The best science fiction stories reveal the truth about ourselves, and make us think about the ways we are using science and technology. With our thesis film Future Proof, we plan to do exactly that.

The Realities of AI. Before the advent of Large Language Models, few could have predicted that this is what AI would look like, or feel like to use. Our science fiction stories portrayed AI as Terminator, or HAL, but what we ended up with is something far different. And it's something we need to talk about, because it's impacting our science and technology already.

OpenAI recently published a solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, a Millennium prize math problem that had stood unsolved for 90 years. With more and more of the sciences adopting AI in their workflows, we feel that this film should work as an examination of what AI actually thinks like, in contrast to the many films from science fiction history that did not predicted the way this tool came to exist. As filmmakers, we are surrounded by folks who use AI every day, and alternately by folks who have claimed a total personal ban on it. Which will it be? What level of use is responsible, ethical, moral, and beneficial for humanity? If we don't start updating our storytelling about AI with films like Future Proof, we'll lose the opportunity to discuss and examine this new and incredibly powerful tool as a society.

Human Responsibility. In our film, the antagonist AI uses Gregory's voice because it is a copy of him: a personality model trained on his recordings. Modern LLMs are built on trillions of units of data drawn and created from humans - in many ways, they are a mirror of ourselves. But that doesn't mean AI is implicitly bad, or good - simply that it is a tool that is designed to give us what we want. And when we ask for what we want, who should be responsible for the outcome? When science and technology give us godlike powers, what does that mean about who we are as humans?

The Engineering Problem. In a world so materially advanced by AI that faster-than-light travel is possible, how does hard human intelligence stack up? What parts of it are we still responsible for, and how does good old human intelligence play a role? Our main character, Claire, is a semiconductor engineer: deeply intelligent but also incredibly stubborn. Her solutions to escaping the clutches of the AI are not always conventional, but strongly rooted in real, practical science. Our ship has been designed to be a nod to real, hard sciences, even though it has faster than light travel. We want this world to feel real and possible, and are continuing to develop our story to make it feel so.

We're calling our starship the Meridian Needle - a futuristic vessel based on real science and components extrapolated from today's technology. It's the most expensive ship in the galaxy, owned and designed by Gregory, Claire's nefarious ex-husband. Despite its transparent cockpit, it's a cage - and it grows more claustrophobic as the film progresses.

We'll build the observation cabin practically, out of acrylic sheets, with the rest of the vessel extending beyond it in VFX. Yes, it's a complex, difficult build — but it's where 100% of our film takes place. We're narrowing our focus to make something that truly stands out from other student films.

The Meridian Needle is a fictional spacecraft built around real engineering ideas. We've designed it so that each section of the ship has a specific scientic job. These include the observation cabin, an inhabited laboratory, solar arrays and a speculative Alcubierre drive. We want the audience to feel that Claire is trapped inside a machine she can understand — and, as an engineer, learn to challenge.

The visual language draws from the best of futuristic science fiction: grounded in reality, extrapolated with our imagination. For our observation deck, where we spend most of the film, we imagine glass, light, and isolation as design principles. We're creating a film that is suffocatingly intense — despite the glass walls, this starship is very much a cage. We're in one character's POV through a gripping 10-minute thrill ride, as the clock counts down and the pressure mounts.

Inside the starship, we'll create a gripping world that shifts between large dolly and jib moves and intimate handheld moments. We'll build the ship on a rotating platform, so that we have 360-degree access to the virtual environment. We want to be as precise as Claire is as she navigates the puzzle she's in - but as she slowly loses control, so do we. We'll build the ship to be modular, allowing us to decide when and where to shoot through glass and when to be up close and personal with Claire. At its core, this is a film about coercive control, and a woman who must learn to trust herself when everything around her is designed to make her doubt.

Practical Build + LED Volume. We're aiming to shoot this entirely on an LED volume wall, so that the environment outside can be captured perfectly through the glass. In a lot of ways it's like the 2013 sci-fi film Oblivion, which used a similar technique. It's an incredible way to create beautiful visuals that reflect, refract, and illuminate the set practically.

Single Cast. The film is essentially a one-woman show, which means an incredible performance is really going to shine. In a sense, it's an actor's vehicle, and I think that will be really attractive to the right person. We'll see Claire go through an entire journey on screen, right in front of us, with AI Gregory and Past Claire joining as voice roles.

Sound Design. The film lives in its audio: the droning alarm, the AI's measured voice, the recordings crackling from the wristpad, the mechanical pop of harness buckles. I'd love to make the ship itself sound reactive, and have the voice actors perform live on set.

Scope. The current draft is 10 pages long, and they all take place on this one set. That means we can put every dollar and every ounce of effort into one strong, carefully designed set piece. Instead of spreading ourselves too thin, we'll absolutely crush just one thing - better to swing hard at one ball than take a few half-hearted shots at many. We need to stand out!

Sagi is a director whose work is rooted in precise visual storytelling and an instinct for tension. He is currently a directing fellow at the American Film Institute, and spent the summer working on Amazon's GenAI team, contributing to their research and development on AI VFX pipelines and tooling. Future Proof is his thesis film: a contained, ambitious sci-fi that combines the intimacy of a one-room thriller with the scale of a space adventure, and raises critical questions about our use of AI and the responsibility of our actions.

His prior work spans narrative shorts and commercial productions for clients including PlayStation, Google, The Ritz-Carlton, and Hennessy — building a fluency with VFX, art direction, and performance that he now brings fully to narrative film.

Sagi is a two-time recipient of the Norman Jewison Filmmaker Award, and a recipient of the Ryan Churchill Promising Filmmaker Award and the Harvey Hart Director’s Award.

This film explores many of the themes I've been grappling with in my own life - responsibility, determinism, and the fear of being trapped. It's a story that makes me imagine the future, in good ways and bad ways, and I want to use it as a platform to begin discussion. It's also a story about a woman in the sciences, inspired by the women scientists in my own family, including my sister. Being dragged along on her projects my whole life (including tagging whales off the coast of South Africa!) has given me a respect and understanding of the sciences that I am eager to bring into my work in film. Through Claire, I want to explore scientific intelligence as something deeply human: curiosity, resourcefulness, and the confidence to trust your own reasoning even when someone is trying to undermine it.