The Techno-Invader

Work Process

The journey began by gathering ideas by ourselves for a project, then coming together to exchange notes. Nothing seemed to stick so we kept coming up with ideas and scrapped them again until we read through Claudia Rohrmoser’s prompt list she shared in the beginning of the semester. Techno Invader sounded so wild and absurd that the thought of a dude travelling back in time to teach the people in the past about techno music sparked inspiration for exactly that time travelling story. An AI-Techbro obsessed with becoming famous travels back in time to bring future technology to the past and therefore speeding up the development of technology in his name. The people do not like “his” inventions which pushes him over the edge, running around turning old tech into future gadgets like books into tablets. There was only the problem that we could not quite figure out how to implement the techno part into the story, or the topic of our seminar which was “digitalisation and its influence on work”.

After gathering more ideas and developing a storyline we quickly realised during a feedback meeting that the story needed to take a new direction. Initially we were thinking about how the main character would be able to travel in time, what rules there would be for time travelling in the future and what would happen to the timeline. If anybody could time travel, then there would have been laws in place and it would not be something special but if nobody could then the main character could not be a regular person and be able to leave their time. We were thinking that it would be an open secret by the government that time travel was possible but only for government specialists and the main character either had to be a specialist or break into the facility – but then the story would have been too complicated figuring out how the character was able to get past security measures. So we decided that the best possible way to get to a somewhat believable outcome was to make the main character a government employee who was tasked with research on potential time travelling that had yet to be invented.

Our antagonist who wanted to change the past for their own benefit became the protagonist after a few changes – a time travel paradox researcher who gets sucked into the adventure of his short lived life trying to stop AI in the future, after being fired by it, while accidentally bringing techno back to the past making him the origin of a whole new music genre. The idea was to end the story on a time loop based on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’s first episode.

It was a long stretched process fleshing out the details and locations. And it took just as long to have the script just right where it makes sense to end in a loop. Lots of editing and scrapping and deleting and rewriting and rearranging and doing it all over again. When the script was mostly done we created a storyboard and with that the shotlist for the pictures, we would have to create from stockfootage and selfmade photos. We took inspiration from multiple sources: The process of creating new environments was inspired by photography collages by photographer Beate Gütschow. The time loop idea was an inspiration by many films and series and books, while the story itself comes from real life events like the rise of AI, techbros obsession with it and Elon Musk firing staff over an unanswered email.

During the shooting of the scenes we came across a long list of hurdles that are unavoidable regarding the short time frame in which the film had to be developed and finished. Unavailable rooms, unmovable furniture, rapidly changing weather conditions, unexpected disruptions, missing actors and so on and so on. We had to be flexible and spontaneous to problemsolve, and be resilient to work around shortcomings. We did the best we could do with the time and resources we had at our hands.

The most difficult part followed when we started working on collaging images together, the photographed perspectives did not work with the preselected stockfootage and vice versa. We had to look for new images and reedit the same pictures multiple times until they fit our standard. It took days, staring at a screen for hours, zooming into pixels, repeating the same motion to get this exact clean cut that blends the foreground seamlessly enough into the background. To bring some intensity and movement into the pictures based on the action of our storyline, we created small animations by isolating the images into their single layers –background, middleground and foreground – and moving them around freely. Besides those there are also minimal zooms and colour effects.

Between the future and the past there is a visual difference in our film leaning on both short films OhNeinDieRoboter by Maik Schneiker and The Efficiency of Pantone 17-4402 by Spencer Kromberg which turn monochromatic in the end. The future is mostly desaturated, there is a blue-ish tint that shows the coldness in this dystopian life. The past on the other hand is more saturated with warm undertones symbolising the warmth towards invention yet colourful individuality that differs from the monotone, sterile environment of the future. The pictures are also mostly left leaning, underlining the past on a linear timeline while the future is shown mostly leaning to the right.

The film ends on an open end because the future cannot be predicted, only chosen.

Inspiration

- series: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency based on Douglas Adams’ books
- short story read long time ago about a man researching time travel. He travels in time and shoots himself, then travels back and not long after hears a gun click behind him
- film: Tenet directed by Christopher Nolan
- film: La Jetée by Chris Marker
- techbros, rise of ai, Elon Musk firing his staff by ai and a questionnaire email
- time travel, time loops
- Doctor Who
- OhNeinDieRoboter by Maik Schneiker and The Efficiency of Pantone 17-4402 by
Spencer Kromberg
- photographer: Beate Gütschow

Miro board