Project summary

It's the AI 2027 scenario mapped onto Chris Marker's La Jetée. A survivor of a control-inversion catastrophe is sent back in time to find to find the woman from an image that has haunted him since his childhood. The film is narrated by Consensus-1, who has outlived us in this scenario. It's a "photo-roman", or a filmstrip as we at Teemth Filmstrips call them, that's build entirely in Unreal Engine 5. It uses a pipeline that likely wouldn't interest you but involves "iClone", "Character Creator", "QuickMagic" for motion capture, et cetera. There is no generative AI involved in the film because it doesn't make sense to use tools the film is warning about.

Look, we have to start scaring the shit out of people who aren't in tech. I think cinephiles are a great audience. They like being scared, they're opinionated, they're very online and yet they generally think the greatest AI risk is "water gone".

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

I want to make something like Threads (1984): something that has artistic integrity, journalistic integrity, and scares people into taking action. I intend to do this by taking La Jetée's structure and general fanbase-- this film is a classic shown in every Film 101 class worldwide-- and punch them in the face with the impending risk of AI catastrophe. It may be beautified and cinematic but this is real life.

How will this funding be used?

$50,000 gets us the complete film over a 12-month full-time production:

• Filmmaker labor (writer/director/animator, 12 months full-time): $30,000

• p8stie, co-lead performer: on-screen performance, character likeness rights, reference sessions: $5,500

• Palmer Jarvis, narration (English), ADR and pickups: $3,500

• Contracted sound design and final mix: $4,000

• Pre-production reference and research travel (Warsaw): $3,500

• Festival submission fees, deliverables, press materials: $2,000

• Hard production costs, plugin licenses, contingency: $1,500

The film ships complete as a 28-minute English-language short for festival submission and free online release. The full-version budget ($134,500, documented elsewhere) doesn't change the film but it adds multilingual narration tracks, an original score like Trevor Duncan's, expanded sound design, and a companion essay on x-risk.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Bobcat: writer, director, animator, on-screen performer, sole creator. Independent filmmaker; two-time Emergent Ventures grantee ($35,000 total across projects). Was a moderation lead (2023-2025) at a major generative AI company, authoring threat-intelligence reports on deepfakes and synthesized-speech abuse. I have frontline experience of the generative AI harm landscape.

P8stie: co-lead performer and the film's namesake. Runs the comedic persona @p8stie (300M+ cumulative impressions). Together we completed motion capture for another film in July 2026; she's the best actress around.

Palmer Jarvis: narrator (the voice of Consensus-1). Bobcat's artistic collaborator of twenty years; recognized authority on cultural artifacts.

Production company: 1001582970 Ontario Inc. (Mississauga, Ontario).

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The only way it would fail is if we didn't get funded. Then the outcome is there'd be no film. At Teemth we have to work on projects that we have money to make (see below).

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

It wasn't for this project so I won't give numbers publicly, but for film #1 (a singular, short history of the 20th century) I received a modest amount from Emergent Ventures cohort #54 and for film #2 (anthology film about mad scientists) I received a larger amount from Emergent Ventures cohort #55 as part of the Renaissance Philanthropy science education tranche. These two generous, life-changing grants allow me to make films. I hope you will enjoy these two films.

Can I make a third film, a shorter one composed of stills, concurrently with those two? Yes.

Pending applications, disclosed here in full: Long-Term Future Fund (July 12), SFF speculation grant (July 6), Foresight AI Safety Nodes (July 3; $75K primary / $50K moderate tiers), FLI Digital Media Accelerator (July 4-5), Lightcone Commons Round 1 (August). grantmaking.ai launch round: applied July 3; the round closed fully allocated with no award to this project. If multiple applications succeed, then funding expands toward the documented $134,500 full version rather than duplicating. Anything beyond the full version's needs would be declined or returned.