The Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival runs in person in Bucheon, South Korea from June 29 to July 9. The Boston Hassle’s Joshua Polanski interviewed director, actor, and writer Franklin Ritch on his film The Artifice Girl as part of his multi-outlet coverage of the festival. Be sure to check out his website for updates on additional coverage.
Ritch’s The Artifice Girl focuses on Gareth (Ritch), a special effects artist turned hunter of pedophiles. Using his special effects skills and tools, Gareth creates an unmodeled, completely original little girl that can be rendered in real-time to lure in and subsequently report would-be predators to the authorities. The girl, Cherry (Tatum Matthews), evolves into something beyond Gareth’s power through machine learning. She becomes a new being, one whose prime directive is to keep kids safe from exploitation.
The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
BOSTON HASSLE: Can you walk me through the origin of the film’s concept? Where did you get the idea for it?
FRANKLIN RITCH: I read some articles about how AI and technology were being used to hunt down predators and criminals online. And I thought that was such a cool idea. What a great way to use technology for something good. So that sort of nugget of an idea happened, but it didn’t really feel like there was a story there until around the spring of 2020, when everybody was in lockdown initially. And I was trying to figure out if there was something I could do during the pandemic.
And then there was this kind of epiphany moment where I felt like maybe there could be a thematic parallel between the budding adolescence of AI and childhood trauma. And once that line was drawn in my mind, it was like, “Okay, this is a story I have to tell.” In the spring of 2020, I didn’t know anything about AI. I’m not a tech-savvy person. So, I did around two weeks of just pure research where I took an online course in machine learning. More importantly, I had lots and lots of conversations and Zoom calls with professionals in those fields.
Talking to people who were actually doing the jobs that I was writing about and getting a sense of the technical shorthand was great, but [I was also] getting a good sense of the people and the personalities behind those programs and technologies and what it’s like as a human being to do that—what kind of mental psychology is that, and what is the toll it takes?
I wrote the first draft in a really short period of time. It was like 48 hours that I just kind of dumped it on a page. I know it sounds impressive or glamorous—you’re picturing Jude Law with a typewriter—but no, it was very disgusting. With the lockdown and all, I’m just sitting on my bed in pajamas surrounded by GrubHub bags. I looked like a gremlin. That first draft just felt like it was writing itself in a weird way.
BH: When did you first fall in love with movies? Was there one film or one director that you look to for your love for cinema?
FR: Like a lot of kids, I always knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, but when you’re like six years old, it seems impossible. It’s like wanting to be an astronaut [Laughs]. But I remember being like six or seven years old and seeing a VHS copy of Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers. For some reason that short film blew my mind. And there was this like moment of, “Oh, I can do that.” That’s plasticine. You just get some clay, some Play-Doh, or some Legos. You take a little camera and then you just take a photo, move it a little bit, and take another photo.
In grade and middle school, I kind of learned the basics of film through stop-motion animation. Then in high school, when I actually started making friends, I started filming live-action short films. But yeah, that’s where the love came from.
Funny enough, I think there is like a weird connection to The Artifice Girl in that way. In stop-motion, you can incite meaning and emotion with inanimate objects, which is what Artifice Girl is kinda all about, right?
BH: I gotta say, that’s a question I ask almost every interviewee, and I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a better answer than Wallace and Gromit.
FR: It’s the best. If you haven’t seen it, you gotta check it out. It’s one of the all-time best films.
BH: In many ways, this is a very timely film—releasing just as Chat GPT is breaking the internet and just before, possibly, the interference of AI in the filmmaking process itself. What were your thoughts about the timing of the release?
FR: I wish I could say that I had planned that. But again, I had the idea in 2020. We didn’t start shooting until the fall of 2020. We shot all of act one in five days in the fall of 2020. And then we packaged a 37-minute long proof of concept, and then sent that out to producers and said, “Hey, will, will you help us finish this film?” Then we shot Act Two in the spring of 2021. We secured Lance Henriksen and shot Act Three in the fall of 2021.
I’m thrilled that the timeline ended up the way that it did, because we ended up releasing right at this pivotal moment in the world. I never could have anticipated that. I’m thrilled—it’s obviously done very well for the film. The timing couldn’t have been better.
BH: Your character says he is asexual, a rather uncommon sexuality to be voiced in American movies. Why did you decide to make him asexual?
FR: As you said, there’s not a lot of representation of asexual characters in film. I [like] the fact that it’s at least stated, but at the same time, I didn’t want people to dwell on that too much because then people might start to associate his asexuality with his personality. Just because he is asexual doesn’t mean that’s why he is cold to people.
More than anything, the fact that he’s asexual kind of just instantly squanderers any possibility that he is a creep. I didn’t want the audience to keep wondering about [whether or not] he has any alternative motives. I think that helps makes sure that the audience isn’t looking for some weird red herring.
But at the same time, I didn’t want that to be like his sole personality either, because asexuality is not what defines a person to person. There’s a lot more to people than sexual preference.
BH: Given the film’s difficult subject matter, how did you navigate safe conversations around difficult subjects with the young actress?
FR: Yeah, yeah. You’re talking about conversations around the intense subject matter with the actors?
BH: Yeah. Especially with Tatum Matthews (who plays Cherry). Because her part, I’m guessing could have been recorded without the other actors present, so she might not have been aware of the heavier conversation and only had her part. I don’t know. That’s what I was wondering.
FR: So funny enough, everything that you see when she’s on screen, that’s all live. I don’t think there’s a single composite shot of that TV.
The way that we did it is we had set up a little white void set for her right behind that wall, which was very thin. We had a camera set up that had a super long HDMI cable that fed through the ceiling and then into the TV. Her little white void was squished up against the bathroom door.
For us actors in the scene, she was always on screen and we could interact with her in real-time, which I think helps with the performances in some of those long one-shots where it’s just the [other] characters and her [through the TV screen] in the same frame. It [also] lends more credibility to her performance because she is like having to just hear our dialogue through the wall and is just staring straight into a camera.
[But anyways], with talking to Tatum about the character, we did a lot of table paperwork and had lengthy Zoom calls where Tate and I would talk about Cherry. We never had to talk about those kinds of subject matters. That wasn’t really important for her to learn about or try and understand. What we did focus on was Cherry as a character and where her sort of motivations lie and how her artifice, so to speak—how that changes and eventually falls away—and what’s there under the surface.
I had worked with Tatum on several projects before this, and I knew [this would be] a perfect role for her. When I sent her mother the script, before Tatum even knew about the project, and had a conversation with her and said, listen, these are all the reasons why this is gonna be intense for a child, right? And, you know, we wanted to make sure that before anything that Tatum is safe and comfortable and won’t be exposed to any ideas or subject matter that will have a negative effect on her. I think that’s hugely important for any kind of child actor that there’s just this transparency and honesty.
BH: What was the hardest scene for you to film?
FR: [Laughs] I guess all of it!
I can tell you about some wonderful little challenges and accidents along the way for independent filmmaking. The best way to do it is to perceive your obstacles as opportunities for creativity, right?
There was a moment right before we started filming Act Two. There was a lot of pressure with Act Two because we suddenly had a budget. In one of our rehearsals, a stand-in opened the door too quickly and punched a hole in the wall [laughing]. And I nearly had an anxiety attack. I was like, “Oh no, we gotta go to Home Depot and patch this hole and we don’t have enough time and all this.”
And, god bless our line producer Jason Blankenship. He said, “I guess there’s no way you could make that like a part of the story, right?” And I was like, “Oh!” And then suddenly it was like, yeah, let’s turn that into a moment, right? [That’s when] Deena (Sinda Nichols) comes in and puts a hole in the wall. And that actually helped with our shot list by consolidating a moment that we were struggling to. There’s stuff like that all the time, these unforeseen kind of moments that you just kind of have to look at as an opportunity to do something creatively.
BH: Your performance in the film, with its fast-paced confident delivery and quirkiness, reminded me of Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in The Social Network. Was this a conscious decision on your part?
FR: No one’s ever asked me that. I appreciate that. But yes, both Social Network and Aaron Sorkin were a huge influence on The Artifice Girl. I’m trying to think of some of the other inspirations: Primer (2004, dir. Shane Carruth) was a huge influence on this, so were both Arrival (2016, dir. Denis Villeneuve) and Spotlight (2015, dir. Tom McCarthy). I love stories of just smart people doing their thing.
With Gareth as a character, I played that role out of necessity. I never really wanted to play the role, but it was just cheaper than hiring another actor. I could do it for free and we would be saving a lot of money. I felt comfortable playing the role because I put a lot of my own personal anxieties into Gareth. I don’t associate with all those feelings and thoughts anymore—that coldness and isolation. Gareth is dealing with his trauma in a way that might be productive and even altruistic, but it’s not healthy. And as a result of that, he ends up alienating himself and inadvertently passing on trauma to his creation.
I love the way Gareth evolves over time. In Act One, he’s such a weaselly and kind of gross-looking guy who wouldn’t ever fit in an office space. And then in Act Two, you see that he’s actually adjusted quite well.
Jesse Eisenberg is a great example though. There are a lot of people out there that are geniuses but that have this weird kind of inhuman kind of quality. And I think Zuckerberg is a great example of that. There’s just something kind of not quite warm there.
BH: How long did the filming take?
FR: Five days for Act One, five days for Act Two, and five days for Act Three. We had a very tight schedule. [I didn’t get much] sleep those nights. I would just go home and start cutting.
BH: The character Amos is the one asking questions about consent, what it means to be a human, and even justice. Given his name, which he shares with a Hebrew Bible prophet, would it be safe to call him the film’s prophetic character?
FR: Absolutely. I love his character. Amos (David Girard) closest shares my own personal ideologies. David is such a phenomenal performer, and he brings a perfect balance of, sensitivity and empathy. [Later, after seeing him appear softer in Act One], we see that there is this side of him that won’t take no for an answer. He is like, “We have to confront this thing.” I love that about him.
[In a way], he is sort of the soul of the film. David loves to talk about how when he first read the script, he disagreed with Amos. He was like, “Interesting, but I don’t buy it. She’s code and there’s a difference between a human being and a robot that thinks it’s a human, right?” He felt very strongly about that—and then through the process of making the film, his perspective changed. By the time they were shooting Act Two, he was like, “I get it. I can see it.”
I think he’s such an incredible character and he, in a way, [has the] dominant perspective in the film, which is sort of indicated when he can’t see the CGI imperfections in Cherry that Gareth and Deena can. Amos can’t see those and neither can the audience.
BH: What’s next?
FR: I wish I could talk about it. [Laughs.]
The Artifice Girl
2022
dir. Franklin Ritch
93 min.
Now available digitally and on demand
