Private Project

Enough to be Dangerous

A young private detective with a strange drug habit has one day to solve a murder case involving surgical robots, his client's innocence on the line.

  • Alby Ravenswood
    Director
  • Sam Vanivray
    Writer
  • Sam Vanivray
    Producer
  • Sam Vanivray
    Key Cast
  • Teddi Grace
    Key Cast
  • Sonny Saggese
    Key Cast
  • Shawn Barylski
    Key Cast
  • Chastity Ross
    Key Cast
  • Dan Crowley
    Key Cast
  • Joshua Rajman
    Key Cast
  • Emily Durrant
    Key Cast
  • Travis Gray
    Cinematography
  • Evan Langley
    Music
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    crime, thriller, neo-noir, mystery
  • Runtime:
    34 minutes 41 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 21, 2014
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.35:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Buffalo Niagara Film Festival
    N. Tonawanda, NY
    April 14, 2015
    North American Premiere
Director Biography - Alby Ravenswood

As a child Sam Vanivray possessed a few innocent dreams, such as creating robots and making films. After building several robots, Sam turned his attention to acting and screenplay writing. Enough to be Dangerous is his first film as producer.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Enough to be Dangerous is a detective story. Although it's noirish, Enough to be Dangerous is actually a classic mystery: a problem is presented; a detective character leads the audience through the wilderness of clues and red herrings; finally, the problem is solved with rational thinking. Film noir--with its inputs including surrealism--never had those strict mystery genre requirements.

The most difficult constraint with this story is the brevity. The script compresses a three-act mystery narrative into 32 pages. Characters are designed to have depth in the form of many skills and hints of untold backstory, yet they're cliché enough for quick assimilation by the audience.

Increasing the density of this experiment, we have various science fictional concepts. First, the instigating crime results from abuse of telepresence and human-controlled surgical robots. These are actually real-life nascent fields. In Enough to be Dangerous, we show a potential way in which teleoperated medical manipulators could become weapons.

Second, the concept of product "cloning" is used, i.e. high-tech knockoffs. Again, this is based on real life scenarios. For instance, Chinese factories are known to make counterfeit goods which are actually based on the designs of the American originals--which are of course made in the same Chinese factories.

Third, the main character, Herbert Drome (a private investigator), uses and abuses memory enhancement drugs. They're referred to as "nootropics"--in reality, the term nootropics covers not only memory enhancement but also attention, motivation, etc. In Enough to be Dangerous, the nootropics are stolen prescriptions sold by a drug dealer. Unfortunately, they are addictive. But, advanced memory abilities gives Herbert an edge for recalling and comparing subtle clues.

So put on your fancy shoes and join Herbert Drome for some hard-boiled cogitation.