As far as movie sets go, the rustic cabin built on the side of Moose Mountain in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country may seem modest.
But for Land, the powerful if minimalist drama directed by actress Robin Wright, it was as crucial as the mountains.
Created by Calgary-based production designer Trevor Smith and built to order in the wilds of Alberta, it is the primary set of the film, which is now available on VOD. It’s where much of the drama plays out, with Wright playing a grief-stricken Chicago woman named Edee Mathis who has cut herself off from the world to live as a recluse in the Wyoming wilderness.
“We built the cabin from scratch and that was our focal point from the get-go,” says Smith. “It’s literally a character itself. So that was a real priority for us to get that right.”
Working with Wright, cinematographer Bobby Bukowski and the film’s location team, Smith’s modest structure looks charmingly homespun and utilitarian in early scenes but turns brutal and isolating later on as the seasons change and Edee realizes she lacks the skills to survive in the harsh environment. Part of the art of production design, of course, is to design sets that look as if they haven’t been designed. But it is a painstaking process filled with what Smith calls “a lot of minutiae,” where the location of every object is thought out and windows are precisely placed for the best angles of light. Somehow this modest structure works to show how Edee’s life on the mountain changes over time.
“It’s always collaborative,” says Smith. “But being the local who really understood the geography of Alberta and understood in those early meetings, I think, the tone of what Robin was going for and the feel that Bobby, the cinematographer, was wanting to illustrate, I felt really inspired and they allowed me a lot of voice and participation. I think for a big part of it, myself and the locations department, we just trusted our instincts. The producers really did give a lot of latitude for us to help them make the best choices, visually speaking, for what was manageable and affordable to tell this story, which was primarily a wilderness story.”
“He did such a great job,” says Wright, in an interview with Postmedia. “Trevor is not just a production designer, that guy is a director. He looks at the story and the progression of it, not just what colour of Pendelton blanket we should throw on the chair. He is really looking at everything.”
While Land, which clocks in at just under 90 minutes, is pared down and meditative, the backdrop of Alberta’s landscape is stunning, with the vistas around Moose Mountain conveying both majestic beauty and oppressive danger. In her feature-film directorial debut, Wright offers a deceptively simple tale of a woman overcome with grief after a family tragedy who reluctantly allows a quiet hunter (played by Demián Bichir) to help guide her through a new life in the wilderness.
The Alberta-based crew primarily shot in Kananaskis, including a spot near Bragg Creek along the Elbow River, and in Didsbury, which was a stand-in for small-town Wyoming. Smith has worked in the central Alberta town before, both as production designer of the recent 1960s-era Kevin Costner and Diane Lane action-drama Let Him Go and on the television series Wynonna Earp.
“The town has this midwestern quality, where it’s a bit sleepy and everything hasn’t developed to a clinical, sterile level,” he says. “It’s just very photogenic, for lack of a better term. It will confuse the average Didsburian because there was some digital effects augmentation when Edee comes back to town. There’s a mountainscape that has been in there and some additional buildings.”
Land was shot in 2019, with production wrapping in October and timed to take advantage of the various seasons the plot required. Well, that was the plan anyway. As is her custom in Alberta, Mother Nature often proved to be almost comically unpredictable. After scrambling to take advantage of Alberta’s short late-summer and fall seasons, the plan was to return in early 2020 for the harrowing blizzard sequence. But, as many Albertans will remember, a sudden snowstorm hit the province in late September. Production was shut down at least three times, largely due to howling 100 km/h winds. Still, the weather proved beneficial.
“There must have been three feet of snow that came to Moose Mountain,” Smith says. “So we had to pivot and scramble to create second units and get cameras up there because it was so rugged and difficult to get to. But what we got was massive production value of winter that nobody expected or planned for. So all those winter scenes, we’re legitimately deep in snow, up to our knees. It was phenomenal, the good fortune that this production happened into.”
When bad weather set in, Wright and producer Allyn Stewart spent nights in the heated trailers at the mountain’s base camp rather than risk hours on icy roads. Bukowski spent many a night sleeping in Edee’s cabin. But the production was in good hands, with a local crew well-versed in adapting quickly according to the whims of Alberta weather. Wright says she was in awe of the crew.
“What an incredible experience to shoot there and what a great crew,” she says. “There were those days where we thought we were going to shoot a summer scene and then we would wake up the next morning and there would be two feet of snow on the ground. Everybody get into winter gear! We were changing the schedule because of how unpredictable the Alberta weather was… They are so experienced with all the shows you shoot up there.”
Land is available March 5 on VOD.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2021
