The Art of Human Salvage

Over the last weekend, The Art of Human Salvage won an award at the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival for "Best African-American, Latino and Person of Color: BEST SHORT FILM".
Congrats to Dempsey Tillman and all of the cast and crew!

I thought it might be a good segue to talk about the writing process for The Art of Human Salvage as the original feature script that was a Shriekfest finalist in 2011.  After working in retail for three years, I began to envision a future completely dominated by corporations.  A world gentrified to the point where there was nothing was offensive or dangerous, but at the same time, all the individuality was gone.  All the color was gone.  I remember that when someone got fired at the giant furniture-selling corporation where I worked, they were never fired, but "separated".  When raises were given that often amounted to less that a quarter per hour, you were expected to be grateful, even when it was a million miles away from a living wage.  The CEO was worshiped like a deity.  We were warned that the things we did in our personal lives might cause us to get "separated", an off-color Facebook posting for instance.
I imagined this one giant corporation running the world.  What would be the first freedom to take? 
My answer was THE ARTS. (It always seems to be the arts)  For the main character, eight-year-old Dominik, it was photography.
Photography was my first art form from the time I was Dominik's age.  I would take pictures with a crude Instamatic camera and work with the limitation of the medium made for casual snapshots, eventually graduating to more "professional" platforms.  Still, that Instamatic period stayed with me.  I used that stripped-down simplicity and took it to the next level as Dominik, a slave in an opium den, uses raw materials not only to create his own camera, but to make his own film under the instruction of one of his old-addict customers, an artist from a world before The Corporation.  The execution of this skill is enough to warrant a death sentence or, as The Corporation calls it, "SEPARATION".

This was where I began.  Where I ended up was a feature script with Salvage Officers (the good guys), Slingers (the very bad guys), and a mysterious CEO that never appears in person, but is universally worshiped.  When Dempsey Tillman made the short-film version of The Art of Human Salvage, he provided a glimpse into the world of The Corporation.  There is much more to see and many more doors to open.  I look forward to the day when the feature film is made and the world can open all the doors.