Le Grand Chapiteau: Télémajik

"This isn't Madison Square Garden, it's a tent! We brought in $100,000 worth of extra lighting. It took us 10 days to rig it. We had a complete technical run-through with all the artists so that they could be exposed to all this new lighting," says Wagg. There were many safety considerations to be made in the process of climatizing the artists to the new feel of the lighting, which took six full shows to adjust. "You can't have follow spots blinding them in the middle of a show."

But the filming goes far beyond just sitting in a seat and watching amazing acts of daring and acrobatics. Wagg takes the viewer to the heart of the performance, to the emotions of the stars of this internationally heralded event. What you won't see during the Cirque show is the camera crew... but you'll see these masters' work. Wagg says some of the camera crew turned down other jobs to wait for this event. They are consummate performers, just like the artists. "When the trapeze artist is performing, it's like you are the guy up on the rope looking down at the audience," says Wagg. "So you get a sense of height and hence you get a sense of drama because you can see how far it is to fall. You can see the muscles and you can see the physicality of what goes into doing that."

Wagg literally takes the viewer inside of some of the eleven acts. By placing a camera inside the German wheel, the viewer gets to see the Big Top spinning around in the background just as the acrobat sees it while performing.

"Each act has its own personality and you shoot it in a way that's specific for that act. The aerial contortionist in the silk is a very emotional piece," says Wagg. "And you get that as an audience, but you're looking up all the time at the shapes she's making. We, however, can go in close on her face and show the emotion she's going through as she's doing the act. There's an extraordinary shot at the end when she's just sliding 20 feet down these silks, and we're wide and we just go in closer and closer until she slides out of frame and her hands are the last thing you see. And with the music, it absolutely gets you."

Wagg says they shot 16:9 anamorphic widescreen. When the film was being reduced down to 4:3, there was a dynamic added. They edited each scene by pan-and-scan, allowing them to choose the composition of each scene. The result is nearly indescribable. Perhaps master cameraman Barry Dodds says it best: "This is going to be fabulous!"