Actors’ portrayal a powerful asset for locally created film
This passionate kinship between audience and character was factored deeply into Winslow’s portrayal of Holmes. He explained this when asked about his feelings of getting a part portrayed by some of the true greats of the acting profession, including Christopher Plummer, Robert Downey Jr., Basil Rathbone, Benedict Cumberbatch, Orson Welles on radio, Boris Karloff, Jonathan Pryce, John Cleese, Ian McKellen, Leonard Nemoy on stage. Even Will Ferrell has a version about to hit the silver screen.
“I’m glad you asked that, because yes it is a daunting thing to not only realize that this character’s been played by, well, incredible actors including one of my own favourite actors, Jeremy Brett, whom I drew a little bit from for this, but daunting also because the character of Sherlock Holmes some people believe to be real. You’re going to laugh, but it’s true. So in taking this on, what I was looking for was a human being, because Sherlock Holmes is, in essence, real to a lot of people, even though the rest of us know he’s fictional. Finding some kind of humanity made it doable for me.”
Another character with a high profile past in Holmes stories, and the ensuing stage and screen productions, is police inspector Lestrade.
“I have not played him before, but I did work at Craigdarroch Castle for 15 years doing sitespecific theatre in that space,” said Case. “I’ve done a couple of Sherlock Holmes (plays) in the castle, but I have never played Lestrade and Lestrade never appeared in any of my plays at the castle, but I love the character. I am a Holmsian, so I had quite a lot of fun. What I loved about this script is, Holmes and Lestrade are really sort of almost on an even keel. They hate each other for various reasons, but they also admire each other, and I like that this script didn’t turn Lestrade into a buffoon. So often he is portrayed as a bit of an idiot, and this Lestrade has at least a modicum of intelligence, which I enjoy. I like playing the foil, and I thought there was quite a bit of humour to be had with the role as well, which I really enjoyed.”
Case also said that in his 30year career in film and television, this is the first portrayal of his own that doesn’t make himself cringe at the sight, when he comes on screen.
“There are two reasons I really wanted Ian to play Lestrade,” Douglas said. “One is a very personal reason. Ian Case actually gave me my first acting gig ever, back in Victoria in 1992. But also because I knew he had the kind of gravitas, the stalwart nature, that would bring out the real policeman qualities of Lestrade. And because we so often do see him portrayed as a buffoon, I thought in this case, what we really wanted to see was somebody who really had a solid centre.”
While Winslow and Case were given characters puffed up with nuance, the character of Lord Hull was devilishly one-dimensional. He was deliciously rotten, which delighted Hamilton. He is used to playing perhaps the most complex portrayal of all in Barkerville, that of town founder Billy Barker himself. For The Doctor’s Case he got to emanate not golden qualities but dirty, soiled ones.
How did he conjure up those wretched qualities to play such a debased character on the threshold of death, taking delight in reading his family the last will and testament cutting them all out of his fortune, giving it instead to a frivolous charity?
“It really is a matter of us just all being capable of those sort of energies, aren’t we? And at the end of the day, you’re tired,” Hamilton responded to a round of laughter. “This time it was just a delight to let yourself go and be someone so truly despicable, you could just relish in it.”
The cast and crew were literally exhausted by the process. The shoot took place over a 12-day period on a budget so modest it hardly even amounts to pocket change, by normal film industry standards. Much of it came from crowd-sourcing, and many of the donors were in the audience at the festival.
Since Craigdarroch Castle could only be used at night, that left the daytimes to shoot all other scenes, so the actors and crew were going almost around the clock.
This could have led to mistakes, which could have led to additional costs or hastier storytelling. Douglas said he counted successfully on crewmembers picked for their organizational skills and attention to detail.
One of those was Lieffertz who had some acting to do, but also some setting of the scenes. That’s a scary task when time is short and expensive, and all done in rooms full of priceless historic artifacts.
“There is a huge amount of necessary carefulness that must be taken, so whenever we were setting anything up, we all had to have gloves on, the curator needed to be there, their people would move the furniture around and things like that, any props we brought in had to be approved, we just had to remember where it all went back,” she explained.
Douglas interjected, “If anyone ever tells you ‘oh, we’ll fix it in post’ (meaning using computers to manually erase in postproduction any errors that are discovered long after the shoot is done) punch them in the face. Then say no, let’s do it right the first time.”
These are lessons that the Prince George film industry is only beginning to learn. The Doctor’s Case is one of the first screen arts projects to spring from the brains and hands of local people and come to full completion. This, said Cinema CNC lead organizer Peter Maides, was why he wanted this film to be featured in the festival. He applauded Douglas, Coyne, Ollenberger, Feragen, co-director Leonard Pearl and their merry band of Holmsian storywrights for making the filmmaking process “more real” because, he pointed out, “quite often we think of films as being something made by people far away with loads of money and stuff, and you don’t, and you’re much closer,” and that will only stand as mentorship and guidance for the next band of aspiring filmmakers who want to bring their own screen arts production to life.