LifeHack, the new cyber-heist thriller, which had its world premiere at SXSW, reimagines the heist film for the digital era. Told entirely through screens, the film follows four teenagers whose digital fluency tempts them into committing a high-stakes cryptocurrency heist that quickly spirals beyond their control. Long gone are the guns, explosives and getaway cars of classic heist movies, now replaced by passwords, livestreams, group chats and social engineering in a nail-biting thriller that is also a coming-of-age story and a portrait of young lives lived through digital devices.
The film, which was nominated for two British Independent Film Awards, marks the feature debut of young Irish director Ronan Corrigan, who also co-wrote the screenplay and co-edited the project. It was produced by Timur Bekmambetov, the filmmaker who pioneered the ScreenLife storytelling format, and executive produced by Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender.
Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Corrigan (pictured) talks about the challenges involved and his love of editing and post.
This is definitely not your usual heist film. What sort of film did you set out to make?
“The quick pitch was always Ocean's Eleven set on a Discord server, but it was always a bit of a love letter to my years growing up gaming, and then it became, ‘What does a modern-day heist look like?’ So, it evolved into this story about a group of teenage scam artists who pull off this crypto heist on a tech billionaire, and we found a lot of true crime cases to pull from, so there's a bit of fantasy fulfillment there as well.”
It’s very ambitious for a first film. Did you get advice from a lot of people and other directors?
“Yeah, and it came about in a really interesting way. My background’s in advertising, music videos and doing a lot of digital content, and when COVID shut it all down, I saw this competition online organized by ScreenLife movie producer Timur Bekmambetov, and I was a big fan of his and the format as a really cool way of being able to make these fun big-genre films, but still keeping an indie headspace for it. So, I had five minutes to pitch him my idea on Zoom, it went well, and he took me under his wing. Then we got some money to make a proof of concept, and that really helped me understand what an undertaking it was going to be, because it's definitely not a screen recording - it's pretty much an animated film by the time we were finished layering up all the windows and cameras. Then we spent a year writing the script, and then another year trying to get financing. And then we spent about four months doing previs and building the film before we went into production. So basically, we started on post first, shot the film in two weeks and then it was a year of post production, so it was a very heavy post production film.”
How did you come up with the shooting plan with cinematographer Ciaran Craig, as there's so many formats. Was this all scripted out, or did you wing it on the day?
“I definitely wasn't winging it, and we had a really heavy previs translating the script to ScreenLife. We had some actors read through the script, and we recorded that, and we had an office where about five of us editors were grinding out the kind of animation and edits we needed, which was quite intensive. And then we used the rhythm of that to build the film over the top of that. Doing that prep meant we were confident with the coverage and what we needed going into production. But with these kinds of films, it's always that balance. You want it to feel like a poppy-genre film, but you also need to tether it to reality. It's like found footage, where if it's too messy, it's unwatchable, but if it's too clean, you lose the fun and appeal of the film, and the authenticity. So, our headspace was, use iPhones, just because the look of the iPhone is so recognizable, and we used an app called Filmic Pro that helped us lock in frame rates and the technical aspects of what you need from a film.
“Obviously, there's lots of other different formats, as the film builds up into this big heist where there's a lot of CCTV. In the end we used 18 different cameras in 12 formats, including the iPhones used as live webcams mounted to laptop and monitor rigs for the film’s central video calls. We also shot with a Sony RX0 II, used for hidden ‘bag camera’ shots, GoPro action cameras, laptop webcams and gaming capture feeds. So doing that gave us a reliable codec, full camera control and a video village for the crew. Sometimes I find having too many options is a problem in post, but having those kinds of burnt-in aesthetics was handy for us, so we didn't overthink it and we just committed to what we got on the day.”
A lot of the film takes place inside the bedrooms and digital environments of the main characters. Where did you shoot it all?
“It was a fast two-week shoot in London, mainly at an old, abandoned hotel, and that became our operation base where we built the bedrooms, and I'd go into one room and the actors would go into their bedrooms, and we'd all join a Zoom and act into it, and it was fun. And that was always important for us, as people speak and act differently on Zoom, so we wanted to make sure we captured that.
“And then there were other set pieces, and it was a lot of run-and-gun stuff where we'd go into offices and set up a CCTV and shoot that multi-cam, live action. Then, for some of the more high-energy stuff, we’d just give the actors phones and throw them into nightclubs and have fun with that. And all that heavy previs prep meant we could go off script in the shoot. I think sometimes, with these kinds of films, people are thinking too heavily about the edit, and you can feel the actors almost acting for the edit rather than the edit working for the actors in post, which I always think is the most important part. But I feel we avoided that temptation, and there's a lot of freedom in shooting on iPhones and being able to get into locations that you wouldn't normally get, and not being weighed down by big crews and red tape.”
Tell us about post, as even most big movies don't get a year for post.
“Exactly, and it felt for the first couple of months as if we're editing a big live-action film, with active performances and set pieces and stuff like that. We did it on Adobe Premiere, and then you start building over the performances, and you end up with these massive Tetris edits that are 30 layers high of Facebook and Instagram windows, and then over the top of that are all the digital cameras that you're using to frame up. And we never wanted to cheat, so we added it full-screen, and then we brought the cameras in after, so that was very labor-intensive, and we were really pushing Premiere as a program far more than it was designed for technically, as it’s not editing software for animation.”
Do you like the whole post process?
“I love post. I think it's hard to be a writer/director in your early 20s, because no one wants to pay you, so filmmaking was always about doing music videos and short films, and pieces for the passion, and then I worked at Netflix as a creative editor, where I was building ads on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok for Netflix shows, and I became really fast at editing that way. I think social media was great training, as some people spend months editing a short film, but I was essentially doing a short film a week, and that was good for just unlocking my brain and becoming a little less precious about editing.”
How did the editing process work?
“I co-edited with Sasha Kletsov, so we were the two head editors, and our other editors were very experienced in VFX and motion design, so they were very helpful for that aspect of the film, and it was a team effort. We split the film up into 21 segments and then we'd do these primary edits to get the rhythm, sound and pace of the film, and then once that was locked in, we sent it to our motion design team, who did the polished version of the film in After Effects using vectors. I feel the more you edit these films, the more locked in you get, so I think it was important to start off in Premiere, where you had this freedom of editing, and then when it was ready, it was ready. And because we were such a small team, the animation workflow just took a little longer.”
Did you do test screenings, and how nervous were you, as ScreenLife films probably don’t look great during post?
“You’re right. The tricky thing about these films is they look terrible for a long time because you've got these really janky animations, and obviously we knew where it was going, but it's hard trying to explain that to the financiers, and I was so nervous showing it. But it was a good lesson to learn how to present your work at the right times, and what to present, and how to get people to trust the process. And they're so useful, as sometimes we’d over-edited stuff, and we had to bring breathing room back into the space.”
Talk about the importance of sound design and music, as they play a crucial role in expanding the world beyond the screens.
“I love music, and most of my favorite films, like Trainspotting, have mixtape qualities. And even when we were writing the script, I was building these Spotify playlists in my head for scenes. I’m a massive fan of our composer, Liam Brown, and I love his music because it sounds like it's recorded in a bedroom. I really like that kind of lo-fi bedroom sound, and as our film is set in these bedrooms, it made sense to bring in an artist working that way, and most of the soundtrack was built with a laptop and a guitar. Then we did all the sound design with Sam Auguste at Onamatopoeia, the Liverpool post production house. He’s done huge films, like Harry Potter, and he did an amazing job of balancing all the dialogue with device notifications, keyboard sounds, digital interfaces, and the score and Spotify needle drops.”
Tell us about the grading. With all the different formats it must have been a lot of work?
“A lot. The colorist was Nikolay Zheludovich, who’s also a DP. He worked independently and it was all done remotely. It was an interesting one to grade, because of all the iPhone and CCTV footage, and it was always a balancing act of how punchy can we make it without it being too over the top and not feeling like phone footage? That was a fun aspect, and we wanted to bring color and a punchiness to it, almost like those ‘90s high-contrast films. I love that stuff, so we were pulling from that era of filmmaking, but then also trying not to lose the authenticity of the film, and I’m very happy with the result. I wanted to capture that space of online gaming that I'm very nostalgic about and I think we succeeded.”