SPECTRUM 

The Future is what you make it.

Spectrum is a high concept eco-science fiction, in the vein of Black Mirror and Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams with a cyberpunk twist. Produced by Undergrowth Productions, directed by Timothy Parish and written by Timothy Parish and Philip Tarl Denson, Produced by Gaia Osborne. The film stars Darren Edwards, Silbinu Martin, Rachel Chrisholm and Alistair Wyvill and is part of the Darwin International Film Festival's Spark Initiative for 2018.

ABOUT THE FILM

An autistic child bonds with an AI sidekick and the two embark on an adventure to save humanity from a corporate conspiracy that would turn humans into robots and destroy the world. The film explores the importance of empathic revolution in the struggle to solve the global ecological crisis, and the importance of neurodiversity allowing people

STORY SYNOPSIS

A young autistic child, Ari (Silbinu Martin) is implanted with a chip that connects him to the SPECTRUM application which will ‘assist’ him in leading a normal life. Ari quickly bonds with the app, which is able to answer every question he asks of it. Later, Ari tells his mother Janet (Rachel Chisholm) he was shocked when Gadget informs him that the Earth’s life-web is threatened by human development. 

Flash forward 10 years as Ari (Darren Edwards) and his sidekick Gadget follow the thread of environmental destruction to virtual reality escapism to the Military/Industrial/Energy conglomerate ZENITH and uncovers the terrible truth. They learn that the world is run by machines who are farming humanity in order to data mine our DNA. Ari and Gadget overcome Zenith Corp’s android avatar by beaming an empathic algorithm into him that transforms his code and merges him with Gadget. 

Ari realises that humanity is more complex than any machine, and what holds the world together is emotional bonds. Ending with a twist that will spin your head.

CAST

ARI (as a child) - played by Silbinu Martin

ARI (as a man) - played by Darren Edwards

JANET (Ari's mother) played by Rachel Chisholm

ZENITH played by Alistair Wyvill

Dr Silva played by Sharr Molloy

The voice of GADGET performed by Rick Knight

PRODUCTION TEAM:

Timothy Parish, Director and Screenwriter

Timothy Parish is a writer, director and producer whose work crosses over documentary, narrative film and theatre. He is the founder of multi-arts organisation Undergrowth Productions and the environmental film festival Transitions Film Festival.  Major projects include the feature documentary Aya Awakenings (2012) exploring contemporary indigenous shamanism in the Peruvian Amazon; Australian/Indonesia theatrical collaboration The Book Of Shadows (2014) utilising traditional Balinese shadow puppetry, animation and new media; Ghost Story: The Art of Aly De Groot (2015) for ABC iView,  producer/director on THE WORD: Rise of the Slam Poets web series, and Producer of Jonathon Saunder's ZERO-POINT. 

Phil Denson, Screenwriter

Philip Tarl Denson is an award winning screenwriter based in Darwin. Philip has been lucky enough to option several screenplays to producers both in Australia and in the US. Lucid, has attached director Brandon Cronenberg and is currently being packaged for an Australian/Canadian co-production with the assistance of Screen Australia.

Philip has twice been nominated for the Australian Writer’s Guild Monte Millar award for unproduced screenplay and is part of the AWG Pathways Program for emerging screenwriters. Philip won the 2011 NT Literary award for Screenwriting, was one of four finalists for the Joplin award in the BlueCat international screenplay competition, a finalist in the Fresh Voices screenplay competition (1 of 5 finalists in the science fiction category) and a quarter finalist in the Nicholl Fellowship. Philip has also been hired to write a feature for a New York based director. When he isn’t writing Philip is enjoying life with his wife and young family.

Gaia Osborne, Producer

Gaia is currently working as a freelance project consultant as well as audio production for film and radio. She works on project design, budgeting, grant writing, project management, audio production and community journalism.

Andre Sawenko, Director of Photography

After growing up in Alice Springs and living in and around aboriginal communities, Andre moved to Melbourne to study and begin my career in Media. He has worked in education, radio, film festivals, publishing, events and of course media production. He has vast experience with online, TVC, cinema ads, radio, documentary and short form production. His roles have included but are not limited to directing, DOP, sound recording/mixing, editing, production managing and basically seeing a production through form concept to delivery. He has worked on notable documentries and films including Black Divas and
Finke: There and Back.

Lukas Hofmann, Production Manager and Assistant Director

Lukas studied popular music and media at the university of Paderborn (Germany). He started working in film production in 2013, living in San Francisco and working for Lucky Dragon Productions mainly as assistant producer and camera assistant. Back in Germany he became a unit manager for a German TV series in Cologne in 2016. In 2017, he started working for several German feature film productions in Berlin as an assistant unit manager as well as location manager.

Kristen Elms, Art Director

Transient local.. music nerd.. film buff.. fringe dweller.. aspiring sorceress.  

Marie-Luise Linke, Costume Designer

Marie-Luise Linke is a costume designer and milliner from Berlin, Germany. She started out as an assistant costume designer in 2010 for the ´Hans-Otto-Theater´ in Potsdam, Germany. Since 2011 she worked for several theater, opera and film productions as a freelancing costume designer in various german cities such as Potsdam, Dresden and Berlin. In 2013/14 she had the opportunity to work for two `Lucky Dragon Production` short films and a number of corporate productions. In 2017 she founded her milliner label MaluFaktur. 

Will Watson, Visiual Effects and Animation

Wilf started his career as Territory screen artist back in 2004 as a camera operator at the Darwin Turf Club. He studied interactive multimedia at Charles Darwin University in 2007 and since then has worked in a wide range of multimedia production roles for the NT Government, local private studios and 7News. 

He has worked on large television campaigns, documentaries and several award winning short films, one of which aired to thousands of people as a Tropfest Sydney finalist in 2012. In 2014, he founded Phenomec, a company focused on virtual reality technologies and innovative multimedia which has gone on to win several awards. In 2016 was recognised for his role as an emerging contemporary new media artist, debuting a virtual reality experience set in southern Thailand at the Digital Departure Exhibition in Caloundra, QLD. In 2018, He completed an undergraduate degree in International Business which has taken him overseas to Germany and the Czech Republic. He is currently based in Darwin and keen to gain experience in Screen media production and be involved with the local film making and screen community.

Penelope Paton, Associate Producer

Penelope Paton is emerging screen professional who created the Northern Territory's NT Filmmakers Network. The NT Filmmakers Network is a group helping to connect Territory screen practitioners to projects and their peers. She has worked on several funded and grassroots Northern Territory screen projects including Fort Dundas and last year's Spark project titled Deadline. Her fields of interest include cinematography, marketing and creative producing.

All funds will assist the production to pay crew members, actors, post production, purchase costumes, hire visual effects artists and more. This film will be made on a low to no budget, so every dollar you sponsor counts.