‘The Disappeared’ a challenging ocean shoot for Maritime cast and crew

TORONTO – Shooting the lost-at-sea tragedy “The Disappeared” came with a key imperative for cast and crew: Don’t get seasick.

With the action entirely set on the water, actors spent the shoot confined to two dories while the crew balanced film cameras on a raft that bobbed nearby.

“Every day we armed ourselves with Gravol and everything just to be safe because you wouldn’t want to be the first of the actors to get seasick,” says star Shawn Doyle, a Newfoundlander whose brother is a fisherman.

“Being seasick you become completely incapacitated. It’s not like you’re a little queasy or something — you can’t function. Which means that you would basically shut down production if you got sick. I took a natural form of Gravol every day and I had a crazy little band that you put on your wrist and it has a little ball on the inside of it that presses against a pressure point in your wrist and I swear by it. It really worked.”

The shoot took place in Nova Scotia’s Lunenburg Bay and Rose Bay. Everything had to be far enough from shore so that no land could be seen on the horizon — after all, these characters are supposed to be hopelessly adrift.

“The Disappeared” centres on six men who struggle to survive the Atlantic when their fishing vessel goes down. Doyle plays harpoon striker Pete, a brawny fisherman who likes to stir the pot.

Billy Campbell plays first mate Mannie, Brian Downey is Captain Gerald, Gary Levert plays the bosun Merv, Ryan Doucette is Gib and Neil Matheson is the young Dickie, at sea for the first time.

“It was basically just a character study, a relationship piece about all these men trying to interact with one another, find their way and the surprising bonds that take place because of it,” says Doyle, heaping praise on first-time feature director Shandi Mitchell, who also wrote the script.

“Her choice to not have any soundtrack or not have any score other than the sound of the water and the sky, those effects, that’s an incredibly audacious choice for a first-time feature director, you know. It’s very brave and it really shows someone who has a very strong vision.”

It helped that all the actors had some connection to the water, including “Once and Again” star Campbell. He says he’s spent much of the past six years in Lunenburg, N.S., to sail on the tall ship Picton Castle, which is based there.

Campbell, also known for roles on “The Killing” and “The O.C.,” says he was introduced to the project by a fellow boat lover who also happened to be a Halifax casting agent. Campbell says he was attracted to everything about “The Disappeared.”

“It was a movie taking place on the water, it was boats, it was kind of a period movie, it was a beautiful, beautiful script and (it was) shooting in Lunenburg, N.S.,” Campbell says in a recent phone interview from Las Vegas.

“It’s kind of like somebody asking you to shoot a movie in your backyard. It’d be kind of fun to be at home and make a movie.”

The L.A.-based Campbell says he built an 18-metre sailboat in Lunenburg that launched last year. He expects to return this spring to take her out again.

He marvelled at the logistics required to pull off “The Disappeared,” which heads to Halifax, Bridgewater, N.S., and St. John’s, N.L., on Friday and plays Charlottetown’s Island Media Arts Festival on May 24.

A 5×7-metre floating platform was used as home base for shooting. A seven-person marine unit, two 13-metre Cape Island boats and three Zodiacs stood nearby.

“The entire crew was positioned on what seemed a postage-stamp sized raft out in the bay,” Campbell says of the floating platform.

“The camera crew and the cameras and the prop people and the boat wranglers and the cast and everything were on this tiny little raft. If too many people stepped to one side of it would kind of start to sink.”

Doyle, whose past credits include the TV movie “John A.: Birth of a Country” and the TV series “Lost Girl” and “Endgame,” said the weather would dictate how and when they would shoot.

A storm scene was shot during actual days of rough water, when four-metre swells turned the boats into little roller-coasters.

A rowing scene meant to be cheerful as the fishermen sang was supposed to take place under sunny skies. But that day it was foggy and the water still as glass, lending an unexpected haunting quality, says Doyle.

Then there was the rain. Doyle recalls one evening dumped 100 millimetres on the cast and crew.

“As we were talking it was hard to even open your mouth because it was filling with rain. It was that rainy. It was crazy,” he says.

It was a challenging shoot, but always exciting.

“It’s a film that we really put our hearts into,” says Doyle.

“The Disappeared” is expected to air on Movie Central in the fall.