Sex Machine 2025

WRITER, DIRECTOR: Chris Shields
PRODUCER: Peter Card
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Craig Weinstein
EDITOR: Kate Shults
PRIMARY CAST:
     - Peter - Carson Wampler
     - Maxine - Chrissy Randell
     -  Woman in Bathroom - Kristine Herbst
TOTAL RUN TIME: 11:20
DATE OF COMPLETION: 12/2006

"All I need to make a film is a camera and maybe people."

"When I started to make Sex Machine I knew I was going to limit myself. In the films I'd made previously I had restrained myself in certain areas, not allowing for multiple perspectives on a single scene or allowing for the use of non diegetic music. Robert Bresson was, and still is, the main influence and guiding force in my work. I try to construct my films with Bresson's philosophies in mind. I starve myself as a filmmaker. I limit myself, only allowing myself to use certain elements. By using only a few elements my skill increases greatly in the application of each, or at least that is the idea, I don't think it has worked so far.

Sex Machine is a material reality. The "futuristic" setting of Sex Machine is the world we live in. There is no fantasy. The "memories" in Sex Machine were shot hand cranked on a bolex camera. I wanted the "memories" to have a crude physical existence, this is why I did not shoot them on a digital format. Everything is material in the film, even the human memory which transfers images through a physical medium. Hand cranking film through a camera creates an inextricable link between the image, the medium it is presented in, and the manner in which it was created.

The important parts of Sex Machine are in the elipses. When I think of cosciousness I think of a limited, completely unique perspective, a collection of fragments and inferences. Every film is its own consciousness which is impossible for the viewer to enter into and assimilate entirely. For this reason the film is distant, fragmented, and alien, like a memory.

I love Midnight Cowboy. Sex Machine is my take on it. It was made for practically nothing by a group of friends and it is very very dear to me.

- Director Chris Shields

• 2006 Brouhaha Film & Video Showcase (Maitland, FL)
• 2007 Florida Film Festival
• 2007 MAGA Macon Georgia Film & Video Festival
• 2007 Houston WorldFest (Gold Remi - College Level Student Production)
• 2007 Rome International Film Festival (Rome, Georgia)

SYNOPSIS
A sex professional who rents his memories meets a woman he can't forget.

SHOOTING FORMAT
24P DV & 16mm

SCREENING FORMATS
DVD, Mini DV, Beta Sp

CONSIDER FOR
Sci-Fi, Drama, Experimental, Student

CONTACT
chrshields@gmail.com

STUDENT STATUS
This film was produced as part of a BFA degree at the University of Central Florida School of Film & Digital Media.