Historical sites featured in Doctor’s Case
The Doctor’s Case has become a benchmark film for the Prince George region. The one-hour flick was made almost entirely using local cast and crew, using some local locations as well.
The script is based closely on the short story written by Stephen King as an homage to Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In the modern-day story based on the Victorian super-detective, King twists the usual plot devices and has Holmes’ trusty first mate Dr. Watson solve this mystery.
This appealed at a compulsive level to James Douglas, a professional actor who is also the manager of visitor experiences at Barkerville Historic Town. Barkerville is awash in professional actors during the tourist season, performing the periodspecific roles of the 1860s gold rush town just a hop to the southeast of Prince George, par- allel with Quesnel. Douglas had access to props, costumes, sites and other resources that made filming a story like The Doctor’s Case an exciting proposition.
Thanks to licensing permissions granted by Stephen King’s Dollar Babies Program, a protocol by which aspiring filmmakers can work with his literary collection without paying high royalty fees, Douglas and a cadre of creative friends embarked on this cinematic adventure.
During the Cinema CNC Film Festival, the public got a special preview of the film, including a panel discussion at which questions from the audience were answered by Douglas and some of the cast and crew. Joining him on stage were J.P. Winslow who portrayed Holmes, Ian Case who played police inspector Lestrad, Andrew Hamilton (the story’s villainous but murdered millionaire Lord Albert Hull), Michelle Lieffertz (abused widow Lady Hull and also acted as the film’s production designer), Stewart Cawood (one of the jilted Hull heirs and also acted as production manager), and first assistant director Evan Ollenberger.
Some of the other key production staff were also on hand at the panel discussion like executive producer Norm Coyne, script supervisor/co-producer Kim Feragen, executive producer Jana Phillips, and others from the senior crew.
“Evan was the only one here who actually went to film school, so he gave us some great advice, especially on the days we had Denise Crosby and William Davis on set, because we knew for those three days we couldn’t really afford to make any mistakes at all. Not to say that we didn’t, but, it was really important to have someone with Evan’s training and experience there on set with us,” said Douglas, by way of explaining the grassroots and passionbased nature of this project. It was done for the love of the story and the interest in the motion-picture art medium.
The audience had many technical questions, like how the many cats of the story were convinced to act on cue, how a seamless visual result could come from using different cameras with different lenses, and so forth.
One of the most involved sets of questions and answers stemmed from the use of Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria as the main setting. Like Barkerville, its age and appearance insinuated itself into the crew’s plans.
“It was actually surprisingly simple, but for a reason,” said Douglas about obtaining the palatial manor located in his former hometown. “Because so many of us work in the tourism industry, serendipity played a huge role in a lot of this. I was at a trade show in Jasper in 2016 and I ran into an old friend who Ian also knows from theatre in Victoria, Kate Humble, who also went on to heritage tourism later in her career and was now working at Craigdarroch Castle. So I very feverishly pitched her this idea, she was able to talk to the people at her organization, and they gave us relatively free rein, just for the cost of staff time to make sure we didn’t wreck the place, as long as we promised to shoot between 5 p.m. and 3 a.m. every day. Had it not been for that past relationship with Kate Humble and her mutual appreciation for both film and the castle, we probably wouldn’t have had that particular location. We really allowed the castle to be a character in the film.
“One of the things I love most about this film is how it gets to showcase three national historic sites that are within British Columbia,” Douglas added, meaning Barkerville, Craigdarroch Castle and also Emily Carr House in Victoria in which doubled for 221B Baker Street, the famous address for Holmes and Watson in the original stories.
Letters still arrive in the mail at the actual 221B Baker Street, London, from those who mistakenly believe the stories to be nonfiction.