These days it’s rare that a film goes viral without a little help from seeded advertising, but when a concept captures the public imagination, it can spread like wildfire.
I directed SLAUGHTERBOTS, a seven minute found-footage short, commissioned by the Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking backed ‘Future of Life Institute’, which examines the positive – and in this case negative – effects of cutting-edge technology, especially AI.
The film is the Institute’s attempt to build support for a global ban on autonomous weapon systems, which kill without meaningful human control. It was released to coincide with meetings at the United Nations’ Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Previous discussions with lawmakers and governments had been academic and dry. SLAUGHTERBOTS was the chance make some noise. We made the film in a ‘found footage’ style, with a TED talk type beginning, followed by scenes of a rapid disintegration in society, as terrorist controlled micro drones attack the Capitol Building and a university campus.
As well as creating debate at the conference, the film has been widely shared on social media, gaining over 40 million views across thousands of platforms. In this country articles have been written in publications including The Guardian, The Times and The Economist.
SLAUGHTERBOTS was produced by Matt Nelson and written by Matt Wood, both of Space Digital. The same company turned around the multiple CGI shots in just two weeks. Together we are developing the concept into a feature film
