Jennifer Geens
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 12/04) - If you were driving the ice road to Dettah Tuesday afternoon you might have seen a helicopter repeatedly flying sideways over the ice.

Or if you were snowmobiling on Great Slave Lake out past Dettah you might have spied an automatic teller machine standing in the snow in the middle of nowhere.

Brothers Chris and Sam Gamble were filming part of the opening sequence for their feature film Versus Ivan, the bulk of which will be shot this summer.

In the opening dream sequence of the dark comedy, the penniless Ivan treks across a frozen wasteland to a bank machine that won't take his card.

The bank machine was loaned to the production by a business in Leduc, Alta., and the brothers drove it up to Yellowknife in their van.

"We had a letter with us in case we were stopped by the police," said Chris Gamble.

Far from needing to steal money to finance the production, the Gamble brothers are awaiting word on the grants they have applied for. In the meantime, the helicopter trip went on a VISA card.

While Chris poked the digital video camera out the window of the helicopter and shot from above, his brother Sam co-ordinated things on the ground, which included putting his jacket on the ATM during transport to keep from getting snow in the machine's sensitive mechanics.

Production designer Keith Duggan stood in for the actor playing Ivan, trudging through the snow to the bank machine five times, clad in short sleeves and a tie.

Chris Gamble is no amateur at making films. The Queen's University graduate has a number of short documentaries under his belt, including "Small Town" and "Northern Gold: the Sharon Ann Firth Story." He has even filmed from a helicopter before for Environment Canada in the Mackenzie Delta. But "Versus Ivan" is his first feature length film.

Gamble chose Tuesday afternoon to match the lighting conditions of Saturday, when they had done preliminary shots on the ice, and made sure the flight path past Dettah would leave the helicopter's shadow out of the shot. He even had the GPS co-ordinates of the shoot written across his hands in black marker in case Louis Lemieux, the pilot from Great Slave Helicopters, needed them.

The rest of the film will be shot between June 28 and July 18.

Crew call for students

Chris and Sam Gamble need high school students to help with their feature film shoot this summer.

Tentative shooting dates are June 28 to July 18. Some positions are paid, some are on a volunteer basis.

Some require technical expertise, but there are also areas like security, hair and makeup, publicity and office management.

E-mail Keith Duggan, the film's production designer (keith@solnoctu.ca) for more information.