If you drive down Highway 59 towards Winnipeg, you may have noticed a property with bright green paint on all the buildings, and a huge green wall. This is Chroma Ranch, and it’s owned by John Mysyk, who has been working in the film industry for 20 years. Mysyk is in the business of creating movie magic, and films have been shooting here for about 15 years.
Even though it may seem like the property, just outside Île-des-Chênes, is in the middle of nowhere by Hollywood standards, it has a lot to offer.
“It’s nice because I’m not in a residential area and I’ve got distance around me,” says Mysyk. “It’s easier to do drone shots. There is more code when you’re around airports, and in fact you can’t fly a drone anywhere near them. I’ve done some disaster movies here and we’ve done a bunch of special effects like blowing stuff up.”
Many different types of projects have been filmed at Chroma Ranch, everything from commercials to documentaries, high-budget films, and TV series.
“I coordinated a TV series called Guinea Pig,” Mysyk says. “It was a guy who would test products. On one episode, he tested a biker jacket that was hooked up to a dead-man switch, so that when you fall off the machine it would deploy airbags around your neck and inflate. He purposely crashed a motorcycle in front of my place on the old Highway 59.”
Mysyk is affiliated with IATSE 856, a union representing freelance specialty artists, technicians, and craft workers in the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry. He also works in conjunction with the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and DGC, which deals with producers and directors.
“I facilitate Manitoba and have personally coordinated 75 to 80 movies,” Mysyk says. “As transport coordinator, anything that goes through a movie goes through me. I’m responsible for the actors being where they’re supposed to be on the set, for the crew, and I’m the guy who has to make sure all the equipment is good so that they can shoot that day.”
Mysyk has worked with many known actors, including Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, and Robin Williams. “We shot Capote here, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, which won Academy Awards. I’ve worked on movies in the Caribbean all the way to Alaska, and they’re all done through the Manitoba film industry.” He even shot part of a movie right outside Niverville, called The Lookout, which starred Joseph Gordon Levitt and Jeff Bridges.
Green screens were originally designed to mitigate risks to actors and stunt people. The technology has come a long away, so it doesn’t usually look cheesy anymore. Before the advent of the green screen, however, the industry had a whole other bag of tricks.
“Before green screen, I did all the travelling shots,” Mysyk says. “This is where you rack a vehicle on a trailer and the actor sits inside and acts like they’re driving. I’m actually the guy that’s driving and making the vehicle go forward. The director would give me cues if they wanted me to swerve or break. Now, because of the green screen, you can do that shot without the vehicle ever moving.”
Mysyk says that Manitoba’s film industry is growing.
“Back when I started, we were doing $14 million movies, and [some] over $200 million. Everything was going good.” Mysyk says that’s when SAG went on strike for 18 months. “It really hurt the industry and we lost all of our U.S. feature films. We basically lived on the Canadian production side of things, which are really low-budget projects. We’re recovering from that now and it’s getting better. That’s one of the reasons why I built this [green] wall. Toronto doesn’t have anything like it, nor does Vancouver.”
In fact, he says the only other wall like this can be found at Universal Studios in California, but that one is only used on one side. Mysyk’s wall is double-sided.
The green screen wall on Mysyk’s property was designed by engineers to a very specific code and built last summer. The ten-foot beams sink 15 feet into the ground and are the same beams that bridges are built with. The wall is 11,000 square feet and is painted Chroma-3 green on both sides.
“The wall is made so that these guys can rig and hang equipment over the top,” Mysyk says. “They can use rain towers if they need a scene to have rain, hang lights, use decelerators, which allow stunt people to look like they’re falling, and even have people repel off of the wall.”
Chroma Ranch has many different areas that can be used for filming. Mysyk painted the interior of one of the barns from floor to ceiling so that it forms a green screen tube that runs 200 feet long and 50 feet wide.
“The bigger budget movies cost $1,000 per minute to operate, so you want to have an alternative area to shoot,” he points out. “One of the reasons the wall is double-sided is so that you can have two different sets being set up, and all you have to do is worry about moving your camera gear around. The barn is for when you’re shooting a particular movie that can’t have rain. At least the crew can shoot a secondary scene inside. I even have a rustic attic and space around outside with bulrushes and a tree line.”
The movie A Dog’s Purpose was coordinated by Mysyk. The film, which faced controversy earlier this year when allegations were made about animal cruelty, took a year to shoot and had a budget of $50 million. “Alan Bloomquist, the producer on this movie, was one of the best men I’ve ever worked with. I dealt with the animal trainers and had to haul the dogs, so I know how they were handled. I can tell you that no dog was harmed during the making of this film. The footage shown on TMZ was edited and staged. We were in Brandon, Manitoba for a month during production, and the dogs stayed in a hotel room just below me. They were fed organic chicken and got treated better than the crew.”
Mysyk says he is always looking to expand his property for more creative filming opportunities. He has a pond on the property that he’d like to expand into a blue screen (the industry prefers blue when dealing with water and snow). The pond set would be equivalent to one at Universal Studio, except Mysyk’s screen would be curved, allowing it to seem more infinite.
He also just finished production on Chucky 7, starring Jennifer Tilly, which is to be released later this year.
“I’m starting another movie right away,” he finishes. “The working title is Break My Heart 1000 Times. It’s a post-apocalyptic-type movie, so for that we’ll have to shut down roads and bridges. I’ll have to bring in the fuselage of a plane, and two tanks, which will be used for all the water shots.”
