With fantastic central performances from Taj Cross and Jesse LaTourette, Verse, playing at Tribeca Festival, is an 18-minute short film that opens an important door to conversation and debate in a world where physical existence and online identities continuously shape and inform one another as tech and AI further wrap their digital arms around the world.
The PlayStation One arrived just in time for my student years, and while nobody could afford one in the early days, by the time I reached my second year of university, someone in my shared student house had one. It was the same year that dial-up internet arrived in the university library, and early versions of Yahoo search and chat became the go-to source for information and networking, if you could nab one of the extremely slow computers available. It was a time when we felt we were all witnessing a giant step forward in technology, from DTS, CGI, and Dolby Digital in cinemas to RealPlayer, MP3, gaming, the internet, and MiniDisk.
Yet, as we played the PlayStation game Worms as students, surrounded by beer, I don’t think any of us could have foreseen just how fast those technologies would advance in three decades. Games are now interactive, escapist events, and the internet has become the foundation stone of our modern civilisation. Add AI, and we are slowly moving toward a world where you can be anyone you want, online, at least. It’s the world of Ready Player One, and a world that Director Noam Argov and writer Sappir Argov explore in their short film, Verse.
Adam, the brilliant Taj Cross, is a gamer who, like many people, prefers the online world to the offline one. The immersive world of Verse has become Adam’s world, a place where he can reinvent himself into the person he wants to be and thinks he should be. In Verse, Adam is buff, chisled and strong, a protector of women and a challenger to alpha males who step on his toes. He has a girlfriend in Verse, an effervescent and confident young woman called Sam; neither of them has met in real life, but for Adam, that doesn’t matter, as long as they are together in Verse. Of course, as in the outside world, there are bullies in the Verse world, but unlike Adam’s life offline, he can handle them, or can he?
When Sam suggests they meet in person, offline, Adam is full of doubts and questions: What will she think of me? What will she think of my body? What if I don’t like her offline? Yet he agrees to the meeting and travels across the city to a nondescript residential house where Sam (Jesse LaTourette) is nervously awaiting him.
As they meet in person for the first time, both are relieved that they aren’t turned off by each other, and Sam is keen to take things further. But, Adam is only confident in the online space, and he quickly suggests they play together, despite the purpose of their meeting being an offline connection. It’s a mistake that will change everything when Adam and Sam encounter the renowned bully SlothMan420, and Adam takes him on, leading to an online assault that leaves a deep psychological and emotional scar both online and offline.
Argov’s short isn’t just a profoundly urgent exploration of the offline and online worlds and how the two can become one when toxic behaviours cross the digital line; it’s also a technological triumph, told through a hybrid mix of live action, animation, and motion capture. Even more impressive is that this is a student project supported by New York University’s Graduate Film Program, NYU ITP’s mocap studio, the Creative Commons Lab, and a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Verse is, in part, a coming-of-age story as Adam realises that no matter which character you choose to create, the vulnerabilities you carry in the real world will ultimately follow you online, too. But it also urgently explores a topic that is never far from the front pages of any newspaper or website: online harm, psychological impact, and the ability to create a persona and hide behind it. Adam believes the online world is safer, more equitable and free. He believes his online persona is impenetrable, brave and strong. Others around him believe they, too, are different and transformed in the online world, but it’s all a lie, a fantasy that feels better than the offline world, but is, in truth, a mirror image of it.
With fantastic central performances from Taj Cross and Jesse LaTourette, Verse is an 18-minute short film that opens an important door to conversation and debate in a world where physical existence and online identities continuously shape and inform one another as tech and AI further wrap their digital arms around the world.
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