Casey Durand 2026

Abstract

Do You Know Lucy? is a digital short film, using both digital video and real-time computer graphics. Viewers are dropped into the game-like perspective of a visitor to a bizarre, high tech government facility. Lucy, an illustrious and enigmatic socialite, has been asleep and held in stasis for many years inside this facility. Her body is hooked up to machines that monitor her vitals and gather information on her health. The voice of Lady Chastity, the lead scientist and keeper of Lucy’s Chamber, walks the visitor through the lab and attempts to illuminate the truth about who Lucy really is. Advanced “bio-imaging” technology allows Lady Chastity to conjure up visual simulations of the activity happening inside Lucy’s body, these manifest as three live-action short films. Meanwhile, a group of revolutionaries send hacked radio transmissions into the visitors mind to try and convince them to help their plot to free Lucy. The game-world of this film serves as a narrative container for the three live-action vignettes. Together, they create a portrait of a moment of crisis in American popular culture, and in my own personal life.

In this paper, I hope to explore the narrative, stylistic, and emotional decisions behind each step of the process of producing this film. Along with that, I hope to outline a loose, family-tree of avant-garde internet video content ranging from the early 90s to today. All the artists, creators, techniques, and subcultures held within that tree are ones that I am perpetually in conversation with as I make my films. Both this paper and the film share the same chapter names, numbers, and guiding thematic principles. I do not intend for it to be a guide or a companion piece to the film, but rather a journal-like collection of notes, concepts, and references that informed each chapter of the narrative.