incredible wind, the mist and the high latitude - it just makes the sun do amazing things. When you work with it, it creates something magical. If you try to fight it, you're finished."

Though it was his first time using the Red on a production, he says that it was a very user-friendly system he quickly adapted to. He did hesitate at the suggestion that the technology amounted to a revolution since like-minded formats abound, but he says, "in the end I quite liked the process. The important thing for me is that it allowed me to completely control the image from beginning to end." Despite this, he adds, "extracting the most out of the Red 'digital negative' is a moving target because there are so many systems that can do it now. And it's all software that is constantly being upgraded. We used Avid's first attempt, which is integrated into the new Avid DS. It wasn't bad, but certainly has room to improve."



The opposite holds true for the post-production experience he had in Newfoundland. "We did the conform and initial colour correction at the Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers' Cooperative. This is an extraordinary gem of an organization in Canada. There is so much talent and collaborative spirit in that building it's incredible. I spent a week with Steve Cook, the colourist there, and pretty much nailed the look I was after. From there we exported the 2K DPX files to the DI room at Deluxe Toronto. After a few tweaks and colour space conversions, it was done. Deluxe's DI suite inspires a lot of confidence because there is some heavy duty colour science going on there and the calibration is simply perfect."

In the end, Tan's goal was to bring to life the moodiness and claustrophobia of the environment in which they shot and the characters found themselves. "I really wanted to be as transparent as possible and take inspiration from the actual locations. When we were scouting, the coolest locations all had seven-foot ceilings and rooms where you touch the two opposing walls at the same time. Some people were raising their eyebrows and saying 'you can shoot in here?' But I said, 'let's just do it.' Sometimes being uncomfortable is worth it if it makes it on screen.

"The most important thing I learned is that I'm going back to the Rock to look for a small summer cottage. If anyone wants to time share let me know."

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