When the film the Revenant won Oscars for Leonardo DiCaprio as best actor, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu for best director, and Emmanuel Lubezki for cinematography, hundreds of others in Alberta felt like they had won too.
They were crew members and extras on the film, up to 700 in total, during the shooting in the province..
Indeed when you watch the film, most of the scenery is Canadian, Although there were a couple of scenes filmed in Montana and Argentina, much of the film was shot in Canada, with many scenes in and around Drumheller, Kananaskis County, Alberta, and the bear attack scene in a forest in British Columbia.
It was not an easy task, with some filming done high in the Fortress mountain at 2,500 metres (8.000 feet), and as the director insisted on natural light, filming time was limited in the short northern days to only a few hours per day.
Peter Hayman, is the business agent for The Cinematographers Guild Local 669, whose members worked on the Revenant. Qouted by Sun news, he said “If the day started a little bit late, everything escalated. As soon as it looked like the sun was going down, things moved very quickly during that magic hour. I was on the set for a couple of days. The artistry and cinematographer together is second-to-none. The shots that they try, nobody else tries.”
When they needed an avalanche high in the mountains, they hired planes to drop explosives on a snowy peak, and only had one chance to catch the avalanche when it happened.
There was also an effort to make the clothing look right for the period with everything hand stitched. There were some concessions though as modern warm weather materials were often worn under the “period” clothing. Especially when temperatures dipped to -40C (which is also -40F)
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