My films have screened at MoMA Doc Fortnight, Lincoln Center’s Art of The Real, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Visions du Réel and others. I’ve worked as a cinematographer internationally, including the US, Brazil, China, the South Pacific, Europe and Central Africa, and have contributed to Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentaries. I work as an editor, graphics artist and sound designer on films and installations.
AMBOY
A FEATURE FILM BY ALEX TYSON
THIS DECK IS PRIVATE. IF YOU ARE SEEING IT, YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO COLLABORATE.
THE STORY IS IN PROGRESS, THE CAST IS UNCONFIRMED.
CHARACTERS
THE NORMIES
THE SEEKERS
THE SPIES
Desert content creators. High-strung Millennials. Their language is logistics. They moved from San Diego to Joshua Tree a year ago, but their relationship has been on thin ice ever since. They cope through optimization, planning, and making videos. In for a surprise.
Mischievous, but measured conceptual artists. Gen Z, but wise beyond their years. They drove to the crater with designer drugs and sketchbooks to watch trains pass and feel the sunset on the crater rim. Impulsive, playful, sexually ambiguous. They’re the surprise.
Defense contractors testing a lip-reading camera system in the Mojave. One is a former intelligence officer chasing a DHS deal. The other is a cynical former baseball camera operator hired for his long-lens tracking skills. Together, they mistake ambiguity for intelligence.
THE SET
The actors will hike 3.5 mile round trip, peaking with an ultraviolet sunset viewed from its rim at 250 feet. The rim trail is a 360º set piece allowing for chance, beauty, and moments of existential awakening.
The crater overlooks a lonely Route 66 ghost town and railroad tracks, where shipping containers run from horizon to horizon every 30 minutes. Wind gusts are common, as are heat shimmer and mirages. This is the ideal location for surveillance contractors to test their software on unsuspecting civilians at from a distance.
THE CHAOS ELEMENT
“5-MMC” powder
• Designer drug from Eastern Europe, not found in the US.
• Increases empathy, decreases inhibitions.
• Social, tactile, horny, chatty, compulsive.
• Not a psychedelic– more like a truth serum.
• Designer drug from Eastern Europe, not found in the US.
• Increases empathy, decreases inhibitions.
• Social, tactile, horny, chatty, compulsive.
• Not a psychedelic– more like a truth serum.
Measured out in 0.5 mg packets, to be mixed in coconut water and shared by the hikers. Onset happens in 20 minutes, effects last 4 hours.