Natural disasters are as certain in life as death and taxes.

So Canadian docmaker Nadine Pequeneza had three small crews packed and ready to go on Jan. 12 when the International Red Cross relief operation was called to the earth-shattering quake zone in Haiti.

‘You still can’t help but walk into a story everywhere you go,’ the director/producer said via her satellite phone from Port-au-Prince on Day 14.

Pequeneza (Aristide’s Haiti) says it is ‘the toughest shoot we’ve ever done, emotionally, physically and technically.’

The three crews are camping on the Canadian Embassy roof because it’s safer to sleep outside while aftershock tremors continue; they’re eating MREs (army rations dubbed meals-ready-eat) and using generators they brought with them to power the HD equipment.

Inside Disaster is the brainchild of Pequeneza, who is also directing and coproducing the pioneering transmedia project for web, TV and film. And while she speaks about the genuine horror of mini food riots and medical shortages at this stage (see photos opposite), she still hopes to be filming an upside to this disaster by summer.

‘How can this improve their lives?’ she asks hopefully of all the international relief money pouring in, noting that’s the big question for part three of the 3 x 60 doc series for TVO (in English-speaking Canada) and Canal D (in French-speaking Canada), scheduled to air in early 2011. Part one of the series is about the immediate aftermath; part two is about the response; and part three will look at the recovery.

TVO came in at the development stage, shortly after Pequeneza secured an agreement from the Red Cross to film its relief teams in action during a major disaster and pitched the concept to PTV Productions in fall 2008.

‘There’s a unique opportunity at this moment in time for producers to relate directly to the public,’ explains Andrea Nemtin, PTV co-founder and Inside Disaster exec producer/coproducer, from her Toronto office.

‘There are starting to be quite viable financial structures for independents to support the broadcast with truly interactive companion sites,’ says Nemtin (Passage). ‘And I think that TV viewers want to be participants in the shows they watch – they’re not as passive anymore,’ she says, noting that humanitarian-relief coverage provides both ‘engagement and action with an issue,’ making it ideal for this pioneering transmedia model.

A $1.3 million production budget was secured by September 2009 and ‘Oct. 1 was our go date,’ says Nemtin, but a quiet hurricane season in the fall meant the International Red Cross didn’t get a call until this year.

In the interim, PTV hired an Internet director, Katie McKenna, who developed the interactive website (insidedisaster.com) with a separate budget of $100,000 (with development coin from the Bell New Media Fund and TVO). ‘The site will expand over the coming year,’ explains McKenna, ‘and how much we expand depends on how much more funding we get for it,’ a sum to be determined in coming months.

Nemtin says InsideDisaster.com is reaching ‘1,000 people a day, and our stuff is everywhere… on YouTube, on Flickr, and we’ve been on every media outlet as well,’ including footage on Global and CBC, with an Inside Disaster logo embedded in every image to build the brand and its potential broadcast audience.

The crews return to Canada on Feb. 8, with the key crew returning to Haiti in six months to film ‘the recovery stage.’

Meanwhile, Nemtin says, ‘we built an interactive website that’s relevant to anyone interested in international relief work, so that it will continue to have a life of its own.’

The Inside Disaster team in Haiti includes: Nadine Pequeneza, director/writer/producer; Simon Paine and Paul Adlaf, location sound recordists; Stefan Randstrom and Tony Wannamaker, cinematographers; and Nicolas (‘Nico’) Jolliet, web field producer