Director's Notes: "The Scenic Route" is a prime example of how I work as a filmmaker, in that it was written with no notion of how it could actually be filmed. In this case, the film required a couple driving through the country, seeing decidedly unlocal sights (mountains, a deer & a bear), driving over a cliff, and then seeing the couple in the destroyed car at the bottom of the cliff. The bulk of these challenges were overcome with the use of stock footage. I instantly went on a video-renting spree, picking up nature videos, travelogues and any action movie that looked like, at some point in it, a car might go over a cliff in it. And, since I knew from the beginning that there was no way to really sell any of these moments on my budget, I decided to make the crappiness of the footage part of the joke (the deer, which was taken from a beat-up VHS from the Toronto Public Library, might be my favourite shot in the whole film). At the suggestion of my ever-resourceful father, we went to a auto wrecker's yard to shoot the final scene at the foot of the cliff and were lucky enough to find a black car that was propped up on a forty-five degree angle from the ground by a cement block. In the end, I kind of like the eclectic, surreal nature of the couple's unspecified location, which contains dusty desert mountains, forest wildlife, cottage country roads, and red, London-style phone booths. I hope you enjoy "The Scenic Route". - Daniel Warth