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I'd never seen this on a movie set before: The director, Fernando Meirelles, called cut, the crew launched into setting up the next shot – which can take anywhere from 20 minutes to hours – yet the actors stayed on their marks. On most sets, the cast would scatter like marbles: go out for a smoke, grab a coffee, wander off to their trailers. Especially a big cast like this, with 50-plus extras and three stars, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo and Danny Glover. But on this day in August, 2007, on this film, Blindness, on location at the former Guelph penitentiary an hour outside Toronto, the actors stayed put, chatting quietly while the crew moved equipment around them like ants hauling sugar into an anthill.

It's not like the set was beautiful, either. In Blindness, based on the award-winning novel by Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, a mysterious plague plunges its victims into instant, white sightlessness, and panicked officials quarantine them in a brutish facility where order quickly devolves into chaos. The Guelph penitentiary, already plenty dispiriting given its barred windows and peeling grey paint, was dressed down even further as an overcrowded dormitory crammed with iron cots, ankle-deep in debris, and strung with guide lines and laundry. Most distressingly, the walls were smeared with feces – fake, but possessed of a brown smell that was uncomfortably close to the real thing.

Still, no one budged. “I think it's out of respect for Fernando and Cesar [Charlone, the director of photography], because they work so beautifully, so fluidly and non-verbally,” Julianne Moore said. “We want to facilitate that. If actors don't scatter, it's easier; they don't have that job of getting everybody back and settling down again. Everybody so believes in what we're doing, we're willing to stay here and get to the next shot faster.”

A movie set is a hydra, with hundreds of heads holding hundreds of agendas; it's almost impossible to imagine that all of them are equally engaged in making art. But here, “everybody seems to be in the same movie,” Moore said. “We're really talking to each other, and enjoying each other. I don't think I could bear it otherwise, because the material is so grim.” She laughed. “And it's nasty in here.”

As the long day wore on, I kept seeing evidence of people's passion for this project. One of the producers, Niv Fichman – whose Canadian company, Rhombus Media, also produced Passchendaele and the TV show Slings and Arrows – had practically worn a groove in the floor leading from the set in the back of the building to his office in the front, where he managed the inevitable crises that occur when a relatively modest $30-million budget meets a sprawling international production.

“So many people tried to get the rights to this story,” said Meirelles, a sweet-natured, soft-spoken Brazilian who earned raves for his films City of God and The Constant Gardener. “At one point, I tried to buy it. But Niv was the most persistent; he flew to Spain and convinced Saramago.” He laughed. “Niv is very good at convincing people.”

In the next room sat Adrienne Clarkson, Canada's former governor-general, patiently watching take after take of Moore hanging a pair of scissors on a hook. Clarkson has cared about the project ever since she hosted a dinner for Saramago at Rideau Hall to help Fichman and screenwriter Don McKellar seal the book's option.

Pacing the hallway near the camera monitors was Barbara Willis Sweete, another of Rhombus's co-founders, who was watching the actors' eyes. The greatest screen actors can convey almost everything with their peepers alone – that's why movies are all about the close-up. But in Blindness most of the actors couldn't use their eyes, so getting nuanced performances required additional care.

First, the actors, including about 200 extras, took eight hours of workshops in which they learned how to appear blind – initially in a panicked and awkward way, and later, as the characters adapt, in a more practised manner. They were given different specialties, such as walking or reacting to sounds. “The worst thing would be for the actors to have the same blank stare; we'd look like a zombie movie,” Sweete said. “Now I think every actor should take a blindness workshop, because so much [of their emotive capacity] goes unused.”

“The workshops taught us to take the energy out of our eyes and put it in our stomachs,” said Martha Burns, one of several Canadian actors in Blindness. “Actually, I've found playing blind surprisingly relaxing. I'm kind of ADD, and it narrows my focus right down.” She laughed. “But this is every actor's dream, because the story is always drawing you in, and Fernando never asks you to act, just be and behave.”

Second, because Meirelles wanted his cameras – he used three – to act as voyeurs, spying on characters who couldn't watch back, the actors never knew exactly when they were being filmed; they had to be “on” during every long take. The A camera was for intentionally framed shots; the B camera, run by Charlone, captured spontaneous moments; and the C camera was set up like a surveillance camera. “There are no storyboards,” Sweete said. “Fernando feels his way in, using the cameras like paintbrushes.”

Unfortunately, all this care and commitment can't guarantee that people will like or even see a movie. When Blindness premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, its reception was tepid; a new cut for the Toronto International Film Festival fared better. But the film opened eight days ago to slow box office and a complaint from the U.S. National Federation for the Blind that the film presents blind people negatively.

The only aspect of a movie that any filmmaker can control is the process. On this day, it seemed to be a rewarding one. “There are many ways of seeing the story,” Meirelles said. “There's the catastrophe plot, which is the easiest but shallowest way. There's the moral aspect, the fragility of civilization. But for me, it's also about learning to see. The first line of the book reads, ‘If you can see, look; if you can look, observe.' Observing is much more subjective, emotional, done with your inside.” On this set, everyone was working from the inside out.