The result is a film that observes the life of Ray, a headhunter that is, an employment recruiter who evades responsibility for any-thing larger than what he can carry in his back pocket. He recently married a woman who speaks only Spanish and makes her living as a phone-sex operator, and his best friend is a functioning heroin addict. While the charac-ters sound like refugees from a film by the Coen brothers, Saunders makes their bumper-car cul-ture clashes seem almost documentary.

It's a visit by Ray's sister (who gives the film its title) that provides the viewer entree, but it's the flexibility of Saunders' video camera that provides the film with much of its verite ener-gy. Saunders says that while budget was one of the factors that led him to shoot on tape and transfer to film, he was also attracted to video for aesthetic reasons.

Not long after Saunders moved to New York in 1985, he saw a program of video shorts by George Kuchar that redefined his filmmaking perspective. "They were edited in camera," says Saunders. "The cassette determined the piece. It achieved a kind of filmmaking that was entirely different and very spontaneous." Inspired, Saunders began shooting super 8 and Hi8 shorts as if they were sprints each shoot was completed in 30 minutes or less. "I went to midtown and shot people, movement, face and motion studies," says Saunders.

With these rapid-tire shorts came a screen-ing facility to match: Film Crash, a Filmmakers' collective composed of Saunders and fellow filmmakers Karl Nussbaum and founder Matthew Harrison (Rhythm Thief). "It was totally uncurated," says Saunders. "We packed a lot of people into a tiny space and would show any film that walked in the door. Everyone was wondering what was next, including us."

With Film Crash screenings scheduled every six weeks, Saunders discovered that he had more than a home for his shorts: he had a deadline. "We had to have a film in every show. Sometimes I'd finish the movie as the audience came in and throw it across the room to Karl. Everyone saw it for the first time at the same time." However, the only way Saunders could screen his work was by transferring it to film. "I liked being able to shoot video, and we only had a film projector," he says. "I had to find a way to bring to the two together."

He experimented with the most rudimentary of tape-to-film transfers shooting on Hi8, playing back the edited tape on a television, and pointing a film camera at the screen to capture the results. Later, he worked with a lab to develop a more refined transfer process. Saunders discovered that the technique they developed one that he doesn't want to describe in too much detail allowed him to have the flexibility and affordability of videotape with much of the polish that comes from film.

His first film to use this technique was an experimental piece called The Beating Chamber. Saunders was pleased with the results, but the high quality of the transfer seemed to have an inverse effect on the film and video communities. "Film people looked down on it, and video people felt betrayed," says Saunders. Nonetheless, he decided he'd use the process to shoot his first feature. The Lost Words (1994) "It became clear that to raise money to shoot film as a first-time director would take a very long time," he says. The film went on to play many festivals and was picked up by Headliner Releasing for distrib-ution moments before the company went under. However, Saunders self-distributed the film and began working on the story that became The Headhunter's Sister. Given the flexibility video afforded the production, Saunders was able to request a great deal of improvisation over the 12-dav shoot. "I knew the script would change as it was shot," he says. "The actors could indulge ideas, and in some scenes every take is different."

With a surplus of material, it took Saunders a year to edit the film. "It was an editing nightmare, but it was like collecting material for a documentary. I was interested in how the story would emerge out of the situation."

While the film is an impressive achieve-ment technically as well as artistically, Saunders says he's been cautioned to play down "the video issue." "There's a perceived quality," he says. "Some people have the idea that the sanctity of the film form should not be violated." While Saunders certainly disagrees with that notion, he's quick to admit video's limitations. "Video isn't a substitute for film; you have to treat it differently or it's going to be bad," he says. "I know how to make it look good, but it limits the palette. There is a pure formal beauty about film that you cannot create in video. I'd like to make a film that has a slower visual beauty, and I don't think that can work in video. Still, I think that as video technology gets better, the line between film and video will vanish."

For now, Saunders' film-video hybrid is making the festival circuit as he looks for a distributor. And he still measures his words when people ask him, "What did you use.'" a question recently posed by a Kodak representative who also happened to be the host of the dinner Saunders was eating during: the Berlin Film Market.

So, Saunders told the truth. "I said we used Kodak," he says. "That's what it's print-ed on."

Scott Saunders, 631 E. 11th St. #12A. NY, NY 10009; (212) 420-1097; fax: 420-1206. Dana Harris covers international film for The Hollywood Reporter. She is the former managing editor of The Independent.