WHERE THE CITY CAN'T SEE (Teaser)
2016 · 2m · UK
Directed by Liam Young
Genres: experimental, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A speculative narrative film shot entirely with laser scanners (LIDAR), set in a near-future Chinese-controlled Detroit Economic Zone where young factory workers don anti-facial-recognition camouflage to explore urban spaces invisible to surveillance systems.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Young makes the camera's capture technology the argument — shooting with LIDAR isn't a gimmick here, it's a thesis about machine vision and invisibility delivered through the image itself. The point-cloud aesthetic carries more political weight than any conventional lens could.
LIDAR-shot fiction is the rare formal gimmick that earns itself — point-cloud humans actually do what Liam Young claims they do. But it's only a teaser, so I'm rating intent.
World's first narrative fiction shot entirely via LIDAR laser scanning, set in a Chinese-controlled Detroit Economic Zone — Liam Young rendering humans as ghostly point-cloud data to make surveillance's dehumanization visible is a genuinely significant formal proposition.