House at the End of the Street’s story is set in suburban Pennsylvania, but the filmmakers took their production to Ottawa, Ontario, for the 28-day shoot. “I never imagined we’d be shooting this film in Ottawa,” says Ryder. “I’ve shot films in Toronto and Vancouver, but I’d never been to Ottawa. I didn’t quite know what to expect. I didn’t even know if there was going to be a crew base there. But Rob Menzies, our line producer, lured us there. There was a film that was just finishing, a crew that was available, and the incentives attracted us.”
They discovered that Ottawa is a versatile and relatively unknown city that lends itself well to moviemaking. “A place like Albuquerque pretty much looks like Albuquerque,” Ryder says. “You have to go to great lengths to make it look like a different place. Whereas Ottawa is endlessly adaptable. It can double for Chicago or Boston or parts of New York. We found that the city has a lot to offer.”
Menzies, who is also one of the owners of Ottawa-based production company Zed Filmworks, helped Ryder and Tonderai scout locations and assemble the crew. “The movie is very hip and it’s an exciting story,” he says. “Ottawa was perfect for it from the standpoint of the types of locations we have here. When Mark and Aaron came to do some scouting, they got a real sense of what the crews were going to be like. Ottawa is an undiscovered gem of a town. It’s between two of Canada’s two big production hubs, Toronto and Montreal, so we can pull from those resources and we’ve got locations that have never been on film before. You’ve got a film community that is welcoming production with open arms. There’s a pride in having a film of this caliber shot locally.”
According to Menzies, the crew outperformed even his high expectations. “It was a really great opportunity to showcase the talent of a phenomenal art department. This group worked so hard and they’re so dedicated to their craft. They managed to produce incredible sets without a big budget. They built entire sets, dressed some locations 100 percent, ripped apart people’s houses, made something drastically different, and then put it all back at the end of the day. It stretched us to the max, but I’m so proud of them.”
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