FORT Director Amr Singh Explores the Importance of Choices in Sci-Fi Short for Opera
FORT director Amr Singh has premiered a new short film for Opera entitled 'Escape'. The story is based around a very simple principle: we have choices, and our choices matter. In a future controlled by technology, one person searches for a way out.
The story sets our protagonist in a world where she does not feel at home. Seeing the monotony around her, the way people seem to simply go through the motions of living, causes her to question whether we are active participants in life. She yearns for an escape from this feeling, from this lack of control.
Over the last century, one of the most influential modes of storytelling advocating for change has been science fiction. The genre allows storytellers to take real world problems and place them in a context in which they can be reexamined free of the preconceptions that so often limit our perspectives. Amr's film pays homage to a vast canon of influential science fiction. Authors such as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, series like Star Trek and Black Mirror, and films ranging from Metropolis to Blade Runner who have taken on difficult social and political issues and successfully framed them in such a way that forced us to confront them.
Speaking of the project, Amr notes: “As a product, a browser is a challenging starting point to create a piece of work you hope is both rewarding for your core audience, as well as layered and relevant to the product itself. The more we applied ourselves, however, the more we realised that browsers are how we view the world and how we engage with it; a conduit for how we engage with technology.
“When looking at things like privacy, ads and pop-ups, and self-expression in social media, we started to identify scenes that our protagonist could pass through. This was how the script began to emerge, and ultimately, my starting point for imagining the world. In designing a piece of work for our audience, the genre of sci-fi seemed like an exciting fit, as well as a relevant one for the statement around technology and the future. So began an intense collaboration with the creative team from Opera led by Chet Callahan, who began layering the scenes with intentional tropes and references to the sci-fi genre.
“Ultimately, when you watch the piece from start to finish, it rewards the re-watchers with near on a hundred hidden easter eggs that reference various sci-fi cannon. In so much as the project was challenging, it was also massively rewarding.”
A key element implicit in science fiction is hope. Many works feature dark or sinister settings; a future gone wrong. Yet regardless of tone, the fact that this depiction is of a fictional future leaves us with the hope that this is something we can prevent. Dystopian fiction takes our fears of the present and shows how they might become amplified in the future. It reminds us we can choose a different course.
Empowering personal choice is at the core of Opera and thus the protagonist sees the way technology is integrated into the lives of the people around her, and it doesn’t feel right. As a society, we are starting to set higher standards in all aspects of our lives. Things that we used to let slide by unnoticed are being brought to attention, and individuals and organizations are being held accountable. FORT's film proves it is thus important to reclaim control for ourselves, especially in today’s world.
