Spotlighted in TIFF 2002’s Perspective Canada, deadend.com is an audacious feature directorial debut by S. Wyeth Clarkson of Toronto’s Travesty Productions. Clarkson shot a huge amount of video footage on a miniscule budget in telling the semi-improvised story of three teens who drive from Halifax to B.C. with the goal of committing suicide at journey’s end.

Clarkson whittled down the 300 hours of tape he shot for various distribution formats: a theatrical version, TV half-hours, and numerous five- to 10-minute interactive webisodes that include substantial footage not available elsewhere. (The webisodes go online at www.deadend.com on Sept. 6, the first full day of TIFF.)

In this article, he discusses the choice of shooting the movie in various video formats and the directorial and editing processes he followed to capture a heightened sense of realism on camera.

In 1995, during my final days as a student at Queen’s University, Phillip Daniels, my friend and now business partner, approached me about doing a doc on three kids who made a pact to drive from Quebec City to Vancouver with the goal to commit suicide once they arrived. My interest was immediately piqued, but as we set about doing research on these kids, it quickly became evident that we were never going to get their story right, so we changed course and made it an entirely fictional film.

At first our story was very traditionally constructed, but with the emergence of reality TV, the digital revolution, my becoming an editor and the rise of the Internet, deadend.com turned into the multi-platform digital feature premiering at this year’s TIFF.

The major shift in the direction of the film came when I decided I wanted ‘reality’ to play a major role. With only $25,000, I figured we would either have to make an infinite number of sacrifices or none at all. We accepted that we would not always be in control and that anarchy and chaos are not things to overcome but to be embraced and utilized. So we turned the script into an outline, decided to work primarily off the cuff, and gave birth to a ‘reality feature film.’

Originating on video allowed me to go down this treacherous path. We shot deadend.com with two mini DVs, a Digi 8, a Hi 8 and a variety of surveillance cameras. I wasn’t particularly concerned with the visual style of the film, although I insisted it never feel artificial. And, from my perspective, the easiest way to avoid things feeling artificial is to make them real. Our actors (or ‘participants’ as we came to call them) rarely knew what was going to happen at any given moment. I would plan events without their knowledge and drop them in the middle of them.

Video was key to realizing this coordinated spontaneity since a lot of it can be shot for very little money, which was important because ‘reality’ has a tendency to not unfold as quickly as one might want.

I would often have two or three surveillance cameras running so the participants in a scene wouldn’t know they were on camera. I had coached the three leads in such a manner that even their ‘off-camera’ discussions could be used in the film if caught on tape.

One of the repercussions of shooting this much footage, however, is that you’ve got to manage it. Fortunately, this is where my background as an editor, or more importantly an assistant editor, came into play. Media management was of paramount concern at the beginning of the editing process. Logging 300 hours takes a long time, especially considering that our multi-camera shooting style produced multiple takes and angles, with nary a slate in sight. But once the beast was beaten into order, the real work of molding a story could begin.