While surfing the internet one day, Byron stumbles upon a facial recognition app that allows him to identify his doppelgänger then use social media to track him down.
When I think of Paul Trillo I suddenly think that something bizarre is about to happen. He mystifies us once again in ‘Just The One of Us’ in perhaps his film that is closest to the ground – you’ll understand after watching the mind bending ‘A Truncated Story of Infinity‘ and the colorful ‘Salience‘. The film is about Byron who is in need of a change. While surfing the internet one day, he stumbles upon a facial recognition app that allows him to identify his doppelgänger then use social media to track him down. When the lookalikes finally connect, they are faced with the question of “what if?” What if you made different choices? What if you got the chance to see what could have been?
This film was commissioned by Samsung and produced through Vimeo for the Samsung Connected Series. Vimeo asked creators to come up with ideas around how technology connects people. I had this idea about how facial recognition technology could be used to find similar looking people. It was something that was entirely possible but also very bizarre and funny. I tried to keep that balance of absurdity and unexpected realism in the film.
The film is serene and its beauty is in fact in how it kept in touch with reality within its absurdity, something that Paul is quite ingenious at.
