If you have heard of this short film then you almost certainly have done so due to the "written by artificial intelligence" element, which is not only an interesting idea, but of course is a good headline to get your film some attention (certainly this is what worked for me). It raises the question about whether or not a computer algorithm can write a sci-fi script if you feed it lots of other ones to work from. The obvious answer provided by the resulting script is "no; no it can't". However the much more interesting thing that the film shows about technology in filmmaking is that when it is only a tool in the hands of talented people then it can work.
Sunspring shows us this by taking a script which plays like a nonsense poem, and turns it into a surprisingly dramatic and amusing sci-fi love-triangle with dark secrets in a futuristic world. The team find the meaning in the words wherever they can; where they can't they turn to the camera and the cast to give it some sort of context to help it work. In short it is the delivery of the film, not the origins of it, that makes it work. The presence of Middlemarch got the headlines due to his role in Silicon Valley, but the other two actors are just as good – in particular Gray gives the final dialogue scene a lot more heart than it has on paper. There is humor in here, tension, pain, heart – and almost none of this comes from the computer generated script.
That is maybe a little harsh, because one should give some credit to Benjamin (the algorithm essentially) for its phrasing. At times the lines are garbage (lots of 'I don't know' in there) but here and there you get some wonderful lines which are either joyful in their randomness (I have to go to the skull), or have an unexpected poetry to them (he looks at me, and he throws me out of his eyes).
None of this yet mentions that this film was also one of the 48-hour challenges; a nice idea which usually produces films which are not so much good films as they are just achievements in working against a clock. For sure Sunspring is a very well-produced film even without this context; and it is encouraging to see that a film playing with technology succeeds in confirming that it is the creative and talented people that make the film work, not the technology they used to make it.
Sunspring shows us this by taking a script which plays like a nonsense poem, and turns it into a surprisingly dramatic and amusing sci-fi love-triangle with dark secrets in a futuristic world. The team find the meaning in the words wherever they can; where they can't they turn to the camera and the cast to give it some sort of context to help it work. In short it is the delivery of the film, not the origins of it, that makes it work. The presence of Middlemarch got the headlines due to his role in Silicon Valley, but the other two actors are just as good – in particular Gray gives the final dialogue scene a lot more heart than it has on paper. There is humor in here, tension, pain, heart – and almost none of this comes from the computer generated script.
That is maybe a little harsh, because one should give some credit to Benjamin (the algorithm essentially) for its phrasing. At times the lines are garbage (lots of 'I don't know' in there) but here and there you get some wonderful lines which are either joyful in their randomness (I have to go to the skull), or have an unexpected poetry to them (he looks at me, and he throws me out of his eyes).
None of this yet mentions that this film was also one of the 48-hour challenges; a nice idea which usually produces films which are not so much good films as they are just achievements in working against a clock. For sure Sunspring is a very well-produced film even without this context; and it is encouraging to see that a film playing with technology succeeds in confirming that it is the creative and talented people that make the film work, not the technology they used to make it.