Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
The producers had hoped to find all the locations within the Vancouver zone for budgetary reasons, but I was trying to create the world that I imagined the trappers and Indians might have lived in and to find the scale that Alejandro wanted, so Robin and I ventured into Alberta. I had worked in Alberta in 1976 on Days of Heaven and remembered its large natural landscape. Alejandro had also seen locations there a few years earlier that he liked. Scale was needed to create a journey for Hugh Glass that was interesting and seemed plausible, if not realistic. The Rockies in that part of Canada are impressive and gave us what was needed for the trappers' world in 1823. Alejandro and Chivo joined up with Robin and me a couple of times to see what we were finding and remind us of what we still needed to find. Those days spent in a car scouting and hiking with Alejandro and Chivo were always exciting because I would learn more of Alejandro's vision. As locations presented themselves, I began to get glimpses of the film and we all became in sync with the needs of the movie. We were driving hundreds of miles and hiking each day searching out every possible location, but it was difficult to see many of them in their best light. I used the app Sun Seeker to plot the path of the sun on a given day in the future to estimate if a location was a contender for the film. Before committing to any spot, we would visit it in the evening light and often have the location department do light studies of the contender in order to estimate just how early and late it would be shootable. Later, I could insert a SketchUp ® model into a Google Earth grab of any location to check for sun placement and scale. These scouts were very much a group effort of Alejandro, Chivo, Robin and myself that never ended. We scouted for additional or better locations continually until the end of shooting. As the locations started to come together, it became time to start rehearsals. Alejandro wanted to rehearse every scene weeks or months before principal photography. I think this must have come from his theater background, but I realized it was an important element of his creative process. In August, the first rehearsals began in a construction shop in Vancouver. Construction coordinator Jan Kobylka put together a plywood mock- up of the boat we were planning to build complete with a life-sized cutout of a mule that Alejandro wanted on the boat. A successful rehearsal took place on this faux set and the next day, the company moved to Alberta to rehearse the scenes that would be shot on locations there and begin preproduction. The shop, props, wardrobe and all the offices were in Vancouver but 95% of the locations were outside Calgary about twelve hours away by car. The keelboat was built in Vancouver and shipped to Alberta while starting construction on our other sets and locations with local crews from Calgary headed by foreman Pierre Bartlett. Additional talent was brought in from Vancouver, but the Art Department worked for many months without offices in Calgary, doing most of its work on locations in office trailers with generators. Those trailers gave everyone a place to escape to for lunch that was not freezing. Opposite page, top: A 1" scale model of the keelboat as he first thought about it, made by Mr. Fisk at his farm in Virginia and sent to Canada. Center: This drawing by Chris Beach shows the placement of the 300 hp jet motor in the aft section and the 80 hp motor in the fore section. Bottom, left and right: Mr. Fisk took these images of the Pawnee village using his iPhone with the Vintique app on location at Big Sky Ranch in Simi Valley, CA. "I loved these photos because they look so old." This page, top left and right: A mock-up of the boat put together for a rehearsal. It was built in the construction shop where the rehearsal took place. The carpenters and painters assembling the final wooden boat over an aluminum hull with two jet engines in it. Below, left to right: After the Indian attack, the trappers escape and float downriver. The boat pulled ashore where they will hide some of their valuable beaver pelts in caves.