Seemly conjured up by some diabolical tech bro driven by an overwhelming desire to block, frustrate and waste the time of millions of internet users whilst surreptitiously having us train the AIs that will one day replace us all, the CAPTCHA is (second only to cookie notices) one of the most hated, yet unavoidable annoyances of life in the digital age. But what if that seemingly innocuous checkbox question held more philosophical weight than it appears to? Victoria Warmerdam’s Oscar nominated I’m Not a Robot runs that delicious kernel of a concept to a denouement which is as fitting as it is unexpected. The story of music producer Lara who after repeatedly failing CAPTCHA tests becomes obsessed with the disturbing question: could she be a robot?, and the lone genre piece competing for the 2025 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film, marks the third collaboration between the writer/director and her partner and producer Trent of OAK Motion Pictures, following Snorrie and the 2020 Iris Prize winning Short Calf Muscle (Korte Kuitspier). Given that I’m Not a Robot is available to watch in full right now below this introduction, courtesy of The New Yorker, I’m not going to rob you of the joyful delight I experienced on my first watch – which is only bested by rewatching it in a room full of unsuspecting viewers – by laying out any more of the film’s plot or the multi-faceted themes which it subtlety addresses. This is a short that I’m more than confident will have you eager to read our spoiler containing interview with Warmerdam and Trent, where they lay bare the construction of the film’s stunt set piece, that is, once you’ve recovered…
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
This is a film that I’ve been enjoying a lot on the festival circuit, which is something I want to get into later. But to start, could you introduce yourselves and the inspiration behind I’m Not a Robot?
Victoria Warmerdam: I’m Victoria, the writer/director of the film, here with Trent, the producer. We are actually a couple; we met about eight years ago. We started working together and we’ve made three short films so far. This one, I’m Not a Robot, is the third. It started when I was trying to get through some captchas and kept failing multiple times. I thought, oh, this might have been a fun way to find out that I’m actually a robot. That thought took a darker turn as I began to wonder: what if you start questioning whether you are a robot, whether you’re real, and whether your partner has been lying to you all this time? I was intrigued by that Truman Show aspect because for some reason I have this fear that someday someone will tell me that the world is not what I thought it was. That’s a very scary, scary thought I have and the film plays a little with that feeling.
What I really like is to surprise myself when I’m writing and I also like it when every scene adds. Making it as simple as possible with all those questions, that was the challenge.
I love that you open up all these questions from such a simple setup. I enjoy speaking to female filmmakers who are questioning female roles. The gaslighting aspect is so relevant; I wanted to kill the boyfriend character! There’s so much in the script, how was the process of developing it to ensure you included everything you wanted?
VW: That’s a good question. When I started with this simple idea, I also saw the ending which is not like my typical ending because it’s quite dark. I saw that image and thought it would be a challenge to go from this mundane start to that ending in less than 30 minutes. When you start thinking about the subject, there are many existential questions, like what is free will, and what is reality? She thinks she is this woman in this company with all females and she’s doing okay, she’s the breadwinner. There were so many things going on such as, what is humanity? But what I really like is to surprise myself when I’m writing and I also like it when every scene adds. Making it as simple as possible with all those questions, that was the challenge.
Trent: We wanted to stay focused on Lara, the main character, while also considering this wider world where robots do exist and are indistinguishable from humans. How does this world work? How much do we have to explain in this short movie? That was also an important one. There’s so much more about this world that we know and which informed the story. 98% of that is not in the film but I think you feel it, that this is a world and it does exist. In the first versions of the script, we explained much more about the world, and even in the editing, a scene was taken out that explains something about the world. So in the end, you feel the world, but it’s not really being explained.
VW: I always like it when a film dives into it immediately and along the way, you learn something about that world and how it works. It was more about stripping away everything you don’t need because I think that’s the most important part, to take your audience seriously. Especially in a short film, you don’t want a whole lot of exposition.
One thing that struck me is that while the story is very modern in terms of robots and AI, the film’s visuals have a vintage feel.
VW: When I was writing the film and talking about it with crew members, you start to think, “OK, what is the world going to look like?” Of course, we could have gone in the direction of this clean sci-fi world but I was always looking for the human side of it. I think we human beings have the tendency to long for the past and so we drew inspiration for this longing for vintage and retro design. We shot it on 35mm film which was also a decision of going back to human craftsmanship that really ties into that human approach of the film.
I think this is the most personal film for me because I drew inspiration for her character based on how I would react. In the film, there’s a scene where she’s walking through this corridor with her boyfriend on the phone and she’s a bit hypochondriac about the whole thing. That’s mainly our conversations between the two of us because I’m a hypochondriac as well. So I put in all those little things – even if she’s a robot and I’m not it feels very personal.
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And how did you find your stunning office location?
VW: We found a beautiful location that looked like a 60s spaceship. The location manager sent us some photos and we said, “OK, this is the perfect office space”, and then he was like, “Yeah, but it’s super expensive, this is just a reference.” But when you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it! He sent some other locations which were also nice but not that location.
I think this is the most personal film for me because I drew inspiration for her character based on how I would react.
T: I think the price he quoted, something around $15,000 per day, was the commercial price, so after a couple of weeks I said maybe you can ask them, you never know. We’re not a big series. We’re not from the US. We’re not a commercial. We’re a short film. They were quite supportive and we managed to negotiate a much lower price, which was still expensive for us, but we knew we had to make it work because we’d never find something else like this.
I want to talk about the scene on the roof. How was that scene planned out and executed because, for me, it was so integral to everything?
VW: We shot that scene in the last two days, and it was quite a challenge, especially the stunt scene, as it was my first time doing one so I was really worried about it. It was quite hard to write that last scene because it’s such a build up and of course, you don’t want to disappoint your audience. I think that’s the part of the script that I worked the most on to build it up properly. Also to make it completely believable that she’s actually jumping because it’s such a short amount of time and she has to go through a lot of steps internally to actually do that. For me, it was never that she has any sort of a death wish, it’s more this F you to her boyfriend, like, “No, I’m in control!”
When we were doing the stunt, we had prepped it two or three times because we had to postpone the shoot a couple of times because of Covid. What I had envisioned was shooting it in one shot from the moment that she decides to jump because I wanted to be with her and really go for that impact. However, the stunt coordinator said, “OK, but we can’t do the last part of the running because the stunt woman is attached to cables so she has to run a little bit to have the speed to jump off the building” and the cables were not long enough. The timing wasn’t the best because it was right before lunch and that’s not the best time to break bad news! During lunch, we had to figure out another way to shoot it and I’m really glad that our DP, Martijn van Broekhuizen, came up with this idea. So now when she’s walking away and her boyfriend is yelling, we pan and in that pan back, we do the swap with the stunt woman, then she goes on the railing and when she’s looking back, we have a face replacement with the actress. Then she jumps and she stops right before the ground, and then you shoot a plate of her doing that last bit. Then you have to stitch it all together in post which was also very nerve-wracking because if it doesn’t work, we don’t have a film, there’s no other ending! Everyone kept saying, “Yeah, that’s going to be alright” but you see the visual effects at 80% done and you don’t believe it.
T: After we locked the film, the visual effects were at 95% and it still didn’t work so we were like, we have to push it to make it to 100% which really took some fine-tuning. Neither of us has a lot of experience in visual effects and it’s very difficult to trust others in that case, because if they say, “But it’s going to be fine” you’re like, “Yeah, you can say it’s going to be fine but we have to make sure it’s going to be fine. We have to see it.”
VW: As a director and a producer, we’re responsible for that. But at the same time, in my case as a writer-director, most of the time I’m just writing, I’m not on set as much as I would like so it’s also a lesson in trusting your crew because they have that experience. I think that was a very eye-opening experience for me. Of course, you have to be on top of it but you also have to trust your crew and trust the process.
I wanted to ask about the sound design. Her job revolves around music and the sound is crucial for building tension. I listen to films loudly in my headphones and I loved how you played with that.
VW: Beforehand, we spoke about the sound design and music a lot. In my previous two shorts, both sound design and score didn’t play a huge part because they have way more dialogue than this film. When I was starting to write the script, I asked the composer that I worked with previously how we could implement more music into it. So in this process, he started to write the music while I was writing the script and that way we could go back and forth, and influence and inspire each other. Some parts of the music that he wrote beforehand are in the final film and I think that really makes it feel like a whole in a way. For the sound design we were looking for a very intimate, human sort of sound. It’s funny because when you watch your film in a different room it’s always different. I think the sound design is maybe a little too subtle in some environments.
It’s like the sound design is almost her heartbeat, it’s a very human element.
T: Especially if you’re playing with other shorts that have their sound level high and we are subtle – maybe we should tune it up. When discussing it we talked about the human element and the robot element. It’s like the sound design is almost her heartbeat, it’s a very human element. We really worked with her feelings, her touching things, her breath. There was one element on the roof where he says, “I don’t want to mourn…” and then he says “…again” and we only see her face for 30, 40 seconds. Originally at that moment there was a tone in her head and there’s also a tone like that in the boardroom when she finally understands, shit, I’m a robot! I did like it but at the same time, Victoria and the sound designer thought it might be a bit too much. Then we focussed on the wind and decided to make it a little bit bigger, which gave us this moment of silence with the wind. It’s a lovely moment.
How was the edit and balancing the progression of Lara’s different emotions?
VW: How I usually work with Trent is that he does the first cut with the editor because I’m always terrified of editing, especially that first pass. 80% of the edit I find horrible because I’m such a perfectionist and I much prefer it when I can fine-tune. But that’s mostly when you’re about to finish either writing a script or the editing process so Trent did the first part.
T: What’s so nice about our collaboration is that she trusts me to do that because I know what’s going on in her head. When I do the first stage of editing, I try to cut away a lot of the bullshit because when you make a film, 90% of what you’re shooting is never going to be used as it’s not good enough. So I make a cut, which of course is 100% based on the script, and then try to find the shots that are good. Of course, that’s not that difficult because there are a lot of good takes, but I try to find something in Victoria’s taste.
With comedy it’s so crucial to find the right timing because a frame more or frame less…it can ruin the joke.
VW: Also, we didn’t shoot a lot because we were shooting on film so that’s already easier in the edit when you don’t have much material. We rehearsed a lot so then when you start shooting it’s not the ‘shit’, it’s good takes but you still have to choose and watch through every take which is something Trent does upfront.
T: Hopefully the first edit is where she can see, “Oh, this could be something”, rather than the “Oh my God, this is nothing!” of before that point. Victoria starts to like editing after versions 15 or 16. I remember one time on I think a 20 day edit, maybe day 15 or 16 or 14 I don’t know, she was saying, “Oh my God, I think I made the worst film ever. If it’s going to be like this, do we have to showcase it?” I said, “No, we can put it on a shelf and we don’t have to do anything with it. It doesn’t matter. We’re not obliged to do anything.” That’s how her mind works.
VW: I think every director can relate to that. But especially with comedy it’s so crucial to find the right timing because a frame more or frame less…it can ruin the joke. That fine-tuning is also in finding the right flow and the right timing. I usually like to go through it scene by scene, fine-tune a scene and then go to another. But in the end, you have to bring it all together and find the flow of the whole film so that was quite a challenge. I was really glad that Trent and the editor were very optimistic about it. That was another eye-opening thing and connects to what I said earlier, I really had to trust Trent and the editor who are more experienced. Every director goes through, “Oh fuck, I made the worst film ever!” Then, most of the time, at some point it will be fine and it works. Saying that, if I knew that I was going to be nominated for an Oscar, I’d have been dead depressed I think.
