An Interview With Filmmaker Ricky Townsend
We were recently given the opportunity to sit down and chat to Ricky Townsend, the man behind the excellent short film Truth.exe. Ricky is a young filmmaker from Christchurch, New Zealand. Ricky is a fine arts student, specialising in film, at the Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury. He is also pursuing an arts degree in Philosophy.
Hi Ricky, thanks for chatting to us.
What was your inspiration for the film?
The film is set within a fictional lore that I have been developing for several years and hope to explore more in future endeavours. I wanted to have the chance to see this universe on screen for the first time and worked on finding a story in the lore that was both practical to achieve yet intriguing to explore. The lore to this universe has a bit of influence from the lovecraftian-lore of the SCP fictional universe and the academic papers of Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom. The universe depicted is a hypothetical theistic reality that is compatible with the scientific and materialistic. Being a former theist from a young age and a current agnostic atheist, I found there to be something quite personal about bringing this universe to life on screen. Though of course what you see in TRUTH.exe is only a small snippet of this world.
Wow! More from this universe? Now this sounds very promising! We will look forward to that.
How did the film get off the ground and what was the process of getting the film made?
The film was originally produced for one of my second year film assignments at the University of Canterbury, School of Fine Arts. Despite the project being a student film I wanted to make sure that all the negative connotations associated with student films were not present in the project. Because of the amount of effort and resources my team and I had put into the project, the film ended up becoming more than just a university assignment and that was when I decided to make it a fully developed short film thriller.
You have excelled on this project. You wouldn’t think it was a student film. The quality is fantastic.
How was this short film made on a low budget?
Making it seem believable and large when you don’t have a substantial budget to work with is a mighty challenge. This is something I was thinking about before I had even chosen which story I wanted to tell. Putting it simply, if I don’t have the budget or resources to make a believable film about aliens invading; don’t make a believable film about aliens invading. Choosing the right story was a big part of the process. I knew it had to be a film that would imply a lot and keep its cards close to its chest. We also had to be open to unorthodox filming techniques. For dolly shots we would have me holding the camera while one of the crew pushes me around in a wheel chair. It’s silly to look at when filming but it works; it even gave me the flexibility to get shots in ways or places that we wouldn’t be able to with a conventional dolly track. Just little things like that allowed us to bring this story to life without a large budget.
I certainly think you have picked the right story. Guerrilla filmmaking is what independent movies are all about!
Why did you decide to tell the story this way?
I wanted to see if I could make a science fiction, materialistic world seem like a mysterious supernatural one. To put it simply, how can I put Arthur C. Clarke’s third law “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” to the test? This is why I wanted to hold off revealing too much about this fictional world. The neo-noir genre felt like an appropriate genre to explore this idea in because of its historical association with information, mystery and the pursuit of uncovering that mystery.
Well you have pulled it off Ricky. Well done! And good luck with the short. We think big things lie ahead.
You can watch the trailer for Truth.exe HERE.
