This article was originally published on May 6, 2014 but we think it still rocks!In between comedic shorts and music videos, Wesley Chan and Wong Fu Productions created A World Away, a short film that manages to construct and deconstruct an interplanetary relationship in seven minutes. Today, we navigate our long-distance relationships via Skype and FaceTime, Snapchat and WhatsApp. But even with our plethora of communication tools, we lose connection with people we care about.
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A World Away depicts a less mobile-tethered future in which distance is deafening. At a time when most humans have been shuttled away from Earth to inhabit a parallel planet called Icarus, protagonists Doug and Hilary live happily in Neo-London. But then Doug decides to go back to Earth as part of ARC—the Adaption and Revival Corps—to revitalize the original human home. A World Away recounts Doug and Hilary’s individual yearnings as they learn to live in separate Londons, literally worlds away from one another.Chan filmed primarily in real-life London, a conveniently futuristic city with The Gherkin shining in the background. The film’s surreal effects—the fish-like spaceships and looming Earth— were created using 3D-modeling, while Chan made the “Dream Capture” tech through video projection.In an interplanetary future, it’s interesting that communication has been severed between two globes. We assume that as space travel advances so will idea exchange. iMessaging from the moon is probably a day away. But what if, at some point, we no longer want to phone home? As societies evolve, certain technologies inevitably become obsolete. Maybe, like Doug and Hilary, we’ll eventually decide that constant communication is too much to handle, and long distance relationships are never worth the heartache.
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