{"id":1364,"date":"2020-01-13T15:53:37","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T03:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.filmconvert.com\/blog\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2020-01-13T15:53:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T03:53:37","slug":"dangerous-to-know-filmconvert-user-showcase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmconvert.com\/blog\/dangerous-to-know-filmconvert-user-showcase\/","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous to Know – FilmConvert User Showcase"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dangerous to Know<\/a> is a cerebral psychological thriller film from acclaimed author David Simpson.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/k90vAQcRqkE<\/p>\n

Give us a bit of detail about yourself – background, profession, how you got into filmmaking and your current role<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Author and producer David Simpson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most people know me either for my novels or my TEDx talk<\/a> on AI and the technological singularity. I\u2019ve got a Master\u2019s degree in English lit from the University of British Columbia, and became an expert futurist because of the research required to write my Post-Human<\/a> series of novels, as well as Dawn of the Singularity. The latter, I wrote for a video game company that wanted something to base a video game on\u2014the game, Ashes of the Singularity, is built around the concept.<\/p>\n

I got into Filmmaking after working temporarily with a local production company to develop a proof-of-concept short film to sell the idea of a Post-Human series of films to Hollywood. As I went through the process, however, I realized that there\u2019s a serious misunderstanding in the conventional filmmaking world of the rapidly accelerating capabilities of digital cameras, both the hardware and software.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, I realized that this misunderstanding was behind much of the astronomical budgets that keep most young filmmakers from believing that they could ever make their own film.<\/p>\n

For my part, I knew I needed to take over the project and direct it myself to make sure that we were getting the most out the tech. My wife and I and one camera assistant shot the short, it was viewed over a million times on Vimeo, caught the interest of Filmmaker Magazine, who did a two-part story, and that caught the interest of Management 360 in Hollywood, who asked for scripts for the first two books in the series\u2014which leads me to how my current film came to be.<\/p>\n

Tell us about your film – how did it come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was explained to me by my contact at Management 360 that, as the Post-Human project moved through the pre-production and then eventually the production phase, that I was going to lose more and more control. However, I\u2019d get paid a lot, so who cares?<\/p>\n

Of course, as any author or writer\/director can tell you: I care.<\/p>\n

So I set about deploying the method of filmmaking I\u2019d developed to make Post-Human look way more expensive than it actually was to a full-length feature film. My reasoning was that, other than the VFX, which are still too difficult to realistically learn from scratch and do alone for an entire sci-fi feature (without it looking too amateur and taking a few extra years) every other aspect of what we\u2019d accomplished in the short film was replicable in a longer-form narrative.<\/p>\n

In short, I could make a movie…just not a sci-fi movie.<\/p>\n

I came up with a concept for a psychological thriller set in the present, wrote the script, found stunning locations, found an incredible cast, and got to work filming it. The idea was to create something that would prove that I understood storytelling in film so that my voice would be taken seriously in Hollywood, but Dangerous to Know has become so much more than just that.<\/p>\n