‘Ten found records. Ten different stories. No images. You are alone in the dark.’
This is how Timothée Hochet, a 23 year-old web filmmaker and director of ‘Calls’, introduces this unprecedented TV experience, that gives a real value to imagination.
After discovering a catalog of authentic and dramatic audio-records from calls to 911 in the US, the young director felt emotions that no film had ever generated before – such as fear of the unknown, silence and breathes. This newly-felt emotions inspired him to create a web series.
In ten episodes of ten minutes, the TV viewer is thrown into frightening stories in just a few seconds: a terrified call from a young woman to 911, divers who disappear during a submarine exploration, a near-death experience… Beyond a black screen, the TV viewer sees some dialogs, flashes and lights. Each episode can be listened to independently, but they are all connected, whether through the characters, the places or a certain kind of temporality, and are all linked to the Apocalypse introduced in the first episode.
When Lorenzo Benedetti, Chief Executive of Studio Bagel, a platform of humorous videos discovered the short program ‘Calls’ on the Internet, he thought it was ‘by far the most original audiovisual object posted on the Internet for years’, and was immediately convinced by the format. Many prestigious French actors have lent their voice to this original adventure.
Many prestigious French actors have lent their voice to this original adventure, the first in a series of scripted and non-scripted programs under a newly-created label by Canal+, ‘Création décalée’ (Quirky creation) promising surprising offbeat content.
‘Calls’ is being broadcast in France on the Canal+ Décalé channel.
