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Schrödinger’s Girl

Science fiction in the cinema has a long and distinguished pedigree. From ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’ right through to the multi-million dollar epics of the last three decades, the vistas of possible futures predicted by film-makers have become increasingly realistic and immersive. Significantly, a bigger budget has not always produced a better movie: the bloated CGI mess of ‘I Robot’ is a sharp contrast to the reverse-engineered sets and ingenious lighting techniques used on the classic ‘Bladerunner’. Nevertheless, the recent advent of relatively cheap digital effects means film-makers are able to create ever more polished documents of these possible worlds.

Enter a new British science fiction film produced completely without interference or funding from the mainstream film industry. It has everything you want from speculative cinematic fiction – artificial intelligence, parallel universes and experimental quantum physics, and most importantly, a tough-as-nails female heroine, armed with futuristic weaponry. Meet ‘Schrödinger’s Girl.’



Produced and directed by Huw Bowen of Sundog Industries, the film follows the adventures of renegade scientist Rebecca Hunter (played by Abigail Tarttelin), whose research into parallel universes leads her on a high-octane adventure through alternate versions of England, on a quest to prevent her alter-egos from destroying reality as we know it.

In an era where mass-produced, over-fed films are flooding the box office, it looks like ‘Schrödinger’s Girl’ could be that rare thing – a movie that appeals to the brain, as well as gripping the audience’s guts for 90 minutes of action-packed thrills. Currently seeking a distributor, the film lacks an official release date, but from the preview alone it looks like this could be one of the most exciting British-made films since ‘Shaun of the Dead.’ Undoubtedly, ‘Schrödinger’s Girl’ deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.

Citing the hyper-complex fictions of Charles Stross and Iain M. Banks (among others) as influences, uncompromising film-maker Bowen says of his feature: “I really wanted to make an SF movie that has interesting ideas and doesn't insult the intelligence of the audience.” Weaponizer began boning up on back issues of ‘New Scientist’ to chat to Huw about quantum uncertainty, brane theory, and hot chicks with guns.

The premise of the famous Schrödinger’s Cat experiment involves the idea of Quantum probability – in what way does your movie relate to the original thought experiment proposes by Schrödinger?

The story is certainly related to Schrödinger's thought-experiment - it's about the idea that until we have observed an event, that event is in a state of flux. The cat in the box is neither alive nor dead, but both at once. Rebecca, our heroine, discovers that the neural accelerant drug that she has been using gives her the ability to alter quantum probabilities on a macro-scale - but only when she is unobserved.

Having said that, there are no cats in the movie, and the name Schrödinger is only mentioned once, in passing, so it's one of those obscure movie titles. It's also difficult to spell. But I like it!

Science fiction contains many examples of strong female heroines – Sarah Connor from Terminator, Ripley from Alien and so on. How does your heroine compare to these genre staples?

Science-fiction has a strong progressive tradition. Sci-fi writers and fans tend to have a kind of humanist default. It's generally considered obvious that an entity's gender, race, sexuality, number of eyes, cyborg prosthetics, whatever, don't define them as individuals. I think we largely take it as a given that humans are equally capable of doing marvellous or terrible things. So it seemed perfectly natural to me to have a female protagonist - and of course, I grew up with Sarah Connor and Ripley as well, so they were obviously an influence.

Also, chicks with guns are hot.



No arguments there! From the preview, it seems like the movie will be exploring the ‘multiverse’ theory of reality – to what extent did you draw on ideas from cutting-edge physics to inform the story?

There was quite a bit of research involved! I had to become familiar enough with the Many-Worlds Hypothesis and brane theory, amongst other esoteric concepts. Then I took the ideas I liked and distorted them beyond all recognition... The science in the film is not accurate in a strict sense, but its close enough to actual science to not be embarrassing. I hope.

John Gribbin's excellent book ‘In Search of Schrödinger's Cat’ was an invaluable resource for the science stuff.

Do you see theories like the ‘multiverse’ as simply good material for fiction, or do you believe that there may be other realities and dimensions in real life?

There may well be other dimensions and realities. Disappointingly, our current understanding of physics seems to indicate that they are permanently inaccessible to us, which really is a huge shame. Fictionally, though, it's a great device for storytelling. I cut my teeth on guys like Michael Moorcock and Bryan Talbot so I've always loved alternate-world stories. I'd love to believe in other dimensions and the like, but I'd need to see some pretty good evidence first!

Where did you find your lead actress, and what qualities were you looking for in her performance?

We were very lucky with our lead actress, Abigail Tarttelin. She applied to audition based on our advert on Casting Call Pro. We had a lot of very strong contenders for the part, but Abigail seemed to instinctively get all three characters very quickly. We knew we needed a very versatile actress, and we were really fortunate there. It's not easy to play three characters at once - especially when they're all in the same scene and have to convincingly interact with each other!

Our actors came from a variety of sources - some applied out of the blue, and some have been working with us for years. They're all damn good and they worked like machines - their commitment and professionalism is exceptional.



Once you had a script, what made you decide to produce the film independently, as opposed to trying to sell it to a mainstream studio?

We just decided that we didn't really need a mainstream studio. The script was written from the ground up to be able to be shot very cheaply. We've got our own editing and VFX workstations, and our own camera gear, so really, studio help was kind of superfluous. It would have been fantastic to have about twice the time and ten times the cash, but on the other hand, I had a degree of freedom from interference that I wouldn't have had otherwise. This film is very personal to me. Of course, I'm not going to do it like this again - next time, I'd like studio money and interference!

What are some of the difficulties you faced during production?

Every day brings new difficulties in production. In fact, pretty much everything about producing a film is difficult! It's like flying the Millennium Falcon - completely awesome, but you've got to keep your eyes open for bits of the ship falling off. Plus everything smells slightly of damp Wookie.

The main problems always come down to time and money. If I could have had twice as much time to do everything, then I would have happily grabbed it. But, on the other hand, good art comes from limits - working within strict boundary conditions makes you more inventive and resourceful.

Who did you turn to for the special effects and makeup, and how important are these elements to the story you are trying to tell?

Special and visual effects were crucial to this movie. Our makeup team, ably lead by Cher Treaugust and Julie Stevens, were completely fantastic and always had more fake blood and bigger prosthetic scars when I needed them. I've done a lot of visual effects - compositing, mostly - so I knew I'd pick up a lot of the VFX shots myself, and indeed I am doing that right now. We've got a couple of great CG artists from the Birmingham area, Christian Lett and Andy Madgwick, who are working on our 3D CGI stuff for the alternate universe skylines, and the outer-space stuff.

These days, with the availability of relatively cheap workstations and software like After Effects, Shake and Maya, you can get really good results on a fairly shoestring budget. It's a cliché, I know, but it has revolutionised filmmaking.

It looks like a lot of location filming was involved – where did you film, and how difficult was it to arrange suitable locations that suited the visual effects you were creating?

Locations were not as hard to find as they might have been. We had some really good people working on our locations - big shout-outs to Paul Hardy, Jen Preece, Cate Brennan and Robyn Smith! Also, various local institutions were very helpful - Warwick District Council and Coventry Council were really great, the police were really helpful (and didn't send down an ARU when we were running around with guns) and a lot of local businesses helped us out by lending us locations and doing us a lot of favours. The University of Warwick lent us their drama studio to build sets in during the Easter break, which was completely fantastic, and the Warwick University Science Park came through for us like absolute rock-stars.

The area where we shot - Warwick, Leamington and Coventry - has got a great mixture of architecture and scenery. We were able to find everything from ultra-modern laboratories to post-apocalyptic wastelands.

In general, making movies gets a lot easier when you're outside London or LA - people get excited about it and want to help out. In LA, they know what filmmakers are like and try to chase us away with pointy sticks and occasionally automatic weaponry.

What were your own influences, in terms of TV shows and films you admire for their tone / look / feel / subject matter?

My influences are fairly mixed. Right now, I'm completely hooked on Lost, though I wouldn't say it was a big influence on this film. I'm a fan of all the standard SF TV stuff - Star Trek, Battlestar, Dr. Who, Heroes, Firefly etc.

I love Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock and attempt, poorly, to rip them off as frequently as possible. I'm really impressed by a lot of the filmmakers from the Spanish-speaking world at the moment - guys like Pedro Almodovar, Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron have an amazing fluidity and mastery as directors and storytellers.

A lot of my influences for this film come from literary SF. I'm a huge fan of writers like Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Paul DiFilippo, Iain M. Banks, Greg Egan and a stack of others who I am unfairly forgetting. I've always felt that written SF has a much broader scope than most stuff that ends up on the screen. Of course, you've got much more scope in a novel than you have in a screenplay..

In terms of distribution, how are you planning to get Schrödinger’s Girl to as wide an audience as possible?

Distribution is always a sore point with independent films! We don't have a distributor as yet. We're going to take the movie to as many film festivals as possible, and if we get good reviews and good audience feedback, then that will make negotiating with distributors much easier.

Some people see science fiction as being allegorical: talking about the present within the context of a speculative story. Others see science fiction as being a kind of cautionary tale – warning against totalitarianism (cf. 1984) or eugenics (cf. Brave New World). Is Schrödinger’s Girl an example of either of these views, or is it something else entirely?

‘Schrödinger’s Girl’ has certainly got an allegorical component. Thematically, the battle is between individuality and conformity. Our heroine, Rebecca, is a complete non-conformist, and is indeed a fairly selfish individual initially. Her darker parallel self, Anastasia, is a die-hard unreconstructed Stalinist, the kind of person who will always put The People first, no matter how many people she has to kill to do so.

It's an important conflict in the 21st Century. Are we going to bow down before huge, oppressive, monolithic entities like the RIAA or the Chinese Communist Party? Are we going to be content to be monitored, indexed, filed and processed? Or are we going to use our brains and technologies to work for liberty, peace, justice, and happiness?

Having said all of that, ‘Schrödinger’s Girl’ is not an overtly political film. Its main goal in life is to give people an entertaining and intriguing 90 minutes.



The music in the preview is fantastic – who created your soundtrack, and what feel were you aiming for?

Why thank-you! The music was written by my good friend Mr. K, of a band called Mudtusk, and the beats and production were done by me. We're working on the soundtrack together, with additional contributions by Nino Marsala, Damian Hayes and DJ Lord Numb. Leamington has a pretty rich musical scene, so it wasn't hard to assemble a kick-ass crew of musicians.

In terms of the feel of the soundtrack, I was very keen for it to have a futuristic, non-orchestral sound. I want it to be hip, for want of a better word!

Finally, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your previous work in film?

As for me, my name is Huw Bowen. I've been making films for a number of years now, after spending a lot of time making music. I had an album out under the name Sundog a few years back. I've done a lot of shorts, some of which can be found on YouTube, and a pile of music videos and the like. I used to teach at a film school in LA, until I realised I was spending all my time teaching and none of my time making films. Then I came back here to get this off the ground.

My two co-producers are Chris Pinches and Paul Hardy. They've both done a number of award-winning shorts, and Paul has written an excellent book on low-budget filmmaking. We've been working together for years. They're great guys, smart and motivated, and I'd have been sunk without them.

Watch the preview for ‘Schrödinger’s Girl’ on YouTube, and keep an eye out for it at local film festivals and independent cinemas.

Weaponizer will be reviewing the film in full some time in June – keep an eye on our Blog for more information.

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