Transcriber

For a brief period I worked as a transcriptionist for a pharmaceutical company. I transcribed conference calls, meetings and podcasts. On the surface the work was boring, grinding and tedious. But the more I transcribed the more engaged I became. Not with the content per se but I felt a growing sense of purpose with each keystroke. The voices playing in my headphones came from another moment in time and I felt like their conduit, document maker and archivist. Each transcript added to an increasing sense of pride and purpose. These were historical documents and I was their witness.

But jobs like "transcriptionist" are being automated everyday and for older workers or anybody slightly out of step with technology the rate of innovation, change and extreme specialization must feel meteoric. A population of prematurely decommissioned workers is on the rise. In my own family's experience some of these workers are often expected to upload their extensive knowledge into cheaper, younger and less experienced versions of themselves--a dehumanizing experience straight from a Philip K. Dick novel. Thinking about this process and its consequences gave birth to the film's main character, Apollo Demode.

A Zen like stillness surrounds Apollo. He is dignified and dedicated, sacrificing life and love for 39 years of service to COMMUNICORP. Apollo lives in a state of controlled existence, a lifelong meditation. But the grinding cogs of the corporate machinery have no mercy for relics like Apollo, and when his calculating boss embeds a message in an audio recording, Apollo's humble world is forever altered.

In French, Demode means "out of fashion" and Apollo represents a collective human experience in the 21st century. Transcriber is a parable for our times, influenced by the fully realized world of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and the existential fiction of Franz Kafka.