An interview with the Stupid filmmakers behind the new “stoner-surveillance-thriller”
A few years ago, Anna and Kyle of Stupid Co “smoked a joint and visited one of LA’s ‘Valley’ neighborhoods.” During the walk, they “began to experience the bizarre reality of surveillance cameras not only surrounding us, but speaking to us.”
The experience, they say, “compelled” them to make a short film called “Hi! You Are Currently Being Recorded.” It’s a “stoner-surveillance-thriller,” which happens to fall squarely in my wheelhouse as a journalist who covers cannabis and Big Brother.
I asked them about inspiration, stoner tie-ins, and the “never-ending surveillance loop” where their eight-minute film lives online in a unique form.
How stoned were one or both of you when you came up with the concept for this film in the first place?
Not that stoned! The horror of the situation writes itself!
Was it more of a paranoid observation that we are surrounded by surveillance? Or more of a realization, like, Holy shit, there are cameras everywhere!
It was a bit of both really—we’re no strangers to the fact that we are being constantly surveilled in our day and age, however the polite yet simultaneously very threatening pre-recorded voice of the Ring camera was something new for me, as it was something that was still just getting started in the UK and Canada. I’ve seen more and more adverts for the Ring cameras in the years since making the film all over London. There’s not one neat answer to the proliferation of cameras and the now eponymous chorus of “Hi! You are currently being recorded” in neighborhoods all over the world (do the Ring cameras come in different languages?) but it’s definitely something we wanted to draw an audience’s attention to. I’m sure everybody has a different read on them, but the more aware we are of what’s going on around us, the better, as we can then make more informed decisions about the world we are all co-creating.
The film opens up with the character in the kitchen with her jar and grinder. From that I gather that she is a casual and regular user but not necessarily an all-out stoner. Is that what you were going for?
Spot on!
She does jokingly say to her friend on the phone that she is probably smoking too much. Is that kind of like a turning point of sorts?
It both is and it isn’t—it’s less a demonization of weed itself, but more the way we police ourselves, protect ourselves, are aware of our vices or how we self-soothe—for the character, she feels somewhat guilty for smoking so much, which also might inform why she ends up in a more paranoid space. It’s hard to know what comes first, the chicken or the egg.
While cannabis plays a role here, it’s really more of a film about privacy, as I saw it. Is that all open to interpretation?
I think you’re right. It’s not really about weed, weed just allows her to see things a little more clearly with more focus—paradoxically—and what she sees scares her. Maybe in a different scenario she’d feel differently. This is one moment in time—we’ve all had moments like that—where something catches us and we become aware of the gaping void that’s opened up in front of us, whereas at another time, we might just carry on with our day with no awareness of the aforementioned void.
Why did you shoot it in the suburbs, as opposed to in a city, where there’s also a net of surveillance, though of a different flavor?
There’s many versions of this film—we’d love to see other ones. This is just one moment in time, in place, in space, captured in one way.
Finally, tell us about your distribution decisions, like dropping it on 4/20 and having it on a perpetual loop.
With such limited distribution options out there for short films, it was important to us to find an alternative route for a release as opposed to just throwing the film on Vimeo or YouTube and calling it a day. Instead, we decided to create our own ‘platform’ where the film can live on in an entirely new life form… turning the 7.5min film into a 24-hr experience with over 192 chances to watch the film each day.
While “Hi!” isn’t a pure on “stoner” film, we wanted to still celebrate the “higher” aspect of the film and dropping on 4/20 felt like a natural way to do so. We’ve been fortunate enough to receive support from the weed brand 22Red and further connect Hi! and our work with the cannabis community is really important and exciting to us because we’re big fans of weed-smoking.
