Confident

Confident is a comic interactive VR investigation that immerses us in the astonishing life of Rudy, living in the 2050s. At a time when everyone has his own digital assistant acting as a "happiness consultant", the relationship between humanity and technology sometimes turns into an extravagant and absurd comedy. Even though Confident poses ethical issues, the experience is light and humorous in tone. The goal here is to elicit the user’s commitment and intellect, while being highly entertaining.

Pitch

Synopsis

2051. Everyone is equipped with a Confident, a “personal happiness assistant.” The bliss-supply device knows all about its owner: his or her affinities, weaknesses, fears, mental and physical health. Shadow adviser and hormone regulator, Confident is wise to its host’s every decision and emotion.

In this comic interactive investigation in VR, you play an investigator from ConiSens, the company that makes Confidents. The user Rudy has been found in a lethargic condition after a connection failure between his Confident and the central server. Was it due to some bizarre glitch in the Confident? Or might Rudy have rid himself of his digital best friend?

Your warrant as an investigator gives you access to the digital memories Rudy and his Confident stored. As a result, if you are intrigued by some finding, you can replay the scene, travelling through space, and grasping objects that will provide you with precious clues.

Alongside this dual freedom from the restrictions of space and time, you must take a position in relation to the contradictory instructions you are receiving from the Confident and Gina, the ConiSens rep. Your choices will impact the story and its climax.

Director statement

Confident raises questions about individual free will, battered by the psychological and emotional determinisms that influence us from day to day. Moreover, by questioning emotional regulation and the trend towards a bliss-based society, or “happycracy,” Confident hopes to elicit reflection about the influence of algorithms on our lives, and the risk that we are becoming increasingly addicted to artificial intelligence with ramifications that we cannot control. In a time when Big Tech claims to know what’s good for us, and when a mind/computer interface has just obtained the US authorities approval for human testing, the tacit relationship between service and control technologies deserves our examination. The experience takes an original tack: rather than presenting yet another variation on the theme of man’s domination by the machine or vice-versa, it explores with a lot of humour the possibility of an illicit – and emancipative perhaps – pact between them.

Director biography

After his studies in film and art history, Jerome directed his first short films on altered states of consciousness and parallel realities. His last VR experience, Alteration, was selected for Tribeca Film Festival and 2017 Venice VR and won the special jury prize at 2017 Paris Virtual, the Grand Prix at 360 Film Festival in 2017, and the Grand Prix Innovation at 2018 FIPA. Bertrand graduated from the prestigious French film school La Fémis: his lively interest in virtual worlds led him to complete a master’s thesis on massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Confident is his first VR experience as a director.

Huidige status

After in-depth work on writing and conception, and now that the design of the visual world is well underway, we will prototype the experience with Novelab, a studio specializing in real-time and virtual reality. Confident obtained a writing grant from the French CNC XN fund for digital experiments, along with a development grant in December 2020. The developmental phase of the project is also supported by Pictanovo. We are now looking for funding and co-producers including but not limited to Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and/or Canada, and are also looking for an international sales agent.