If you haven’t seen the short film RISE, well take five minutes of your time and enjoy it. This amazing short film captures a distopic society loosely based on events from the democratic uprisings that arose independently and spread across the Arab world in 2011. This sci-fi concept piece is a labour of work to showcase just a glimpse of what the full-feature would be. Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games + Animation held an event night on Thursday, May 5th, 2016. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here is a video of the whole evening, which included a question that I ask him at 1:22:00. Enjoy!!!

David Karlak Filmmaker, Los Angeles

David Karlak is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. In 2010, he directed the short film The Candidate, which generated a huge buzz in Hollywood after making the prestigious Viewfinder List in 2011. Following the success of The Candidate, David sold an original sci-fi pitch to Warner Brothers, titled RISE, with Roy Lee producing. He then sold a second original pitch titled Outliers to 20th Century Fox with Peter Chernin producing. David is attached to direct both films. In recent years, he has also been exploring the use of virtual reality for storytelling and even directed a virtual reality experience set in the world of RISE which premiered at the Storyscapes series at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2014. For more information visit www.davidkarlak.com.