Los Angeles – 2023. James Striker is on the verge of bringing down the oppressive government that has crushed all freedom in the United States.
Shifter is perhaps a higher than usual budget short, but still on a tight one considering the content created by the Hallivis brothers. Despite some obvious stereotypes often seen in Hollywood films, its the high end production quality of this film that quickly garnishes our attention.
The film is set in Los Angeles 2023. Where James Striker is on the verge of bringing down the oppressive government that has crushed all freedom in the United States. But before he can take them on, Striker must get past a homicidal drone and an elite squad of EFT soldiers. His only advantage is the SHIFT, a process that allows Striker to transfer his mind into an identical clone body. New body, Same mission: Bring the whole system down.
Diego and I are fascinated with the idea of a technological device that would allows humans to transfer their consciousness to a different body. We are only given one body in this lifetime, but what if every time you get terminally ill, or hurt you are able to switch to a different body and get a second chance. The application for this technology would be endless; soldiers during missions, police officers, firefighters everyone that risks their lifes on an every day basis would feel more confident knowing that if something goes wrong they can shift bodies and go home to their families. But then what happens if this technology lands in the wrong hands, as we know mankind has a dark side, and a technology like this could also be use for a lot of wrong doing. Shifter is just a teaser of what a world with this technology would be like. We choose to show the technology on a hero trying to bring a corrupt system down, and develop a story that is full of excitement, danger and action.
The Hallivis brothers managed to fit this ambiguous synopsis into a short 10 minute film quite nicely. Something that wouldn’t have been possible without the hard work of the entire crew and incredible pre-production preparation.
We had an amazing crew that worked very hard to make this happen on a string budget. It took us a lot of planning specially the elevator scene. Since we didn’t have a big budget for this we had to improvise and come up with creative solutions to pull it off. We would love to develop this into a feature film and hopefully time would let us!
We did get the impression that this was just a small part of something much bigger, where surely the brothers have something more in mind. Shifter is set upon several Hollywood action-flic storyline standards, but packs a rather impressive set of special and visual effects, as well as stunt and even set designs. Something that is well beyond the short film standard. Have a quick look at the ‘Behind the Scenes’ of Shifter to be amazed at how this all came together.
Watch the Storyboard comparison
