a sci-fi noir micro web series by The Matarrese Bros.
Set in the near future, George Tran, a private detective, reluctantly takes a case to find a missing android in a desperate attempt to make a quick buck. But the case goes sideways when the missing android is revealed to be pregnant and winds up dead.
As Tran tries to get to the bottom of the mystery while battling his own hallucinations of a robotic transformation, he discovers that he is not the only one after what the missing android is hiding.
From glam metal to grunge, rock & roll never dies, only changes…
look & feel…
This series will fully embrace a unique and imperfect look and feel to create the textured world of Near-Future San Francisco. The series will start mostly in b&w with small blips of color during Tran’s brain tremors and as he slowly turns into an android more and more color will be introduced until the entire series takes place in color.
Colored lighting combined with a high contract, low-key aesthetic of traditional noir cinema will give the series a fresh and futuristic feel.
Streak filters and lens aberrations will be employed to create a dream-like feel. Unique framing, foreground elements, and frames within the frame will help to isolate or confine the characters. The series will also be shot using a single vintage medium format photo lens for consistency.
Only a backpack…
We’ve worked on productions of all budgets and sizes. While we like having lots of equipment and crew at our disposal, we really want to challenge ourselves with this project to stay as lighter and more nimble than we ever have been before on a film.
Taking a page from Godard’s Alphaville, we will shoot real locations the lend themselves to the near future world we are creating. We plan on keeping everything mobile by using only gear we can carry in backpacks, dividing the responsibilities of camera, sound, lighting, and special fx among the small crew.
We want to echo what’s happening in the story by combining the real and the synthetic, the physical and the digital. We’ll employ digital cameras to build a crispness of digital technology to the image combined with the gorgeous imperfections of vintage still photo lenses. For our main lighting sources we will augment the existing lighting by relying on battery powered, app controlled LEDs that will be quick to deploy anywhere and adjusted using our phones.
