September / 2004

Looking for Roots on the Red Road
“Red Road is a compromise between ‘reality-TV’ style and traditional documentary filmmaking”

By Helmfried Muller
CSC Associate

“Finding the Red Road” is an expression used by First Nations people to indicate one who seeks to reconnect with his ancestral heritage. Now, a new documentary called Red Road, produced by Dan Petrusich for Lost Heritage Productions Inc., tells the story of Barry Hambly, an Assiniboine-Dakota man who was born on the Carry the Kettle reserve in Saskatchewan but adopted as a child by a white family in Hamilton, Ont.

Over 30 years later he meets his birth mother for the first time. In a conversation, captured on camera, this shy First Nations woman talks about her life, a rag-bag of experiences spanning the infamous residential school era and time spent at the reserve amongst her people. She expresses well what lies at the core of the unfolding drama of so many dysfunctional native families.

Red Road aired Aug. 28 on the Life Television Network.

ON THE RED ROAD: DOP Helmfried Muller (left) and director Conrad Beaubien share a light moment with child actor Kenzie McLaren.

As the director of photography for this production, I had a meeting early in the schedule with director Conrad Beaubien on the style and general approach to this film. It was to be shot in “reality TV” style, particularly Barry’s first visit with his mother at the reserve in Saskatchewan. The catch was, he had yet to talk with her and would she even agree to have a film crew around at this most dramatic and emotional moment of her life? One thing was decided at that first meeting: the crew had to be small, very small!

A large part of the production was filmed in and around the reserve in the southeastern part of Saskatchewan. It was early last winter, yet temperatures hovered around minus 30C degrees. A dusty dirt road leads away from the highway, seemingly to nowhere in particular. Arriving at the reserve, one realizes just how far away it is from mainstream Canada. For Barry, this dusty dirt road through the prairie landscape led to a dramatic encounter with his past and his native roots.

Other locations for the shoot were Regina, Hamilton, the Six Nations reserve in Brantford, Ont., Cookstown, Ont., and more. While the documentary was shot mainly on video (Betacam with a DXC-D35 camera), some scenes, illustrating memories of Barry’s childhood, were shot on black-and-white film (7222 Double X negative in a CP-16/R camera, processed and transferred at alphacine Toybox).

As director Beaubien put it: “In my view, to truly replicate a ‘flashback’ moment, shooting on B/W film is the only way to go. The transparent, luminous quality supports the ‘suspension of belief.’ In my experience, rendering video to try to simulate the ‘look’ does not come nearly as close.

LOOKING FOR ROOTS: Barry Hambly (born Whitecap) at the entrance of the reserve where he was born.

“The use of B/W for these scenes contributes to the visual reinforcement of early childhood memories of Barry Hambly, on whose story the doc is based,” he said. “One flashback was a visual recall related to his natural father, driving a GMC El Camino, a car that carries negative impressions for Barry to this day. Research and coordination led to capturing the perfect imagery of a ’70 El Camino disappearing down a dusty sideroad. It was shot in a very believable ‘Saskatchewan stand-in’ landscape near Cookstown, Ont. Other scenes, both interiors and exteriors, sought to underscore the same effect.

The director continued: “I feel what we have achieved in Red Road is a compromise between ‘reality-TV’ style shooting and traditional documentary filmmaking. Minimizing the obtrusiveness of the medium in this style of production means a great deal to the outcome. How an interview subject relates on camera has everything to do with their degree of comfort with the environment you present.

“After working with Helmfried for many years, we are able to respond quickly to variables and deal with creative and technical solutions spontaneously without the support of a large crew. Remaining as invisible as possible and allowing the flow of events to unfold is what contributes to the challenges of a work I love.”

Using film for a small part of a production has become a sort of signature of Beaubien. In the award-winning documentary Secret of Will (Golden Sheaf Award, Yorkton, 2002), we decided to use film to shoot some of the opening and end sequences. An original song created for the program, together with the strong film images, strike an emotional chord in the viewer.

Despite shooting on video for over 20 years now, I still prefer film. Much has been said about the differences and I don’t want to add to that. I just like the look of film, the more pleasant colours, the way it handles contrast, how it affects viewers and what it is able to convey. Although I don’t use my 16mm camera that much these days, I still keep it maintained and ready.

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