Intel Digital Home Film Competition

Digital/Truth

This film is a slightly disturbing and thought-provoking story, by professional film artist by the name of James Dean, about how we can hide behind our computers. The characters in this film conduct an online relationship, but it turns out that neither is exactly what the other thinks.

Why did you decide to enter?
I liked the concept. The competition seemed to invite ideas which touch on many of my areas of interest. I have been a long time fan of William Gibson and Iain M Banks and loved some of the intellectual wrangling which comes out of combining humanity and technology. In one draft of my script the love interest turned out to be an artificial intelligence. The story eventually moved in a slightly different direction but I still find these existential arguments fascinating...


What's the film about?
The story of digital/truth is fairly simple. The setup is a guy working in a soul-destroying office who recieves a DVD in the post. We follow him as he prepares to watch it and when he does we discover that it is a modern version of a love letter. A beautiful woman declares her love and bares her soul. The twist at the end of the film is that all is not as it appears. I've always seen it as a life affirming tale but I wouldn't be surprised if people find it a bit 'dark'. I hope, if nothing else, it provokes some thought on the subject.


Where did you get the idea?
A slightly drunken argument seeded the idea! I've always been fascinated by the interface between human life and technology. Most people tackle this in a hard core sci-fi vein which certainly has a place. As technology has started to catch up with the ideas authors and film makers have been given the opportunity to couch the argument in much softer, human terms. I opened my film with a statement which tries to convey how seemlessly technology has been adopted by society. People have so much unthinking faith in the fidelity of their technology based interactions. I guess that's what I'm trying to allude to with digital/truth.


How did you manage to juggle work and filming?
I was surprised with how smoothly the film came together. Various pressures at work meant the whole process was condensed into about a week. I managed to get some great actors to commit to the project based on the synopsis. Most of the filming then happened in a few evenings. We shot a couple of Catherine's scenes in her lunch-hour!

After that it was a case of disappearing into my room and working on the cut and grade. Most of the post production was done late at night. In fact, I can't remenber doing anything on it before midnight. I had given a rough cut of the film to a composer, Peter Gosling, who I'm a big fan of. The timings were so tight that we basically weren't going to have time to tweak any of it. I was a little nervous when the moment came to try the film against his soundtrack. We dropped the soundtrack on and watched it through. I was over the moon. Pete had done a fantastic job of picking out the exact tone of the film. Everyone who worked on the film was so good that it made the whole thing really pleasurable.


What equipment are you using to shoot and cut the film?
The film was all shot on DV using a Canon XL1. I've always been a fan of the camera and it has some nice features. It is one of the few semi-pro cameras which has a changeable lens. This alone made it a fantastic choice for the film. A lot of the film used quite a wide lens and I think I might have struggled with some of the other dv cameras in the market. We also built some track out of drain pipes and some old rollerblades. It might sound a little Heath Robinson, but it worked well on the day. I love tracking shots and they are often one of the first things people sacrifice when they are working on a tight budget.

All of the post production was done on my PC. My day job is as a 3D animator which meant I knew my way around the system pretty well. That said, digital/truth, is my first attempt at film making and it was a bit weird working with real people and real cameras instead of virtual ones. I cut the film using a Video Toaster 3 which is a reasonably unheard of product. It’s a little quirky, but can be quite quick. All of the final grading was done using Adobe After Effects. I've been using it for a couple of years now and really can't rave about it enough. It's fantastic...


How do you expect technology to change and affect you?
I think it will change a huge amount. I remember working as an animator for about 3 years before I managed to save up enough money to buy a betacam deck and the hardware needed to link it into the system. The deck is now gathering dust under my desk and most of the work I'm doing just uses semi-pro cameras plugged straight into a laptop. I think this change has been fantastic.

These days, for the most part at least, computers just seem to work. It wasn't so long ago that everything you did on a computer felt like an achievement and you were always battling against it. I hope this is a trend which continues. Moore's law will also have some exciting consequences. I think people's home computers will get more and more powerful and easier and easier to use. I think in 10 years time Hollywood could be running scared when talented film makers turn out amazing films from their bedrooms.


As a film maker / hobbyist, what is important to you in terms of technology - power, ease of use, flexibility, or something else?
Power is everything for me! I like throwing myself into a new piece of software and playing with it before I try and do some serious work with it. I think it might take a lot of the fun out of the process if editing software had a paperclip which popped up and said 'You look like you are editting a gritty inter-personal drama. Would you like some help?'