Andrew S Allen
What is the basic concept or premise behind Terminus and how did you arrive at it?
I grew up watching a lot of 1970’s Canadian media, shows from the CBC and NFB. As a result of these years, I’ve developed an interest in brutalist design and architecture. That influence prevails throughout the film. I’m also quite fascinated by how the mind adapts and evolves through stress. Both my need for stress, and my need to get rid of stress have played a large role in the shaping of my character. The characters in Terminus are metaphors for anxiety… they are our own personal demons that we pretend are not there.
Spyfilms (also behind the Short of the Week 2007 favorite, Alive in Joburg) has developed a great reputation for their seamless integration of lo-fi and hi-fi visualization techniques (DV + CG). Tell me a little about your relationship with SpyFilms and the process you went through in crafting the vision you had for this film.
My day job is as a commercial director, and I’ve been working with Spy for a little over three years now. The crew was never more than 7 people. Two reasons for this: 1- we didn’t have a large budget, and 2- we didn’t have a lot of time at our locations, so we had to shoot lean. I actually think the rushed, imperfect filming style lends a lot to the look of Terminus. The film took around 10 months to complete, but it could have been done in half that time had I not been doing other gigs. A lot of time was spent trying match the look of 1970’s super 8 film. The film itself was shot on DV, but we spent a lot of time in Shake trying to make it not look digital.
I noticed that you’ve posted the film online at a number of sites including YouTube. What do you hope to achieve with this film? And what has online distribution done to help you get there?
My goal for the film was to get it into the Toronto Film Festival. Then with that “validation”, use it to launch a successful online run. The exposure that the internet can give filmmakers is powerful, way farther reaching than the festival circuit. I learned this very early watching my friend Neill Blomkamp’s online run of Tetra Vaal, and then Alive in Joburg. To be honest, I didn’t expect Terminus to do as well as it has… it’s had somewhere between 4 and 5 hundred thousand viewings on the official site alone. I did not expect that at all.
What’s your favorite moment in the film?
Trent Opaloch, our DP, is the guy with the luggage conveyor following him. I like it when the actual final product ends up the same as what you had in mind when conceptualizing it. That scene is very close to my original idea.