Miriam El Abbassi | Arts Editor
Featured Image: Martins and her writing partner, Dave Aliry, embarked on the difficult task of creating a web series. | Sara Martins
Sara Martins is a Torontonian writer, director, and York film production alumna who recently made her directorial debut with the sci-fi web series, The Vault (available to stream on YouTube).
According to Martins, the seed of her career was planted in high school, during her ninth grade English class. “We had to create a video representation of a chapter in the book we were reading. I can’t recall the scenes anymore, but I remember how much I enjoyed the experience of working with video,” she says.
Martins’ experience was so positive that she decided to join the Video Yearbook Club at her school, and for the next four years, she helped create and edit yearbook videos.
Fast forward many years later, Martins and her writing partner Dave Aliry embarked on the difficult task of producing a web series, shot exclusively in Ontario. The Vault is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi web series that follows a ragtag group of survivors who are forced to live in an underground military bunker, buried five miles beneath the Earth, known as ‘Vault 175’ or ‘the Vault’.
It is assumed that no one can survive the desolate environment of the Earth’s surface, a world-wide wasteland that was brought about by a nuclear winter. But one day, a routine surveying mission searching for supplies comes across an unconscious pilot. Unwilling to leave a survivor behind, they take him back to the safety of the Vault to try and figure out the mystery behind who they just discovered.
When asked about the inspiration behind The Vault, Martins replies: “Dave, and I were kicking around ideas back in 2011 about writing something to do with the end of the world and an alien invasion, since, at that time, we felt that sci-fi and alien invasion films were few and far between.”
Martins then goes on to describe that she and Aliry continued to build the story, as well as develop the core cast of characters. The Vault evidently fell on the back burner, until it was pushed into production last year.
Of course, it isn’t always smooth sailing on a film set, as Martins describes: “I’d say that we had two major challenges to overcome. The first one being the weather and the second being the genre itself.”
Due to the nature of the plot, most of the exterior shots needed to be taken during the winter, but as many know all too well, a Canadian winter can be incredibly unpredictable. Martins recalls that the first day of shooting was in the middle of a snow storm. On top of that, equipment malfunctions forced the team to be on an even tighter schedule, as they fought to complete everything before the sun went down.
Being in film production at York has evidently shaped the way Martins creates. “It gave me the courage and confidence to be able to use my own voice. It’s hard to be heard among the cacophony of voices out there, but I learned that the only way to stand out is to be true to yourself and to work on projects that you are passionate about,” she says.
The advice Martins has for future filmmakers is to make sure that you’re always moving towards your passion and your own bigger picture—to ensure you never lose that end goal.
She also shares that never giving up, no matter how difficult things may seem, will only prove to be incredibly rewarding in the end, “There were so many times where I thought the world and all the elements were against me, I mean shivering in the cold and miserable weather for hours only to realize the camera wasn’t working; that was difficult. It takes a lot of reaching, deep down inside yourself, to find the strength to continue. But if you do push on, if you refuse to be defeated, you’ll never regret it.”
