ALERT

Creating the film “alert”…

It is purely by chance that I got the opportunity to make a Super 8MM film. One day, as I walked through Oxbow Park in the Georgetown neighborhood, I saw a sign for an 8MM film festival. I decided to sign up based on that sign and attend a crash course in 8MM film making. The Georgetown Super Eight Film festival would supply the camera and all I had to do was come up with a story and find some friends to star in the film. The key rules were 1) you had to shoot the film in Duwamish Valley, 2) Everything had to fit on one roll of Super 8 film and 3) No scene editing was allowed.

With this in mind, I created a story that would involve a few locations across Georgetown that could be shot in one afternoon. At the time, I was enthralled with the Robyn Album “Honey.” In our song “Human Being” she talks about a world where Artificial Intelligence takes over the world and humans are the minority. In this world, humans need to learn to interact with AI that has been designed to mimic human sensibilities. I felt this was great fodder to look at how technology impacts how people relate within each other.

I shot the film using a Canon 310 XL, a popular 8MM camera from the 1970s. I decided not to go with recorded audio to avoid painstaking audio syncing later. Instead, I surfed free audio libraries and created a soundtrack that represented the internal thoughts of the characters. I figured computers replacing the the dialogue would be on brand with the movie’s theme.

The result was the short film, ALERT, which debuted at the Georgetown Super 8MM film festival in 2019. I describe the film as follows:

"The latest chapter of the digital "revolution" has changed the way that we relate to each other and public spaces. "Alert" is a call to action to make new connections rooted in the physical world in an effort to maintain connection with our greatest asset; our humanity.”

Enjoy!