All Our Analogue Ghosts
In a secluded, off-grid community, a man sifts through the conflicting digital archives of his recently deceased father, uncovering a schism in their analogue utopia and the uncomfortable truth about the man he thought he knew.
# All Our Analogue Ghosts
**Format:** Short Film / Anthology Episode | **Est. Length:** 10-12 minutes
## Logline
Tasked with creating a video eulogy for his late father, the founder of an isolated off-grid community, a son discovers that the digital archives of his father's life have been secretly edited for years, forcing him to confront the conflicting legacies of the man he thought he knew.
## Themes
* **The Malleability of History:** How personal and collective memory can be deliberately altered and curated to serve the needs of the present, erasing inconvenient truths.
* **Idealism vs. Authoritarianism:** The slow, corrosive process by which a utopian vision, born of noble ideals, can curdle into a paranoid and controlling system to protect itself.
* **Objective Truth vs. Subjective Legacy:** The struggle to find a single, definitive truth about a person when their history has become a battlefield for competing narratives and ideologies.
* **The Complication of Grief:** The disorienting experience of mourning a person while simultaneously discovering their deep, hidden flaws, tangling grief with disillusionment.
## Stakes
The very soul and historical foundation of the isolated community are at stake, as the version of its founder they choose to remember will dictate their future.
## Synopsis
In the isolated, off-grid community of Reverie, PHILIP is tasked with a final filial duty: compiling a video eulogy for his father, MARTIN, the settlement's recently deceased founder. Working in The Archive—a climate-controlled cabin housing Reverie's entire history on a closed server system—Philip begins what he assumes will be a straightforward task.
He starts with an early video of Martin's 'Founding Day Address.' The footage is old and tinny, but it shows the idealistic visionary Philip remembers. However, as he digs deeper, he uncovers unsettling inconsistencies. A council meeting log from Year Five reveals a colder, more paranoid Martin proposing an internal surveillance system to prevent "ideological drift."
Philip's unease escalates when he finds a mislabelled, covert audio recording. In it, his father is cruel and dismissive towards a dissenting resident named Thomas, speaking of "necessary sacrifices." This directly contradicts the official record, which includes a staged video of Thomas smiling stiffly and claiming he is leaving voluntarily.
Disturbed, Philip confronts CARMEN, the community's archivist and network guardian. She reveals the shocking truth: the archive has been a "battlefield" for years. Competing factions within Reverie—idealists trying to preserve Martin's original vision and loyalists determined to protect his later, more authoritarian legacy—have been engaged in a silent, digital civil war, constantly editing, deleting, and altering records. Carmen explains that Martin knew about and even encouraged this, calling it "a living memory, shaped by the needs of the present."
Left alone with this devastating knowledge, Philip sifts through the wreckage of his father's digital life, seeing firsthand how history has been manipulated. His grief is now hopelessly tangled with confusion and horror. Deep within a corrupted partition, he discovers a small, encrypted file left by his father. After trying several passwords, he successfully uses the serial number of the first server they installed together. The file decrypts, revealing not a confession or justification, but a single, ominous text file containing a final warning.
## Character Breakdown
* **PHILIP (30s):** Earnest, dutiful, and technically proficient. He grew up idolizing his father and believing fully in the utopian ideals of Reverie. He is a man whose entire worldview is built on a foundation he is about to discover is quicksand.
* **Psychological Arc:** Philip begins in a state of reverent grief, holding a pure, idealized image of his father as a benevolent visionary. He ends completely disillusioned and conflicted, burdened with the heavy knowledge that his father's legacy—and his community's history—is a complex and manipulated construct. He moves from simple mourning to a profound existential crisis about the nature of truth itself.
* **CARMEN (40s):** The settlement's archivist. Pragmatic, weary, and deeply intelligent. She is the guardian of Reverie's messy, contradictory history and has carried the burden of this knowledge for years. She is not a villain, but a realist who has accepted the community's complex reality.
* **MARTIN (Seen in recordings, 50s-70s):** Reverie's founder and Philip's father. He appears in archival footage as a charismatic, passionate leader whose conviction slowly hardens into paranoia and cruelty. He is the central mystery of the story—a man who was both a visionary and a warden.
## Scene Beats
1. **Opening:** Philip sits in the quiet Archive, beginning his task. He plays the ‘Founding Day Address,’ a nostalgic smile on his face as he watches his younger, idealistic father.
2. **The First Crack:** Philip opens a council log from Year Five. He is visibly unsettled by the cold, paranoid tone his father takes while proposing a "truth protocol."
3. **The Dark Discovery:** Philip finds a fragmented, covert audio file. He listens, horrified, to his father's cruel dismissal of a pleading resident, Thomas.
4. **The Contradiction:** Philip searches for Thomas and finds the official record: a sanitized council log and a short, stilted video of Thomas's "voluntary" departure. The lie is obvious.
5. **Confrontation:** Philip finds Carmen in the server room and demands to know why the archives are contradictory.
6. **The Revelation:** Carmen sighs, knowing this day would come. She explains the "digital civil war" between factions, showing Philip the hidden logs of edits, deletions, and forgeries. She reveals Martin knew and allowed it.
7. **The Wreckage:** Alone again, Philip dives into the edit logs. He compares original files to the "official" versions, seeing how arguments were turned into agreements and hesitant speeches were edited to sound certain and powerful.
8. **The Lockbox:** In a corrupted partition, Philip finds a single encrypted file left by his father.
9. **The Key:** After several failed attempts, Philip tries a deeply personal password: the serial number of the first server he and his father built together. It works.
10. **The Warning:** The file opens. It's a simple text file. The camera focuses on Philip's face as he reads, his expression shifting from confusion to dawning horror. We do not see the words, only his reaction.
## Visual Style & Tone
The visual palette will create a stark contrast between the community's rustic, analogue life and the cold, digital world of The Archive.
* **Reverie (Exterior/General):** Warm, natural lighting. A sense of simple, handmade community. Wood, earth tones, and practical, worn technology.
* **The Archive (Interior):** Cold, clinical, and sterile. The only light comes from server racks, monitor screens, and fluorescent ceiling panels. The blinking server lights create a rhythmic, almost hypnotic pulse.
* **Archival Footage:** Presented in various period-appropriate qualities—grainy standard definition, tinny audio, digital artifacts, and glitches—to emphasize the layers of time and technological decay.
The tone is cerebral, melancholic, and quietly tense, building a sense of creeping dread and existential unease. It aligns tonally with the techno-paranoia and memory exploration of **Black Mirror**, the themes of historical manipulation in **Fahrenheit 451**, and the claustrophobic, controlled environment of **Severance**.
**Format:** Short Film / Anthology Episode | **Est. Length:** 10-12 minutes
## Logline
Tasked with creating a video eulogy for his late father, the founder of an isolated off-grid community, a son discovers that the digital archives of his father's life have been secretly edited for years, forcing him to confront the conflicting legacies of the man he thought he knew.
## Themes
* **The Malleability of History:** How personal and collective memory can be deliberately altered and curated to serve the needs of the present, erasing inconvenient truths.
* **Idealism vs. Authoritarianism:** The slow, corrosive process by which a utopian vision, born of noble ideals, can curdle into a paranoid and controlling system to protect itself.
* **Objective Truth vs. Subjective Legacy:** The struggle to find a single, definitive truth about a person when their history has become a battlefield for competing narratives and ideologies.
* **The Complication of Grief:** The disorienting experience of mourning a person while simultaneously discovering their deep, hidden flaws, tangling grief with disillusionment.
## Stakes
The very soul and historical foundation of the isolated community are at stake, as the version of its founder they choose to remember will dictate their future.
## Synopsis
In the isolated, off-grid community of Reverie, PHILIP is tasked with a final filial duty: compiling a video eulogy for his father, MARTIN, the settlement's recently deceased founder. Working in The Archive—a climate-controlled cabin housing Reverie's entire history on a closed server system—Philip begins what he assumes will be a straightforward task.
He starts with an early video of Martin's 'Founding Day Address.' The footage is old and tinny, but it shows the idealistic visionary Philip remembers. However, as he digs deeper, he uncovers unsettling inconsistencies. A council meeting log from Year Five reveals a colder, more paranoid Martin proposing an internal surveillance system to prevent "ideological drift."
Philip's unease escalates when he finds a mislabelled, covert audio recording. In it, his father is cruel and dismissive towards a dissenting resident named Thomas, speaking of "necessary sacrifices." This directly contradicts the official record, which includes a staged video of Thomas smiling stiffly and claiming he is leaving voluntarily.
Disturbed, Philip confronts CARMEN, the community's archivist and network guardian. She reveals the shocking truth: the archive has been a "battlefield" for years. Competing factions within Reverie—idealists trying to preserve Martin's original vision and loyalists determined to protect his later, more authoritarian legacy—have been engaged in a silent, digital civil war, constantly editing, deleting, and altering records. Carmen explains that Martin knew about and even encouraged this, calling it "a living memory, shaped by the needs of the present."
Left alone with this devastating knowledge, Philip sifts through the wreckage of his father's digital life, seeing firsthand how history has been manipulated. His grief is now hopelessly tangled with confusion and horror. Deep within a corrupted partition, he discovers a small, encrypted file left by his father. After trying several passwords, he successfully uses the serial number of the first server they installed together. The file decrypts, revealing not a confession or justification, but a single, ominous text file containing a final warning.
## Character Breakdown
* **PHILIP (30s):** Earnest, dutiful, and technically proficient. He grew up idolizing his father and believing fully in the utopian ideals of Reverie. He is a man whose entire worldview is built on a foundation he is about to discover is quicksand.
* **Psychological Arc:** Philip begins in a state of reverent grief, holding a pure, idealized image of his father as a benevolent visionary. He ends completely disillusioned and conflicted, burdened with the heavy knowledge that his father's legacy—and his community's history—is a complex and manipulated construct. He moves from simple mourning to a profound existential crisis about the nature of truth itself.
* **CARMEN (40s):** The settlement's archivist. Pragmatic, weary, and deeply intelligent. She is the guardian of Reverie's messy, contradictory history and has carried the burden of this knowledge for years. She is not a villain, but a realist who has accepted the community's complex reality.
* **MARTIN (Seen in recordings, 50s-70s):** Reverie's founder and Philip's father. He appears in archival footage as a charismatic, passionate leader whose conviction slowly hardens into paranoia and cruelty. He is the central mystery of the story—a man who was both a visionary and a warden.
## Scene Beats
1. **Opening:** Philip sits in the quiet Archive, beginning his task. He plays the ‘Founding Day Address,’ a nostalgic smile on his face as he watches his younger, idealistic father.
2. **The First Crack:** Philip opens a council log from Year Five. He is visibly unsettled by the cold, paranoid tone his father takes while proposing a "truth protocol."
3. **The Dark Discovery:** Philip finds a fragmented, covert audio file. He listens, horrified, to his father's cruel dismissal of a pleading resident, Thomas.
4. **The Contradiction:** Philip searches for Thomas and finds the official record: a sanitized council log and a short, stilted video of Thomas's "voluntary" departure. The lie is obvious.
5. **Confrontation:** Philip finds Carmen in the server room and demands to know why the archives are contradictory.
6. **The Revelation:** Carmen sighs, knowing this day would come. She explains the "digital civil war" between factions, showing Philip the hidden logs of edits, deletions, and forgeries. She reveals Martin knew and allowed it.
7. **The Wreckage:** Alone again, Philip dives into the edit logs. He compares original files to the "official" versions, seeing how arguments were turned into agreements and hesitant speeches were edited to sound certain and powerful.
8. **The Lockbox:** In a corrupted partition, Philip finds a single encrypted file left by his father.
9. **The Key:** After several failed attempts, Philip tries a deeply personal password: the serial number of the first server he and his father built together. It works.
10. **The Warning:** The file opens. It's a simple text file. The camera focuses on Philip's face as he reads, his expression shifting from confusion to dawning horror. We do not see the words, only his reaction.
## Visual Style & Tone
The visual palette will create a stark contrast between the community's rustic, analogue life and the cold, digital world of The Archive.
* **Reverie (Exterior/General):** Warm, natural lighting. A sense of simple, handmade community. Wood, earth tones, and practical, worn technology.
* **The Archive (Interior):** Cold, clinical, and sterile. The only light comes from server racks, monitor screens, and fluorescent ceiling panels. The blinking server lights create a rhythmic, almost hypnotic pulse.
* **Archival Footage:** Presented in various period-appropriate qualities—grainy standard definition, tinny audio, digital artifacts, and glitches—to emphasize the layers of time and technological decay.
The tone is cerebral, melancholic, and quietly tense, building a sense of creeping dread and existential unease. It aligns tonally with the techno-paranoia and memory exploration of **Black Mirror**, the themes of historical manipulation in **Fahrenheit 451**, and the claustrophobic, controlled environment of **Severance**.