An Interview With Travis Laidlaw, Director of “Dead House”

In the world of independent film, most indie storytellers are found wearing multiple hats on a single project; the need to keep overhead low while working with a small budget often calls for a filmmaker to be credited as a majority of their crew. For some, this is troubling and they’d prefer to pass the torch to focus their efforts elsewhere, and for others, like Toronto-based director Travis Laidlaw, being the moving part through the pipeline of a short film production is a rewarding experience.

Laidlaw has worked on projects as a writer, producer, editor, motion designer, visual effects artist, and sound designer. Currently on ALTER, a YouTube channel with over one million of horror-loving subscribers, his 2019 released short film “Dead House” is free to stream, and at the time of this publication, has well over 100,000 views. The synopsis reads, “Two men renovating a mysterious old house try to leave before the building enters lock down and seals them inside. Unfortunately, the house has different plans for them.”

More recently in October of 2020, Laidlaw released his second short, horror film titled “The Silent Lay Steady”, which is slated to run its course through the genre festival circuits come 2021. Starring Katrina Elmsley, Spencer Hanson, and Justin Hay, the short was filmed at the historic site known as Black Creek Pioneer Village, a tourist hotspot with over some 60 buildings. The location for “The Silent Lay Steady” was the residence of a former doctor, chosen by Laidlaw for the circular interior layout of the building. As he prefers writing his short films after securing a site to shoot at, the home at the Black Creek Pioneer Village assisted in setting the appropriate tone to match the short’s synopsis, which reads, “A woman finds herself alone with the body after a funeral in her 1860's farmhouse.”. In an interview with Laidlaw, he adds that spooky things begin happening as the woman finds herself headed towards a startling realization. Through his interest in the work from director M. Night Shyamalan and his own fears of losing a child, Laidlaw admits that much of his writing revolves around the topic of death, involves the loss of youth and the horrors that would entail, and the idea of a person being dead yet unaware of it.

“Location-based writing is how I’ve done my past two films. I begin with an idea, consider locations that may be best fit, get them locked, then write,” he explains of his process, noting that for “The Silent Lay Steady”, the original idea was having a person be stuck with a dead body during a stormy night, playing into the idea of postmortem photography. “Back then, photographs were expensive, so it was something grieving relatives would have done to capture the deceased’s life, in a sense,” the director explained. “Then, I saw that exact short film at a festival, and it was great, but I abandoned my idea and started with a new one about being trapped with a body, and let the tangents go from there.” For Laidlaw, subverting the twist to step away from cliché is the goal.

The 1959 horror novel written by author Shirley Jackson, “The Haunting of Hill House”, is of Laidlaw’s favorite literatures and select lines from the beginning of her book were the inspiration behind the title of his recent short film. In an effort to both give a nod to the late 50’s novel from Jackson and relate the excerpt more to his own project, Laidlaw reimagined the wordage he found to be meaningful, giving reference to the dead laying silent and steady (or not). The verbatim that inspired his thought-provoking title reads,

“... Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

While “The Silent Lay Steady” isn’t available to watch for the public yet, following the 2021 film festivals Laidlaw plans to seek finding it a life on ALTER where his first short, horror film “Dead House” currently sits, if no other connections come through. “I kept it simple and I’m glad for that. It gave me the chance to focus on atmosphere and tone,” said Laidlaw. Describing his second film as “low-key”, he shares that while the short doesn’t have a lot of scares, it keeps up with the balance of horror. Written in a matter of three weeks, “The Silent Lay Steady” was filmed in November of 2018, and came with important lessons to consider when filming at a historic site. Laidlaw addressed that with such old buildings at such a location, there are fire potential concerns, so you must alert and ask the property staff about the use of fog machines.

Nonetheless, the cast and crew had the Black Creek Pioneer Village to utilize and wander through during the two-day night shoots for “The Silent Lay Steady”, an aspect that Laidlaw enjoyed. “Having the whole place to ourselves, it was creepy, also around the time of Halloween, and being a pioneer town, there wasn’t much power other than a few street lights,” he stated. Additionally, the filmmaker found fulfillment on set, adding that while it is stressful as it requires thinking on the spot, Laidlaw fancies that challenge.

Overall, the indie artist finds that the skies are blue while writing his projects, pre-production is his least favorite phase that brings about the most stress, and post-production he finds the most fun and rewarding. Releasing projects takes more time, but for that reason, he is given more control of the pacing and mood, as well as being able to contemplate edits for longer periods to ensure they reflect his vision, which is something that Laidlaw denotes to being his top rewarding facet.

One struggle during post-production was attempting to recreate a scene where a coffin begins overflowing with water, as the Black Creek Pioneer Village didn’t allow for the use of water inside their buildings. Being a visual effects artist, Laidlaw used his knowledge to do a split scene, pouring a bottle of water above the lid to film the outpouring of liquid, while also filming the lid dry to it would appear as though the water truly was coming from the inside. This post-production decision saved Laidlaw the extra time and resources developing a functional and realistic pump system to create the same effect, and he even had the ease of recreating this sequence in his garage.

“Independent directors believe that getting it all in one shot gives them that credibility. I tried that the first day, but it took half of the time, wasn’t working and never came out clean,” the filmmaker admits. “We shot the film traditionally, and I wasn’t choosing ‘one shot’ for the right reasons.” Consequently, Laidlaw found that assembling the schedule as completing every scene in one go only lead to setbacks, time wasted, crew having to play catch-up, and unnecessary stress. “You assume it will go well, but the clock is ticking if you can’t make it work,” he added. Time needs to be allocated to rehearsals as well, with Laidlaw insisting that this is not just for cast, but for camera operators and other crew.

As for other work, Laidlaw has coordinated his talents in directing, producing, and leading post-production for a number of music videos for some of Canada’s top rated artists, including Sam Roberts Band, The Darcys, Lights, and Dragonette. Produced and directed by Justin Chambers, Laidlaw, and Ben Robinson, “Darkland”, a web series science fiction, horror anthology, is currently being built off of and scripted into a feature-length film by Laidlaw, though, the feature is currently unnamed.

The seasoned filmmaker advises young directors to continue making new projects and keep in mind that there’s always room for improvement. “Some believe they’ll be on the fast track with one short that will blow up. Some get lucky, but it’s not reality, and many have to accept that,” Laidlaw shares for aspiring film creators. In his experience, he has witnessed newcomers enter the field by locking themselves into a single project, remaining too protective of it, but he encourages all to make more to hone their craft.

“Trust your instincts. Protect your vision. Be truthful to what got you into the project.

Things get muddy during post, and you can start cutting out stuff that you brought to the project.

Don’t take the ‘you’ out of the story you have to share. While it’s still a collaboration, you have lived with the idea the longest.”

To find Travis and his work, find him on his official website here and check him out on IMDb!

Follow Travis on Instagram and Twitter.

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Thanks for reading! If you watch “Dead House” or any other work from Travis Laidlaw, let me know on Twitter @horrorwriterang!