Future
A story of suicide, time travel, and junk food
A drunken, train-wreck time traveler offers a suicidally depressed barista a do-over with his life—there’s just one catch
Future was an opportunity for us to examine a life in pause from two very different perspectives.
Doug Erickson is a suicidally depressed barista, who punishes himself every moment of his waking life, never forgiving himself for the pain and embarrassment he both caused and suffered in college. Doug never really made any attempt to correct his errors either, as it can be easier, although more painful, to just remain stuck.
Doug, treats his misery with all the effort of a defeated shrug. Justin (The time traveler) looks at all the pain he experiences in his line of work, and learns to laugh about it, while dulling it with whatever drug he can get his hands on. Allowing these characters to represent two sides of the same coin made their butting heads all the more interesting, as they were always standing on common ground, but just couldn't see that.
The Get Super Rad filmmaking team decided early on that the mood of FUTURE should be the cinematic equivalent of intentionally leaving your sneakers at home so you don’t have to participate in gym class. Our film was created to live and exist predominantly in transitions. We intentionally introduce a ticking clock in our film, then chose to ignore it immediately after, following the same behavioral pattern of Doug, the slacker protagonist of the film. FUTURE is meant to buck a traditional formula, and explore the world Doug has created through his unwillingness to grow, or even try for that matter.
We took the high concept idea of time travel, and chose to ignore all most all science fiction tropes and imagery by setting the film in a low income Detroit suburb. This coupled with a naturalistic shooting and lighting style helps accent the absurdity of the situation our main character finds himself in.
Our music and score were chosen carefully to match the genre jumping tone of the film. The score created by Steve Green brings the science fiction feel to the film, through a familiar John Carpenter-like sound. We used pop music to connect the audience with Doug's emotional struggle. Lastly, we used the noise and ambient sounds of artist Dave Graw to highlight the pain and absurdity of the film. These tones are a collection of ugly sounds that when brought together can reveal something beautiful, and become a symphony. We liked the idea of connecting all the pieces of Doug's ugly world to find something very sad and human at its core.
Future begs the question: If you only had a few days left to live, and you felt like no one wanted you around, what would you do with that time? Would you climb a mountain, fall in love, invent a world saving device? Or would you eat all the shit you don't let yourself have, and blow off work to get drunk with your old friends?
Film website:
