THE ARTIFICE GIRL: An Interview With Writer/Director Franklin Ritch

Introduction

The Artifice Girl is directed and written by Franklin Ritch in his feature film debut. The film stars Tatum Matthews (The Waltons: Homecoming), David Girard (the short Teardrop Goodbye with Mandatory Directorial Commentary by Remy Von Trout), Sinda Nichols (That Abandoned Place, Bubblegum Crisis), Franklin Ritch and Lance Henriksen (Aliens, The Quick, and the Dead).

Synopsis

A team of special agents discovers a revolutionary new computer program to bait and trap online predators. After teaming up with the program’s troubled developer, they soon find that the AI is rapidly advancing beyond its original purpose.

Cinema Scholars own Glen Dower recently got to chat with the writer and director of The Artifice Girl, Franklin Ritch, about the film, getting inspiration from Wallace and Gromit, working with the legendary Lance Henriksen, the nature of AI, and a host of other topics. 

Interview

Glen Dower:

Mr. Ritch. How are you, Sir?

Franklin Ritch:

Hi, how are you doing, Glen?

Glen Dower:

I’m really good, thank you. We’re going to talk about your new film The Artifice Girl, of which you are a cast member, writer, and director, and this is in fact your directorial debut. Congratulations! It must be an exciting time for you.

Franklin Ritch:

Yes, indeed. It’s been a crazy past year.

Glen Dower:

I just want to talk about your origin story if you like. It really made me smile when I found out that a young Franklin was inspired by none other than Oscar winners Wallace and Gromit.

Franklin Ritch:

Correct! Correct. Yeah. I’m glad you’ve done your research. That’s right. Just really kind of crazy to see when you’re a kid and you think, oh, making movies is impossible, like being an astronaut. But watching Wallace and Gromit was just a sort of this moment of like, oh, well I could do that. You just get some plasticine and you get a  camera and then you move it a little bit, take a photo, move it a little. And so I got my start in grade school and middle school doing stop motion before I had friends and was filming live action. So yeah.

Glen Dower:

I have two little boys and I’m trying to get them into the love of Aardman Animation through Shaun the Sheep.

Franklin Ritch:

Oh, great!

Glen Dower:

Yeah, they do produce magic over there in Aardman. So, for the film itself, I know you also did your research of course, because the Act One specifically, you studied lots of police interrogation tapes because there’s of course the interrogation of your character, Gareth. Through those interrogation tapes, did you see the cliches we’ve been led to believe, for example, good cop/bad cop, smart cop/dumb cop, or crazy cop/sane cop? But did those come through the writing as well?

Franklin Ritch:

There’s definitely a dynamic. I don’t know if it’s as straightforward as a good cop, or bad cop, but there’s definitely having a pair of people there. I just loved that there was a rhythm to the way that they cross-examined this person. It’s always interesting too when you watch it without knowing what the context is because then it was sort of the fly on the wall or trying to figure out what’s going on, what is this person being accused of? What did they do? And the interrogators do a great job of giving tiny bits of information, but also trying, they already know a lot of the questions that they’re asking. So it was just really kind of seeing that kind of cat-and-mouse dynamic. I think it’s very entertaining and was just sort of a great way to expose all of this information and do so in a way that was entertaining, engaging, and ultimately sort of set up the inquisitive nature of the story.

Glen Dower:

Yes. The first act is very tense, and you do expect it to stop at certain points, but then like you say, it ebbs and flows, peaks and supposedly troughs. Then the two interrogating characters go in another direction, and they keep trying to fool Gareth, leaving the audience thinking, how much do they know? And they keep just releasing information and different bargaining techniques. One will leave the room – where did she go? It is all played so, so well. We have a three-act structure. Was that always the intention because we have these specific time jumps in between? Was that your intention, or did this feel like, okay, we’ll stop here and then think about what will happen next?

Franklin Ritch:

Yes, when approaching this, I knew I wanted to tell a story about the conversations that these developers were having behind closed doors. I thought that that would just be really interesting and exciting to explore. So, when approaching it from that perspective, this was the spring of 2020, so it was like, okay, limited resources, limited everything! It was like, can I tell the story in one location with a couple of characters? And so starting with that initial interrogation scene, which I thought would be a great way to sort of realize, yeah, but I want to know what happens in 50 years, what happens when this thing spirals out of control, and what happens when this, that and the other? And it was like, I’d love to explore that, but I also don’t see this as becoming a three to five-season HBO series. This is something that I’m going to have to make with practically nothing. So for me, it was like, okay, well, what if I just find these key moments in the sort of development of this program and build very tight, real-time scenes around those moments? And that was very early on in the conceptualization of the story. So yeah, I mean, from the get-go, I kind of knew it was going to be the sort of three-act time jump thing, which I think is just a really fun way to explore this story.

Glen Dower:

Yes, definitely. We do see a start, middle, and end if you like, and I think it would be an awesome stage show as well when I was reflecting on the film. That would be a great play to see, I think as well.

Franklin Ritch:

It’d be really good. I love that! It’d be great!

Glen Dower:

As you say, you started filming in 2020, went through Covid, we came out of Covid, so we say, and AI now is such a terrifying force. We see it everywhere! Even just through daily social media where people are augmenting themselves to appear more attractive. What is this? And people becoming more anime versions of themselves. And recently we had Elon Musk stating he believes we should immediately hit the pause button and let’s pull back. What a perfect time for your film. How did I plan that?

Franklin Ritch:

Oh, yeah, this was all part of the plan! No, no, I didn’t even really care much about AI back in 2020. And I mean, it was kind of an interesting time. Not the way it has been in the past two months. It’s been crazy recently. But I just thought it would be an interesting way to explore and draw a parallel between the budding adolescence of AI and childhood trauma. Now, the film isn’t necessarily meant to make a grand statement about the future of AI. Obviously, a lot has happened in the past three years since I wrote the script that no one could have foreseen. But I do think the story focuses on just one particular instance of an AI that is, her whole intention is just to try and replicate human behavior for the purposes of saving children. And that’s what leads her to be seeing herself being distinguishable from humanity. So I don’t know. I think there are sort of two camps right now with AI. You’ve got people that are overwhelmingly excited and that’s great, and I think that’s understandable. And then you’ve got people that are absolutely terrified. And I also think that’s completely valid considering what all this is.

But I don’t think AI is necessarily inherently evil or good. I think it is kind of what the film sort of suggests that it is inherently a reflection of the people who make it and who develop it. So if it’s developed and used by a nefarious criminal, or let’s be honest, capitalistic purposes, that’s what it’s going to do. And there’s going to be repercussions from that. Even if it’s used with the most altruistic and best intentions, there’s still that flaw of someone like Gareth accidentally putting their own personal trauma in the AI. And it will reciprocate, and it will. That’s the nature of trauma. And it’s always systemic. It’s always a cycle. And so, I think I don’t want the film to necessarily push a certain message. I think I hope it insights into the conversation, but I really do think that we should be approaching AI with thoughtfulness and integrity, and compassion because we’re going to cross a line and not realize it long after we’ve crossed it.

Glen Dower:

That’s what we’ve been told in the movies.

Franklin Ritch:

Right.

Glen Dower:

You play Gareth in the film, of course, as the lead, we could say? Was it always your intention to play him?

Franklin Ritch:

No, that was more out of necessity. I really think it’s funny that you call him the lead, which I guess is fair because he has the most screentime I think, of any character. But he’s really the antagonist of the story. Every sort of sequence has a character that wants something, and Gareth is the obstacle. I think it’s fun to explore the character of Gareth and examine his flaws and even his best intentions, again, are carried out in a flawed way. But no, I really enjoyed playing Gareth, but that was not the intention. It was Covid times. We wanted to have as few people on set as possible, and I felt comfortable stepping into the role only because of three things. One, I had immense trust in my cinematographer, Britt McTammany. We had done extensive pre-production together, so we kind of knew I wouldn’t have to stand over his shoulder and try to do any part of his job. He was set and good because we’ve developed all that trust. I had trust in the actors, which is number two, and believe that they were not going to lead me astray when it came to performance nuances and stuff like that. It was great to do that. We had a significant pre-production process where we planned everything, planned every shot, planned every bit of coverage, and we’re very precise with that. So my focus could just be on the actors and not have to worry as much about whether we were getting all the shots we needed. So that was very helpful.

Glen Dower:

Great. I want to speak about two other members of the cast while I have time. How did you find your ‘Cherry’? Tatum Matthews. Wow. How did you find her?

Franklin Ritch:

Tatum and I had worked on several projects before that. I first met her, I think in 2018. She auditioned for a play I was directing called Wait Until Dark, which I’m sure people are familiar with in the Alan Arkin-Audrey Hepburn film. But she auditioned for the child role in that, and she made everybody in the audition room cry with her monologue. And we were like, all right, you’ve got the part! But then I worked with her on some other short films after that. And it just writing the idea, it was like, well, obviously this is going to be Tatum. She’s got the role. But even so, with the high expectations we had of her from working with her on previous projects, she still exceeded, vastly exceeded what we could have ever anticipated her to bring with this character.

Her subtleties and nuances, her understanding and maturity, just thoughtfulness to not just her character, but the themes that her character explores and represents are just absolutely fantastic. And we did have table work where we talked about some of these themes and some of these ideas. We’d never had to get far into the disturbing stuff because it just wasn’t even necessary. Tatum already had a very kind of mature perspective on everything, and she brought so much to the character just in her research on AI and her research on AI behavior. We had, I think, one moment on set. There was a moment where I was like, wait, should she even be blinking? And Tatum was like, oh no, I’ve already looked into it. They blink too much. And it’s the rate at which they blink. I’ve already got this. It’s like she had thought of everything because
she was, yeah, she’s a professional.

Glen Dower:

And she completely held her own in Act Three against…legend…Lance Henriksen! Boom. What Chef’s Kiss casting that was. The actor who helped with James Cameron’s original pitch for The Terminator played an AI being as Bishop in Aliens. He’s been in over two hundred movies. He is just a sci-fi icon. You must have been so, so thrilled when he signed on to your film.

Franklin Ritch:

Absolutely! I mean, he was always at the top of our list, and we had no real clout, so we just had no reason to suspect we were ever going to really get him. But he, lucky enough, got the script in front of him and read it and immediately was like, I’ll do it. Which was the greatest feeling! But not only was it just a dream come true to put him in a scene with someone like Tatum, who I kind of feel like I discovered a little bit, but I really haven’t, like she was already booking stuff before Artifice Girl. But no, to pair her with a legend like Lance, who I’ve been a huge fan of since I was a kid, was unbelievable. And Lance could have just shown up and read the lines, but he cared so much about the character, so much about the story. We had so many long conversations over the phone on set about the ideas and about Gareth and how he connected them to his own personal life, which is such a great thing to hear from an actor. It, again, just couldn’t have been better. And yeah, Lance is a legend. Everything you’ve heard about him is true. And when he brings it, I mean, you can see in the film it, it’s, yeah, it’s incredible!