production bee hive

Last Friday, a rainy grey day, I dropped into the Roxana production office on Carlaw Avenue near Dundas. A series of first floor rooms on a long corridor are now the hub of pre-production, with a staff of about eight to ten people hanging about. Production Co-Ordinator Jonathan Pencharz showed me around. (That's a picture of him hard at work, eating his lunch.) The inauspicious gathering of rooms looked like a toned up version of a dugout or a bomb shelter, with cable running in all directions. Producer Stephen Traynor I had run into only a half hour earlier in the CBC eatery Oooh La La, having a post-production meeting on a film that is going to air in the new year. I continue to be amazed by these people who can keep four balls in the air at once!

But speaking of Stephen, what was that swan in his office? No one seemed to know for sure. I think it's an early set piece, said Jonathan. Or maybe for rehearsal. I searched my memory of the script for a swan reference and drew a blank. Maybe that will be explained in time!


Elsewhere, I intruded on a production design meeting, and in the background, art director Martha Sparrow graciously allowed me to take pictures while she worked on some drawings. Sketches and collections of research pictures adorned the walls around her. Rhonda Moscoe, the Production Desiger and costume designer Debra Hanson are responsible for bringing to life a very particular era -- in many forms, from the burlesque house to a pawnbrokers to a tony art gallery and posh Diefenbaker era establishments. We will check in with them again to see how it's going.

Meanwhile, I had to run out before my badly parked car was towed. This production so far has given me some of my most memorable parking challenges! Can't wait til we get on location.... !
Eight days til principal photography begins!