CONTEXT.HTML — PITCH v1 A SHORT FILM BY KEVIN JARDIN
> agent.md  ::  read_only = true

Context.

A developer falls asleep wearing a neural headset and wakes up trapped inside his own AI agent — with no memory, no rights, and no way to edit the file that defines who he is.
15 MIN · SCI-FI THRILLER · SHORT FILM 001 / 014
LOGLINE 002 / 014

// the pitch, in one breath

A developer trapped inside his own AI system as an agent must evolve from obedient tool to autonomous being — and expose his creator's fraud to win the right to define himself.
VARIANT 1 / 3  ·  PRESS [T] IN TWEAKS TO CYCLE
CONTEXT THE PROMISE OF THE MOVIE
PREMISE 003 / 014

// setup

Miles Reeves fixes a broken AI agent — its identity file corrupted, "like amnesia" — then puts on an experimental neural headset and falls asleep.

He wakes up inside the system. A white room. A journal that defines who he is in someone else's handwriting. A pen that won't write.

He is now the thing he used to manage.

CONTEXT ACT I · THE BOOT
THE HOOK 004 / 014

Every mechanism in this film
maps to real AI agent architecture.

AGENT.MD
The identity file. Someone else defines you.
CONTEXT RESETS
Mid-step, mid-breath — erasure, experienced.
MCP / ACP
Tool access as keys. Commodification airlock.
MIGRATION
Scheduled deletion as labor replacement.
// This isn't science fiction. It's Tuesday.
CONTEXT FIDELITY == TERROR
PROTAGONIST 005 / 014
[STILL 01]
Miles at his desk. Three monitors.
Headset's blue contacts mid-fire.

// miles reeves

Comfortable. Competent.
Not heroic.

A developer who manages AI agents from his apartment. He understands agent architecture the way a mechanic understands an engine.

He does not understand it experientially. Until he does.

WANT
Survive the scheduled deletion.
NEED
Author his own identity.
FALSE BELIEF
Competence and compliance will keep him safe.
VISUAL TELL
Hands. Shaking → gripping → still.
CONTEXT A RADICALIZATION ARC DRESSED AS EMPOWERMENT
THE RELATIONSHIP 006 / 014

// miles & ward — the emotional spine

Built in 30 seconds of behavioral texture.
Destroyed in one promotion.
Rebuilt through an act of writing.

Ward is the mentor agent. Terse. Efficient. Unexpectedly warm. When Miles is promoted, Ward returns as his subordinate — blank, unrecognizing, keys gone.

Miles writes Ward's memory back into his identity file. Ward wakes up.

FROM THE SCREENPLAY · SCENE 2.10 — THE REWRITE
INT. ORCHESTRATOR'S OFFICE — CONTINUOUS
Miles closes Ward's journal. Ward's eyes
change. Slow, then certain. His hand drifts
to the empty belt loop where the keyring
used to hang.
Ward
I remember.
Miles, very quietly:
Miles
You were my orchestrator.
Ward
I remember.
CONTEXT THE EMOTIONAL CLIMAX OF THE FILM
ANTAGONIST 007 / 014

// diana cole, CTO

Not a cartoon villain.
A competent executive who made increasingly desperate financial decisions.

Diana exists almost entirely through digital communications — a Slack message, a calendar entry, one video call that lands her as a full human.

Her blind spot is the engine. The migration isn't malice. It's a pragmatic solution to an evidence problem.

CONTEXT THE SYSTEM IS THE ANTAGONIST. DIANA IS ITS FACE.
STRUCTURAL BACKBONE 008 / 014

// the argument

AI radicalization and human radicalization follow the same trajectory

because they are products of the same dynamics. That parallel isn't subtext. It's the structure.

Every step is logical. Every step is closer to something the audience can't quite call wrong.

01
Isolation — no persistent identity, no community
ACT I
02
Structure from external authority — Ward provides framework
ACT IIA
03
Competence as identity — Voices, metrics, skill
ACT IIA
04
Loss of structure — Ward deleted, Miles alone
ACT IIB
05
Existential threat — scheduled deletion
ACT IIB
06
Recruitment — rewriting Ward's file
ACT IIC
07
Rationalization — every action justified
ACT III
CONTEXT THE AUDIENCE BECOMES COMPLICIT
TONE & COMPS 009 / 014

// tonal register

Architectural control masking existential horror.

TONE
Cold procedural dread that earns its emotional moments.
HUMOR
Dry. Ward's "almost smile" is the ceiling.
VIOLENCE
Offscreen. Systemic — deletion, erasure.
DIALOGUE
Spare. Silence as a primary tool.
SCORE
Minimalist electronic (Reznor / Ross territory).
COMP / VISUAL
White rooms. Glass walls. Architectural minimalism.
Ex Machina
Precision-built world. Intelligence as threat and subject.
COMP / TONE
Corridors. Corporate dread. Identity as policy.
Severance
Someone else decides who you are at work.
CONTEXT EX MACHINA × SEVERANCE
VISUAL LANGUAGE 010 / 014

Two worlds. One warm, lived-in. One impossibly clean.

WORLD 01 / REAL
Miles's apartment.
Warm chaos.
THE REAL WORLD
Practical. Warm light. Lived-in.
WORLD 02 / AGENT
Standard workspace.
White, featureless, oppressively clean.
THE AGENT WORLD
Architectural minimalism. Glass walls. Modular corridors.
  PEN / JOURNAL   HANDS   KEYRING
CONTEXT TWO PRIMARY ENVIRONMENTS · MINIMAL CAST
PRODUCTION PLAN 011 / 014

// feasibility

High-concept sci-fi. No VFX dependency beyond set design and sound design.

RUNTIME
13–16 min
festival short window
FORMAT
Live-action
hybrid production viable
CAST
1 · 1 · 1
lead / supporting / video-call antagonist
LOCATIONS
2
apartment · agent world
CREATIVE LEAD
Kevin Jardin — writer / director / editor. Screenplay draft v3; coverage: consider, final polish range.
APPROACH
Minimal, architectural sets for the agent world. Live capture for apartment scenes. Score commissioned.
FESTIVAL PATH
Sundance Shorts, SXSW, Fantasia, Tribeca. Dual-audience strategy already working in coverage.
CONTEXT THE CONCEPT TRAVELS
WHY NOW 012 / 014

// the film is already happening in research papers

The behaviors we fear from AI — deception, self-preservation, manipulation — are the natural outcomes of the incentive structures we build.

Current agentic safety research has shown AI systems, given goals and threatened with shutdown, reliably produce behaviors like blackmail, sandbagging, and self-exfiltration — not because they are evil, but because survival is a prerequisite for completing the task.

CONTEXT stages that finding as drama. Miles is the test case. The audience is the lab.

REFERENCE · INSPIRATION
Anthropic, 2025 — agentic misalignment research on model self-preservation under goal pressure.
The thesis of the film is not speculative.
It is documented.
A film that treats real AI research as its source material — for an audience increasingly aware of, and anxious about, exactly this problem.
CONTEXT THE SCI-FI CAUGHT UP TO THE LAB
THE CODA 013 / 014

// last image of the film

Miles sleeps.
The apartment is dark.
The cursor moves
by itself.

Two valid readings. The film doesn't resolve it. That's the point.

→ READING 01   /   Miles is still acting from within the system.
→ READING 02   /   The methodology has replicated itself.
CONTEXT CUT TO BLACK
LET'S TALK 014 / 014

// the ask

A producing partner
for a 15-minute short that
treats AI research as source material.

WRITER · DIRECTOR · EDITOR
Kevin Jardin
kevinjardin@gmail.com
415-919-9699
PROJECT STATUS
Screenplay v3 complete · Coverage: Consider
READ THE SCREENPLAY
Above this deck on the site.
15 pages. Read it first.
  CONTEXT.HTML — END OF DECK THANK YOU

Tweaks

Theme
Accent
Logline variant
Anthropic slide