If you were to tell me back around 2009, when I used to delve in the old version of cyberpunkreview, that a short film without massive budget could look this good, I probably had laughed at your face. But luckily times have changed a lot and, since visual distopian imaginery and futurism have risen to mass popularity (unlike its literature counterpart, as far as I'm concerned) along with costly North American productions, independent creators and indie folk are also hitting the subject harder than ever, with manifold results. Cheaper filming gear and producing software are now also incentives never seen before, and also badly needed for productions of this short, which heavily depends on visuals to make for the absent psychedelic-induced poetry of a William Gibson's Neuromancer or a Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Yet, BREAKER [ブレイカー] is not only visually overwhelming but its brief script and visual references amount to a miniaturized tribute to cyberpunk as a whole.
We shot the film in just two frenetic days, with most of my small crew bunking together in a love-hotel overnight! From pre-production to completed film the process took less than a year altogether. With all the shooting done in Tokyo, and the post-production done in Montreal.
While producing was vital to the result, part of the entire project was to set a futuristic evironment in the street of Tokyo without altering its environment with VFX, thus exploring the city's widely recognized potential for visual futurism and exotism. I can only deem this a victory, as the result is way more realistic that it would have been otherwise. To the triumph of visuals a lot is added by the Harajuku-based DOG fashion store, combining the wildest extremes of punk, industrial, rockabilly and really, anything and everything in the fashion world to create a the garments of plausible yet otherworldly futuristic urban tribes.
The short story goes as follows: Mach1, a young cracker entrepreneur gets exposed to a short of USB external memory bank by one acquaitance of hers, in the bathroom of a hacker pub under the command of a robot called Gibson. From them on her memory implants start blanking out from time to time, as they are taken over by an artificial military AI developed by a corporation going by the name of Genesics. Of course, they are trying to retrieve the piece of software, and searching for Mach1 in order to ''forcibly remove her cranial memory implants''. While Mach1 is focused on surviving, the AI searches for an unmonitored access to the web in order to umpload itself on it and be free.
The plot is of course reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell above all, but it also has the flavor of Gibson's short stories, such as those of Burning Chrome. But there is also a ton of fresh and purely Japanese references, such as a couple of Butoh dancers performing in the sewers of the city, or the growing sex doll market. Also some characters including Mach1 wear a circus-inspired attire with a red and white pattern very classic in Japanese counterculture since Terayama's years. A boy selling optical implants also refers to the U.R.K, which in words of Philippe refers to Unified Republic of Korea, meaning that in such a future scenario the Korean peninsula is reunited at last. Given the fact that there are few lines in this 10 minute film, these are a lot of references. Also, an intentionally blurry combat scene is quite reminiscent of both the classic Hardware (1990) and a also number of futuristic anime productions probably also tributed here, such as Armitage III (1995).
Submitted to the February 2018 Fantasy/Sci-Fi Festival in Toronto via the web platform of FilmFreeway, Breaker did extraordinarily well and received a ton of awards which really deserved in my humble opinion. Great as it would be to have a full lenght film of Breaker, it is highly improbable in words of its own director. Yet, it certainly constitutes a milestone in low-budget futuristic film making, which may precede short-story or novella adaptations as we've never seen before.
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