‘We’ve had a real good run here and we’d all love to keep it going’

"Blocking, quiet please," says Megan Banning, first AD.

She’s standing at the open door of a barn near Hanmer, where Letterkenny, a cheeky bumpkin comedy airing on CraveTV, is shooting a scene for its second season.

Actors Jared Keeso, Nate Dales and K. Trevor Wilson are seated inside the barn on lawn chairs, rehearsing lines, with bottles of Puppers Premium Lager (7.2% alcohol) close at hand.

It’s of course a fake brand, created for the show, much like the town of Letterkenny itself is fictional, although based on similar backwaters that Keeso encountered growing up in Listowel, in southwestern Ontario.

A canine face dutifully appears on the label of Puppers, but there’s also a pair of real, resident pooches here today — a wily, semi-approachable border collie named Toby, and a mini-him.

It’s the second year Letterkenny has shot at this same property, and the dog demographic has doubled.

"It was a pleasant surprise to find out Toby had fathered a son this year," muses Keeso, while taking a break in the lee of a shed to escape the wind. "Son of Toby, that’s what we call him."

The whelp does have his own name, Oscar, but few of the cast or crew seem to know it, so most just go with Son of Toby.

The dogs are something of a comic duo in their own right — rivalling characters Wayne and Daryl in the series — but they also tend to get in the way.

Toby Jr. has earlier made off with a plywood square meant to level a dolly, while Toby Sr. is known to lay claim to equipment in other ways. "He pees on things sometimes," says Keeso.

At the moment they’re milling around the barn door and threatening to make unscripted cameos in the scene.

"Where’s that nice man who likes these dogs a lot more than us?" asks Banning.

"We actually have a person on the crew who is dedicated to dealing with the dogs," explains producer Mark Montefiore, with New Metric Media. "He takes them out into a field and distracts them."

Unfortunately, the animal wrangler seems to be absent on this occasion, so another crew member is conscripted to toss balls for the collies.

Keeso, who co-created Letterkenny, says the presence of the pooches is just part of the overall atmosphere on set, where cast and crew feel very comfortable.

"The family at this farm is so warm and accommodating," he says. "We owe a ton to them."

With the site’s humble farmhouse, open fields and weathered outbuildings, the production team has found just about everything it needs for sets and backdrops already in place.

"The only thing we added was the produce stand, which we built last season specifically for the show," says Montefiore. "That’s one of the main sets where the characters hang around and shoot the shit."

The matron of the spread, in her mid-90s, continues to reside in the farmhouse while scenes are shot outside and even inside, and occasionally comes out to say hi, hang laundry, or water flowers.

Iden Ford, unit photographer on the production, recently shot an atmospheric portrait of the matriarch in a chair in the yard, cradling her accordion.

There’s no livestock on the property but that doesn’t mean the Letterkenny team goes entirely without contact with country critters.

One crew member toting a floppy pane of fabric (used to diffuse light) looks up to realize a dove has latched itself onto the top edge and doesn’t seem in any rush to fly off.

At dusk, the lights used to illuminate scenes draw clouds of moths and mosquitoes.

Keeso says the Valley location reminds him of his roots. "My family had a sawmill but there were lots of farms like this growing up in Listowel," he says. "It’s a town of 5,000 people, an agricultural community. This is a lot like it and there’s tons of charm in this place."

The actor, who earlier played a young Don Cherry in the biopic Wrath of Grapes, now resides in Montreal but says he loves spending time in Sudbury and its more pastoral environs.

"We’ve had a real good run here and we’d all love to keep it going," he says. "We’re fixtures at all the bars and local wing joints."

Asked if he gets recognized for his role as Wayne in Letterkenny, Keeso admits he gets a few shoutouts, especially during visits to Tim Hortons in downtown Sudbury.

"I make a couple stops there a day and say hi to all my pals," he says. "Someone will yell out something like ‘pitter patter’ or ‘hard no.’"

Those would be phrases uttered often on Letterkenny, which features a unique dialect that Keeso attributes partly to the rural milieu of his youth and partly to comedic invention.

"It’s small-town vernacular and nuggets you pick up along the way," he says. "And then you get creative."

Asked if his character experiences any major arc or catharsis in Season Two, the actor laughs. "It’s a lot more of the same," he says. "We’re playing to our strengths."

Keeso cowrites the show, which originated as a Youtube series in 2013, with Jacob Tierney, who also directs. "We’re all just growing with it," he says. "It’s my first time as a TV writer."

So did he pen in a love interest for himself for the new season? "I wrote three of them," he says. "That’s something the audiences might want to know about — there’s a lot more female roles this year."

Quite a few parts have gone to local actors this time around, including Kamilla Kowall, Joel Roger Gagne and Jay Bertin, all of whom Keeso describes as series regulars.

"The talent pool here is very deep," he says. "Those three all auditioned for Season One, and they were so good we brought them back and beefed up their parts for Season Two."

While most of the scenes are shot on the Hanmer farm, Montefiore says the production does move around to other locations.

"We shoot all over town," he says. "Today, just the hicks are here. But we have the hockey players we shoot at the arena, and at the convenience store in the Donovan we have the skids."

The show is a bit provocative and profane, but Montefiore believes it appeals to a wide audience. "We’re not known for shock humour," he says. "It’s still accessible and relatable for people across the country."

The second season will be six episodes long, like the first, and was close to wrapping this week.

New Metric Media, which also produces What Would Sal Do?, has become one of several movie and TV outfits to make repeat visits to Sudbury.

Melissa Zanette, chief of staff for Mayor Brian Bigger, says 20 productions shot locally in 2015, generating $18.7 million in direct economic spend. That doesn’t include spinoffs.

This year, there have been seven productions so far, three of which are series.

As a gesture of appreciation for being welcomed in the city, New Metric Media presented donations this week of $2,500 each to Cinefest and the Sudbury District Girls Hockey Association, while Bigger was bestowed a Letterkenny Shamrocks hockey jersey.

Back in the barn, the actors are going over their lines one last time, while the crew positions a camera on dolly tracks laid across the straw-strewn floor.

Keeso, whose own dog Gus has occasional walk-on roles in Letterkenny, is holding forth on "charitables" — which apparently has become a noun — while wielding a bottle of Puppers Lager.

"Ten-four good buddy," he says. "Let’s take the dog into town "¦ Pitter patter."

jmoodie@postmedia.com