Nunavik’s caribou set to become Imax movie stars

KUUJJUAQ — So far, Nunavik’s caribou have resisted commercial harvesters, but they are collaborating with a film crew who want to make them into movie stars.

Caribou, and their Scandinavian cousins, the reindeer, are the focus of a new 45-minute film on the life cycle of these animals in Nunavik and Sweden.

“It’s called ‘Symbol of the North’,” said director Bill Reeve. “And it makes for a good story.”

Over the past year, his crew has been following caribou around Nunavik, visiting the region four times. They’ve already caught the animals in rut, during calving and with their young.

Now the crew is back in Kuujjuaq for three weeks, at the height of the bug season, to film caribou as they try to escape these insects by migrating to higher land.

Although there are nearly one million caribou in Nunavik, Reeve hasn’t yet seen as many as he expected.

“The big bubble for me was the numbers,” he said. “We were told that we could see 20,000-30,000 at a time.”

But they haven’t.

“And somehow we have to illustrate this,” Reeve said.

This task is made harder because he’s shooting the film with Imax technology.

An Imax production is expected to deliver breathtaking sight and sound. Finished Imax movies are shown on huge screens up to eight stories high that sometimes wrap around the spectators. An Imax movie can be an awesome experience.

To produce those spectacular visual effects, Imax relies on unique cameras. These cameras shoot larger and faster film, at 24 “credit card sized” frames per second. The results have unparalleled clarity and sharpness.

But these Imax cameras are also heavy — around 45 kilos, and take three people to operate. Their weight is a disadvantage when filming caribou, because the film crew must position itself in one place and can’t chase after the animals.

And the cameras are only able to shoot three minutes of film at one time. This, says Reeve, means that many “marvellous Imax moments” are lost while the camera operators stop to change film.

It took crew members a week to successfully film a caribou calving because they had to catch the event in a single three-minute segment.

“It’s exhausting work,” said Reeve. “And it’s largely experimental.”

The technology originally developed in Canada, but it’s been in existence only for the past 30 years and remains a specialized arm of the film industry.

Reeve, whose previous Imax productions include ‘Super Speedway’, ‘Survival Island’ and the recently released ‘Extreme’, has had the Imax bug for 15 years

While some 30,000 regular movie theatres are found around the world, there are only 127 Imax theatres. Most are located at science centres or museums, such as the Montreal’s Old Port facility or the Canadian Museum of Civilisation in Ottawa.

Yet the audience for Imax films is growing. Approximately 50 million people see Imax films every year, and by 2000, there will be 200 Imax theatres.

Imax films are also relatively expensive to produce, costing up to $150,000 per minute.

Among this film’s financial sponsors and investors are Hydro-Québec, Tourisme Québec, Nunavik Tourism, Falconbridge Ltd. and the Stockholm Museum of Nature.

Yet producer Martin Dignard said that he has been struggling to stay within the limits of a $6 million budget. To move the crew and equipment around Nunavik he’s had to rent a entire Hawker Siddely 748. A helicopter will be in standby in Kuujjuaq for the next three weeks simply to ferry the crew out to the caribou.

Then, in September, everyone travels to Sweden where the story of Sami and their reindeer will complete the film.

The film also plans to include elements of circumpolar culture.

Inukjuak resident Adamie Inukpuk who has previously appeared in the films Shadow of the Wolf and Kabloonak, introduces elements of Inuit culture, such as hunting, mussel-gathering, igloo-building and throat singing, into the action.

“Symbol of the North” should be finished by March, 2000.