Created and Directed by Dina Khalil
The What?
The screen fades in.
A mysterious figure sits on a couch, their back facing us. Over their shoulder, we see them playing a video game titled Essential Workers.
On their TV screen, three game characters navigate a 2D world — only able to move side to side, trapped within invisible boundaries.
As the camera dollies into the game, we watch the characters struggle to survive the current level. But something is off. One of them begins to experience déjà vu. The overwhelming feeling that she’s been through this before claws at her subconscious, but she pushes it aside — continuing the mission alongside her friends.
Until she can't ignore it anymore.
The sense of familiarity becomes unbearable. She tries convincing her partners that something is wrong — that they are trapped. As they look around, their world begins to distort, glitch, and break apart before their eyes.
Panic sets in.
The characters frantically attempt to break free from their invisible restraints.
But can you break free from something you didn’t know you were trapped in?
Inspiration
This project was inspired by several sources:
- Detroit: Become Human — for its moral questions about autonomy and control.
- Pleasantville — for the concept of being trapped inside a media format and the slow realization of reality.
- Bandersnatch — for its interactive storytelling approach, allowing the viewer to make decisions that alter the course of the story.
- The article “Are we living in a computer simulation? I don’t know. Probably.” — which planted the existential question in my mind.
- My sister — who brainstormed the concept of a character breaking the fourth wall, and together we ran with the idea.
Software
- Make Human
- Mixamo
- iClone 7
- Adobe Fuse
- Adobe Premiere/ AfterEffects
- Stornaway.io
“I think there’s a very good chance we are, in fact, living in a simulation, though we can’t say that with 100 percent confidence. But there is plenty of evidence that points in that direction.”
-Rizwan Virk
The Why?
This is an interactive short film about the importance of backing up your files — disguised as a sinister, haunting meta-narrative about control, free will, and destruction.
The three characters in the game serve as metaphors:
- They are a computer virus. Their mission is to infiltrate, destroy, and erase data — in this case, the student’s thesis.
- But metaphorically, they are also us. Humans, much like a computer virus, have infiltrated Earth — consuming its resources, polluting its air, and depleting its life.
During the pandemic, it felt like the world locked us away — the virus (humans) — to allow the Earth to heal. This parallel served as the foundation of my film. Just like the student loses control of their game, Earth temporarily regained control from its virus — us.
And much like corrupted files, we cannot undo the damage that has already been done.
The How?
I used MakeHuman to model one of the game characters and Mixamo to generate two additional 3D characters, including their precompiled animations that matched the intended cutscenes.
To achieve a more cinematic and immersive look, I imported the 3D characters and their animations into Unreal Engine, where I staged them in a virtual studio setup. Using a green screen (chromakey) workflow, I rendered out my characters separately, allowing me to composite them later in post-production.
In Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, I layered the exported green-screened characters over the game environment, creating a seamless blend between the real and the virtual — emulating a traditional filmmaking pipeline while preserving the stylized game-like aesthetic.
For the interactive storytelling aspect, I built the branching narrative using Stornaway.io, allowing the viewer to make key choices that influence the outcome of the story — much like a player controlling a video game character.
By merging game engine technology with traditional filmmaking workflows, I aimed to mirror the very struggle of my characters: a fight between reality and simulation.
Disclaimer: The characters' uniforms don't mean anything in this context.