Travesty Productions is a busy house these days with a diversity of provocative projects underway.

The Toronto-based prodco is developing a digital feature film, deadend, that it will broadcast on its website (deadend.com) as it is being shot.

Inspired by the real-life story of three teenagers driving across Canada to the West Coast to commit suicide, the film was written and will be directed by Travesty cofounder Wyeth Clarkson; partner Phil Daniels is producing.

‘You can watch it as the film’s being made. It’ll be a pure stream,’ says Daniels. And because deadend follows the fictionalized journey of the three main characters as they drive across the country, it will be shot chronologically (which will enable the online audience to follow along) in a verite-like style.

In the same vein as The Blair Witch Project, scenarios will be staged without the actors’ knowledge and, in a self-described Cassavetes style, much of the narrative will be improvised when the film shoots next summer.

‘Because of the verite style and the extensive travel involved in the film, shooting in digital allows us portability, keeping a very small crew, and it’s good for easing its transmission onto the Internet,’ says Daniels.

Excluding the Internet component and transferring from video to 35mm, deadend is budgeted at $150,000.

Also in development is a series called BnE, spawned from a half-hour, digital drama set to air on cbc early next year. Described by Daniels as ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off meets the Toronto local rap scene,’ the show, being written by Daniels, Clarkson and Vanz Chapman (story editor/head writer for cbc’s soon-to-air series Drop the Beat), follows the adventures of Milk (Emil O’Neil), a ‘break n’ enter’ artist.

The 13-part, half-hour series is budgeted at $2.6 million.

On the documentary side, Travesty is in development with two one-offs for History Television, both budgeted at $175,000.

The first is called The Five Cent War. It is the story of the 1947 revolt by Canadian children against an increase in chocolate bar prices – from five to eight cents. For one hot summer, children across the country took on the corporate candy giants, only to be defeated by newspaper articles claiming communist involvement in the protest.

The doc will be shot next summer across the country.

Daniels, who is coproducing with Clarkson, is writing and directing. Calgary-based writer Yanick LeClerk is attached as associate producer.

The second doc for History is called I Chose to Fight. Directed and written by Daniels and coproduced with Clarkson, it is about the Canadians who volunteered to join the u.s. forces in the Vietnam War. It will be shot in the early spring and will air on Remembrance Day in 2000.

* Big Soul produces The Seventh Generation

big Soul Productions, helmed by Riverdale star Jennifer Podemski and partner Laura Milliken, a former associate producer of the Aboriginal Achievement Awards, has created the first-ever aboriginal youth series for broadcast in Canada, The Seventh Generation.

Licensed to the newly established Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, the 13-part, infomag-style series, budgeted at $380,000, will showcase the achievements of young (under 30) native Canadians (which includes Inuit, Indian and Metis).

Each half-hour episode will feature three profiles of future leaders in the arts, entertainment, music, business, politics, sports, medicine, science and technology.

‘Because aptn is so new, their in-house programming is pretty much non-existent at the moment, so there’s nothing that puts young, native, exciting youth in the media,’ says Podemski, who created and hosts the series, which she and Milliken are cowriting, codirecting and coproducing.

Some of the talent to be profiled includes Danika Edmunds, Canada’s first female Inuit physician; Newsworld anchor Carla Robinson; and country music star Lorrie Church. There will be 39 profiles in total.

In a last note, Podemski points out that the series will play a key role in providing role models for a community with alarmingly high unemployment, substance abuse, dropout and suicide rates. ‘Inuit youth have the highest suicide rate in Canada,’ says Podemski. ‘The only way the suicide is going to end is if the kids start to feel some confidence.’

Human Resources Development Canada has committed $80,000 to the series, and Podemski and Milliken, who are putting together a package to market the series internationally, are looking to have that figure matched by private investors.

The series will be shot on digital video.

* Mainline takes on two oddball films

mainline Pictures is in development with the feature film Over the Falls, a romantic comedy about taxidermy, yo-yoing and finding love.

Budgeted at roughly $2 million, the film is produced by Allan Magee and Colin Brunton, and written and directed by Michael McGowan (My Dog Vincent).

‘It will be to yo-yoing what Strictly Ballroom was to dancing, we hope,’ says Magee, who is currently negotiating a coprod deal with an out-of-province producer.

Oasis Pictures holds Canadian and international theatrical distribution rights.

On the darker side of things, the prodco is also in development with the feature film Bottom Feeders, written by Dean Burns and to be directed by Vincenzo Natali.

Producers Magee and Brunton have been working and reworking this project, budgeted at just under $2 million, for more than a year.

‘People either love it and want to throw money at it or they hate it and want to stop it,’ says Magee.

The film is about a guy with Munchausen Syndrome – a condition that causes sufferers to willfully make themselves sick – who meets a nurse with Munchausen by proxy – wherein sufferers willfully make other people sick. ‘It’s a sick and twisted little thing,’ adds Magee.

The Harold Greenberg Fund has kicked in $10,000 and Temple Street Productions’ Rick Warden is attached to coproduce (a deal struck before he started at Temple Street).

The producers are aiming to begin production in Toronto next fall.

* Citytv, Fox Network on the right Trax

trax, a non-broadcast series pilot produced by Muse Entertainment Enterprises for Citytv in Canada and Fox Network in the u.s., was awaiting word on a six half-hour order as Playback went to press.

Directed by Renny Harlin (Die Hard ii, Nightmare on Elm Street iv) last summer in Toronto, the Trax pilot is a futuristic hybrid of Cops and Night Stalker, based originally on a video game called Terror Trax.

Shot on Betacams and mini dvds, ‘it is intended to be like a verite cop show, where the camera follows cops as they try to catch the undead,’ explains line producer Betty Orr.

Set in an underworld of evil where blood dealers exist in lieu of drug dealers, the show incorporates its own language (‘rotter’ – non-bleeder; ‘fur balls’ – werewolves; ‘fang job’ – vampires) and a host of morphing characters.

Special effects were handled by gvfx.

The pilot was exec produced by Pebblehut Productions’ Susan Murdoch and written by Daniel Cerone. If it turns into a series, Harlin, who was originally involved in its development, will attach as an exec producer, says Murdoch.

Pearson Television International will handle international sales.

* Indie Fest gets Juiced

juiced, written and directed by Ottawa filmmaker Katie Tallo, is the only Canadian feature film accepted into next year’s San Francisco Independent Film Festival (Indie Fest 2000), which runs from Jan. 6-14.

Produced by Barbara Jordan of Ottawa-based Bark Productions in association with The New ro (chro) and Chum Television, Juiced marks Tallo’s feature film directorial debut and boasts an all-Ottawa-based cast and crew.

The film was selected along with 18 others from a pool of more than 100 features, the majority of which were American. It is also the only one in the lot directed by a woman.

Described by festival director Jeff Ross as ‘Clerks on estrogen,’ Juiced centres on daily life in the restaurant business and is set to air on The New ro in January 2000.