TechNOphilia

About the Film

HD, techno-romance, 6 mins., 2019

Inside, a hangout place, the boyfriend who is addicted to games tries to win back his fed-up girlfriend, but he fails. Things become more and more robotic as he tries harder.

A couple in the middle of a relationship crisis shows how technology starts shaping people to become too dependent on it that relationships and lifestyles are altered, and possibly destroyed. As they get into a heated argument, the other folks around the coffee shop gets boxed up by the gadgets covering their deeper emotions. People's interactions are becoming as machinated as the tools they use.

Trailer

Abstract

This film is about a young couple in the middle of a relationship crisis. The weary girlfriend seeks some attention from her beau during a supposed date. The game addict boyfriend is too preoccupied by his game. The rest of the people around the seemingly sterile coffee shop are engrossed with their own gadgets in a strange, and at some point, subtly creepy way. People of this generation are already being enslaved by technology that interactions are clearly getting altered towards coldness and superficiality. Relationships are becoming more and more mechanical. People are starting to look like robots.

In this fast-paced era filled with much technological innovation, there are so many things to do, there is too much work to finish, and there is so little time. When could be the last moment a person yielded to the cliché of stopping for a bit and smelling the flowers? Technology should be in harmony with the way people live their lives. Relationships are vital to humans as social beings. Computers and gadgets should not rule the person. Rather, they should be utilized to make lives better and more meaningful.

Film

Production Team

Boyfriend		Jong-jin Lee
Girlfriend		Saekyung Lee
iPod girls		Kiley Kyung-min Moon
		Yumi Maenaka
		Katie Shasteen
Mobile phone guy		Stephen Kochenash
Battery empty guy		Tim Lee
Low-battery girl		Amy Bopp
Battery empty girl		Kiyono Kakinuma
PSP guy		Gino de Guia
Laptop guy		Edvan Muslimy
Camera guy		Choi Junghan
Keyboard guy		Katsudo Minei

Director/Writer/Producer		Rianne Hill Soriano
Director of Photography		Mohammed Jano
Production Designer		Rianne Hill Soriano
Assistant Director		Miya Seo
Art Director		Stephen Kochenash
Editors		Rianne Hill Soriano
		Mohammed Jano
Field Sound Recordists		Choi Junghan
		Katsudo Minei
Sound Engineer/Musical Scorer		Philip Arvin Jarilla
Story by		Rianne Hill Soriano
		Mohammed Jano

Production Notes

"Technophilia" is Rianne's fourth film. It is her first film to be shot outside the Philippines. She shot this award-winning short as a personal project during her film training program at the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) in Seoul, South Korea. Through KOFIC’s help, alongside the support of the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) and Korea University, she was able to get enough resources to produce the film.

This project is her first 16mm film outside film school. It was shot with an Arri SR2, which means the production had to shoot without any video assist. However, they tried to be resourceful enough by using a MiniDV camera carefully placed near the SR2 to provide a means to review the acting performances.

The concept for this film started after her first three months in Seoul in 2008. She noticed that most people in public usually listened to music, watched TV, or played games using their mobile phones while in transit. Whether in the subway or bus, people walked with earphones in their ears without much caution on what's happening around them. She saw how people in public always preferred to be "plugged in" instead of conversing with their companions. As an excited foreigner artist from a third-world country, she realized how much she lost after focusing too much on shooting with her camera than enjoying the very experience of her globetrotting endeavors through her very own eyes. One night while inside the subway, she looked to the right and suddenly had an epiphany when she saw "robots" using cellphones and iPods. This readily prompted her to write the script, which eventually got KOFIC's support.

Shooting this project allowed her to go way beyond her comfort zone, as she had to find all production requirements in a foreign land without her trusted colleagues, friends, and family. She knew that she should shoot the film within her means and resources — from coming up with a feasible budget to forming a solid production team to getting access to the best location. She was able to gain the trust of some young, promising filmmakers in Seoul, which made it possible to mount this film as planned. She was able to cast newfound friends, classmates, and friends and friends despite her relatively small network, as her concept allowed her to utilize mostly non-professional acting requirements from people who should simply be operating their gadgets inside a coffee shop. Interestingly, after more than a month of looking for the right location throughout Seoul, she saw the perfect fit at the upper floor of the building where she usually spends her class breaks in Korea University — a students' lounge area that can pass as a neat and sterile coffee shop location.

Knowing that the film requires a very techie physicality, the filmmaker describes her stylized treatment as "human factory" where the mise-en-scené is dominated by straight lines instead of curves or waves. The colors are in the neutrals — mostly whites, silvers, blacks, and grays. All shots feel mechanical by exuding strictly linear and snappy motions. The characters' movements progress like a factory moving as a part of the larger whole. Sound effects of gadgets are arranged into its own digitally inspired "human factory" sound design and musical score.

This picture exudes a tinge of quirkiness reflecting the techno, geeky, droll, and zany aspects that technology brings. The robotic treatment renders a gadget factory feel through character movements working like exaggerated and uniquely outlandish machines in action.