A young couple enjoys a quiet evening at home, over and over again, caught in some time-loop, temporal paradox. Revitalizing the found-footage approach, TIMƎLIKE is a well told lo-fi science fiction mindbender, riddled with cryptic clues of an unstable future.
March 1993, Madeline and her boyfriend are enjoying a quiet evening at home when they are interrupted by a visit from a stranger bearing a message from Madeline’s future self:
Written & Directed by Rich Boylan / Produced by Mel Hoy / Sound by Thomas Thompson / Madeline: Eva Jonn, Chloe: Mel Hoy, Rich: Richard Boylan.
Unnerving, right? I love its aesthetic, how it was all recorded on a VHS camcorder, and the flannel shirt and NOFX cassette playing in the background were nice touches too. The short is open to interpretation and theories, what remains clear is how amazing TIMƎLIKE is at creating atmosphere and intrigue from 8 minutes of film, while Hollywood seemingly struggles to produce original ideas — All credit to Boylan and his crew. Here he elaborates about the process;
“Footage was shot, captured and edited on Adobe Premiere, then the edit was dumped back to VHS and copied from one tape to another as many times as was necessary to get that nice worn out look. I did a few run throughs where I really messed up the tracking as it copied for scenes where I wanted additional distortion.”
Richard Boylan (definitely a person to watch) is a cinematic designer for video game developer Bioware, where he’s worked on the Mass Effect series and is currently working on Mass Effect: Andromeda. He also contributed this hilarious video to the Shia LaBeouf memosphere:
I suspect TIMƎLIKE is going to go viral, if not in this universe’s current timeline, then definitely in another. And this… Because my mind just went there
🎭 