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"HOW I SHOT MIKE HARRIS & LIVED
TO TELL ABOUT IT" It's true. I shot Mike Harris. I shot him a lot. I shot him when he was golfing. I shot him when he was shmoozing. I even shot him a few times in the Legislature. Half the time the poor dope didn't even know he was being shot. He'd turn around, walk away and think nothing had happened. That's because my tool of revolution was a Mini DV Camera. When I decided to shoot my documentary Life Under Mike I found it very difficult to scrounge cash from the traditional sources due to the political nature of the subject (government rarely funds projects critical of themselves). As a result, I needed a shooting format that would NOT be cost prohibitive. I wanted something that would allow me to be stealth like, to move in and out of situations with as little fuss as possible. Over the course of my two year shoot I would find myself in the middle of riots, strikes and plant take-overs, not to mention the receiving end of some brute force by Mike's guards. I also wanted my subjects to be natural and at ease, their talk to be conversational as though we were just chatting casually without a camera stuffed in their face. All of these pre-conditions meant the standard tool of a TV Documentary, a BetaCam, was simply outta the question. Too bulky, too expensive. But I needed to get that broadcast quality so Hi 8 was also a no go. And then I saw it - the SONY Mini DV camera. It was perfect. Cost effective. Quality resolution. Compact and unintimidating. Everything I had hoped for. At the time, a lot of doubting Thomases didn't believe these cameras could deliver. So few people were using these babies in the fall of 1997 that when it came time to edit, several reputable post houses around Toronto informed us that the time code generated by the Mini DV cameras couldn't be read by an AVID - none of it was true! I shot the entire doc on Mini DV (24 hours of raw footage). We recorded the sound right on to the tape using a boom mic connected to an XLR to mini adapter. Sound is probably one of the few drawbacks with these cameras, though. The quality was excellent but the mini jack inputs are useless unless you're a tourist. The built-in mic was also useless because it picked up all sorts of extraneous noise. In my case the adapter I was using also proved to be a problem. The sound house had mistakenly wired it backwards which meant that when I outputted a Master with stereo sound I had a phase problem (the two channels cancelled each other out!!!!). Once we figured out the problem it was easily fixed in post by my editor. Since making my doc., digital video has grown in popularity and with good reason. I would recommend it to anyone who is shooting a documentary. Life Under Mike had its premiere at the Bloor Cinema, a 700 seat cinema in the heart of Toronto where it was projected off video! The picture looked great even on a large screen. It has since become one the Bloor's biggest draws. This is a revolution for sure, perhaps in more ways than one. You can read more about Life Under Mike at the Guerrilla Films website www.guerrillafilms.org.
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