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Tara Thorne plays it real-to-reel.
By Tara Thorne
"It's a true story about Joseph Howe, about a duel that he fought in 1840," says director Michael Fox about his new film, A Lesser Sort of War. "He was challenged to a duel by a man named John Halliburton, who accused him of libel. What happened at the end is John Halliburton misses and Howe has a chance to shoot him, according to the rules of the duel, but he fires his off pistol into the air."
This is the first project that Fox, who has also directed six other films including Entherance Online and the Skratch Bastid-starrer The Living Impaired, has shot on 35mm film as opposed to digital video.
"It looks prettier when it's done, for sure," he says of the difference. "My only real thing about the transition is I think I got used to having such a small lens that I tend to do a lot of close-up shots. And so there were a lot of close-up shots I couldn't do with the larger lenses. And it takes a lot longer to set up the shot.
"We actually had no money to make this movie. I acquired quite a bit of film stock for very cheap and just rented a bunch of gear from AFCOOP. It probably cost about $1,500 to make in total."
The 10-minute drama, written by Hal Thompson, was inspired by the pair's work at Citadel Hill. "I've been working at the Halifax Citadel for the past while," says Fox. "I started finding these tidbits and anecdotes about Halifax's history amusing. I figured I would make a short film." The team shot over three days last November in Province House, at the Citadel and at the Martello Tower in Point Pleasant Park. "That's actually where the duel took place," says Fox, "we shot it in the exact spot. We didn't really design the costumes from scratch—we took pieces from the Dal costume dept and from the Halifax Citadel as well, based everything on old pictures from the 1840s."
A Lesser Sort of War stars John Johnson as Howe. "The thing is there's this guy who works with us, and he's done some acting and he looks almost exactly like him," says Fox, laughing. "He's got those chops, those big mutton chops. We were just comparing pictures of Joseph Howe with him in the movie and they look very similar."
Fox and Thompson have a feature based in 1860s Halifax now in development. A Lesser Sort of War screens along with Jay Dahl's Time Farter and Marc Almon's The Wake of Calum MacLeod on Wednesday, March 28 at Park Lane at 7:30pm. Find out more about A Lesser Sort of War online at: www.whitelancefilms.com/lswtrailer.htm