Sight by Daniel Lazo and Eran May-raz

[Khashishi]

Anyone see this short video? It's about a world where augmented reality is everywhere, and everything is gamified, and ...


Great visuals and intriguing story

 

[UsableThought]

A lot of work put in for so short a film; but it lost me pretty quickly in terms of interest.

A problem with shorts that have to explicate so much is that the explication crowds out anything resembling character development. In terms of character about the only thing we get out of this is that the woman seems naive, the man seems a dull-witted creep. Neither of which is enough to help us care about either of them. And the "cool" factor or surprise factor seems minimal.

More about the software engineer: One reason he seems dull is that they show him only as a consumer of the technology. Yes, he manipulates the woman, but you would expect a coder to be more clever, more fascinated by the code. Of course it's hard to show coders being creative since the physical action typically consists of "typing at keyboard." I remember that dreadful movie "Swordfish" in which the hero was supposed to be a genius coder and the only thing they ever showed him doing was typing really really fast.

Back to the short - if it were longer, e.g. 30 min., they might have time to round out the characters to make them more human & hook us into caring at least a little about them; and also to present the technology in a way that makes it less flat & gimmicky. The idea isn't a new one so it needs really good storytelling to make it work.

 

[Khashishi]

Of course, but if it were longer, it wouldn't be a short.