VT: I think so, too. When I worked with Peggy Baker for Words Fail, I brought it to her in its rough cut, because I was early in my days as a director – back about seven years ago. So I brought it to Peggy. She was working in Montreal, and I took it to Montreal and showed her the rough cut, really nervous, what would she think? Because as you can see, I love to use close-ups. I love to use movement with the camera as much as movement from the dancer – and I remember in early days when I was a dancer I wanted the camera to stay still so I could move. But it's a whole different aesthetic.

Anyway, I took it to Peggy and she said, “It's your film. I love it. I'm seeing new things in my choreography, but it's your film.”

Q: With the Trio, since you did not have much of a budget, why did you have that detailed shot list? So it wasn't a matter of creating those very short shots in the editing room?

VT: Yes. That one was completely storyboarded, and in fact it had to be worked out because of the way we were using the green screen. So sometimes the mirror is real. I think the cinematographer got his award because sometimes the mirror is real – he's shooting into a real mirror, and sometimes he's shooting into a green screen mirror. Most people have it in their budget to go into a studio that's been prepared, it's all blue digital sets, blue or green – I literally took cans of paint on the plane from Toronto to Calgary, to Banff, and we were painting our cardboard sheets to create the green screen. Trio was heavily storyboarded, as was The SwanS. Cinnamon Peeler was storyboarded a little bit for me to choreograph the movement with them in the studio. I only had half a day with Sean and Gail in the studio, and then a lot was done in editing. What I did with Cinnamon Peeler was instruct my cinematographer to shoot at four levels. So he did one take completely like this, one take here (partitions off the upper section of her body), one take here (partitions off her lower torso and upper leg), and one take of the feet and then one complete of the shadows and then one complete of them as is. A lot of that film was created in the editing room.

Q: How much knowledge of dance does your cinematographer have?

VT: Each one was different. Roger Vernon did Trio and won the Gemini award. He didn't have much knowledge of dance. He was at Banff, and was my mentor when I did Women in the Director's Chair. Then, I was so proud the year later that I could hire him as my cinematographer. Don Spence, who did The SwanS has shot almost all my dance. He shot Vida y Danza, Cuba for me last year. And he virtually dances with his camera. Paul Tolton who shot Shadow Pleasures (which included Power and Cinnamon Peeler) didn't have much dance experience, but he was intrigued, and also really interested in feeding off me as a dancer and learning from me just as I was exploring cinematic techniques with him.

Vida y Danza, Cuba

Quick aside – I first went into filmmaking with not a lot of education in it. When I worked at the CBC, there was a great deal of respect for me – everybody knew where I'd come from and they listened to me, while I also learned a tremendous amount from them. Then, when I first started going out on my own I worked with a couple of independent cinematographers who had attitude about “who does this little dancer think she is, stepping into our world,” and I wasn't treated well on the set. I had to learn that you actually have to be not so nice (as we dancers often are) – I had to learn to take on a directorial affect, play that role. Oh, and I didn't hire him again!

Q: I'm curious about the lighting. The pieces that were originally made for the stage, how did that inform your lighting choices?

VT: Very good question because there's a little conflict there. Because cinematographers in the film world are actually lighting people – that's what they do – often the cinematographer is not the camera operator, although in my cases they were, again a budget issue.

So, again Power is an example because Andrea had created that for the stage and she had very clear ideas on what she wanted for her lighting. She was convinced by Paul Tolton too. She has such extraordinary visual talent, that very quickly she realized that he was a wonderful cinematographer. So all those wonderful triangles and shadows she had hinted at in the stage work were of course easier to accomplish on film and so she worked on the lighting closely with Paul. For the Matjash piece with Rex in SwanS, we lit in the theatre. The cinematographer lit that but he had to work with the lighting guys because I wanted to set it in the vintage Winter Garden theatre. For Trio we used natural light. Again, partly budget and partly that's what we wanted to do. For Cinnamon Peeler it was the cinematographer. Well he's the one who figured out how to shoot the shadow. But that's a good question.

CA: Veronica, thank you so much.

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