Primer (film)

1
Primer (film)
Primer
Directed by Shane Carruth
Produced by Shane Carruth
Written by Shane Carruth
Starring Shane Carruth
David Sullivan
Music by Shane Carruth
Edited by Shane Carruth
Distributed by ThinkFilm
Release date(s) October8,2004
Running time 77 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $7,000
Box office $424,760
Primer is a 2004 American science fiction drama film about the accidental discovery of a means of time travel. The
film was written, directed, and produced by Shane Carruth. Primer is of note for its extremely low budget
(completed for $7,000), experimental plot structure, philosophical implications, and complex technical dialogue,
which Carruth, a college graduate with a degree in mathematics and a former engineer, chose not to simplify for the
sake of the audience. The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, before securing a
limited release in the United States, and has since gained a cult following.
Primer (film)
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Plot
The operation of time travel in Primer.
Four engineersAaron (Shane
Carruth), Abe (David Sullivan),
Robert, and Phillipwho work for a
large corporation during the day, run a
side business from Aaron's garage at
night, building and selling JTAG cards.
With the proceeds, they fund research
for their own inventions.
After arguing over the project that the
group should tackle next, Aaron and
Abe independently pursue work on
technology intended to reduce the
weight of an object. Although the
device seems to work as planned, it has
a side effect: an object left in the
device experiences about 1300 times
the amount of time the device was
activated for. Abe reasons that objects
inside the box repeatedly travel from
the time the box was turned on to the
time it was turned off while the field is active.
After some testing, Abe secretly builds a prototype machine large enough to contain himself and, after using it to go
back to earlier that day, demonstrates the results to Aaron by showing Abe's past-self entering the prototype
machine. Abe and Aaron build an additional machine (subsequently called "the box") and decide to cut Robert and
Phillip out of the discovery, under the pretense that the garage has to be fumigated.
Abe and Aaron start using the time machines to make money in the stock market, but as their understanding of how
the machines work evolves, they become more adventurous with their trips. Their experimentation is cut short by the
unexpected appearance of Thomas Granger (Chip Carruth), the father of Abe's girlfriend Rachel, whose financial
backing the group had been trying to procure. Time traveling appears to have made Granger comatose, and neither
Abe nor Aaron understand how Granger could have discovered the box. Abe is particularly disturbed by this turn of
events and concludes that time travel is too dangerous to continue. Abe attempts to prevent his past self from using
the machine for time travel, thereby nullifying all of its consequences, by using a "failsafe" machine, which Abe
previously built in secret, to travel back to a point prior to his first trip through time and also prior to his broaching
the subject of time travel with Aaron.
Having traveled back four days in time using this failsafe point, Abe goes to meet Aaron and collapses. After Abe
recovers, Aaron reveals that unbeknownst to Abe, Aaron had discovered this failsafe box and used it to get control.
Aaron brought back another box, creating a false failsafe point to make Abe believe that there was still a working
failsafe machine awaiting him, and preventing Abe from undoing Aaron's actions. Aaron then reveals that he has
been using a recording to recite their conversation from an earlier time. Aaron continues to explain how he
encountered, fought, and was subdued by a previous version of Aaron who used the failsafe to come back and make
recordings after drugging the Aaron from the current timeline.
But the Aaron who met Abe at the parkbench, convinced the earlier version of Aaron that, since he (the latter
version) had already made the recordings, he (the latter version) should continue to act as the Aaron in this timeline.
The younger Aaron leaves, allowing the older Aaron to continue plans of redoing the events of a party in which a
Primer (film)
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crasher attempted to shoot Rachel Granger so Aaron can become a hero. Abe agrees to try to change the events of the
party with Aaron and the two succeed, though it is unclear how many iterations it has taken. The issue of trusting,
particularly anyone with such technology, and differing views on using the machines can be seen as having
destroyed their friendship.
Aaron accuses Abe of coveting his family and Abe warns Aaron never to return or interfere with their doubles. Abe
stays behind to continue plans of attempting to prevent the original Abe and Aaron from this timelinewho have no
idea of what the others have donefrom ever using the machines for time travel, suggesting that Abe would tamper
with the machines in the hope that their doubles would think the experiment a failure and move on to other projects.
The younger Aaron who came back in the failsafe to make the recordings speaks on the phone to an unspecified
recipient to whom Aaron states he owes a debt. An Aaron and a team of French-speaking workers begin construction
on what appears to be a building-sized device.
Cast
Shane Carruth as Aaron
David Sullivan as Abe
Casey Gooden as Robert
Anand Upadhyaya as Phillip
Carrie Crawford as Kara
Samantha Thomson as Rachel Granger
Brandon Blagg as Will
Carruth cast himself as Aaron after having trouble finding actors who could "break ... the habit of filling each line
with so much drama". Most of the other actors are either friends or family members.
Themes
Although one of the more fantastic elements of science fiction is central to the film, Carruth's goal was to portray
scientific discovery in a down-to-earth and realistic manner. He notes that many of the greatest breakthrough
scientific discoveries in history have occurred by accident, in locations no more glamorous than Aaron's garage.
Whether it involved the history of the number zero or the invention of the transistor, two things stood
out to me. First is that the discovery that turns out to be the most valuable is usually dismissed as a
side-effect. Second is that prototypes almost never include neon lights and chrome. I wanted to see a
story play out that was more in line with the way real innovation takes place than I had seen on film
before.
Carruth has said he intended the central theme of the film to be the breakdown of Abe and Aaron's relationship, as a
result of their inability to cope with the power afforded them by this technological advancement:
First thing, I saw these guys as scientifically accomplished but ethically, morons. They never had any
reasons before to have ethical questions. So when they're hit with this device they're blindsided by it.
The first thing they do is make money with it. They're not talking about the ethics of altering your
former self.
Primer (film)
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Production
While writing the script, Carruth studied physics to help him make Abe and Aaron's technical dialogue sound
authentic. He took the unusual step of eschewing contrived exposition, and tried instead to portray the shorthand
phrases and jargon used by working scientists. This philosophy carried over into production design. The time
machine itself is a plain gray box, with a distinctive electronic "hum" created by overlaying the sounds of a
mechanical grinder and a car engine, rather than by using a processed digital effect. Carruth also set the story in
unglamorous industrial parks and suburban tract homes.
Carruth chose to deliberately obfuscate the film's plot to mirror the complexity and confusion created by time travel.
As he said in a 2004 interview: "This machine and Abe and Aaron's experience are inherently complicated so it
needed to be that way in order for the audience to be where Abe and Aaron are, which was always my hope."
Primer was filmed in five weeks, on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas. For example, the scenes in the public library
where Abe and Aaron made their Internet stock trades were shot in the Richardson Public Library (the Friendship
fountain in front of Richardson City Hall is visible in the background through the windows).
The film was produced on a budget of only $7,000 US, and a skeleton crew of five. Shane Carruth acted as writer,
director, producer, cinematographer, editor, and music composer. He also stars in the film as Aaron, and many of the
other characters are played by his friends and family. The small budget required conservative use of the Super 16mm
filmstock. The extremely low shooting ratio of 2:1 meant they had to carefully limit the number of takes. Every shot
in the film was meticulously storyboarded on 35mm stills. Carruth created a distinctive flat, overexposed look for the
film by using fluorescent lighting, non-neutral color temperatures, high-speed film stock, and filters.
After principal photography, Carruth took two years to fully post-produce Primer. He has since said that this
experience was so arduous that he almost abandoned the film on several occasions.
All music for the film was created by Shane Carruth. On October 8, 2004, the Primer score was released on Amazon
and iTunes.
Distribution
Carruth secured a North American distribution deal with THINKFilm after the company's head of theatrical
distribution, Mark Urman, saw the film at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Although he and Carruth made a
"handshake agreement" during the festival, Urman reported that the actual negotiation of the deal was the longest he
had ever been involved with, in part due to Carruth's specific demands over how much control over the film he
would retain. The film went on to take $424,760 at the box office.
[1]
Reception
Primer received broadly positive reviews in the mainstream press. The website Metacritic rated Primer at 68 out of
100, while the similar site Rotten Tomatoes reported that 73% of the critics that saw the film gave it positive
reviews, and the site listed it as one of the best science fiction films "for the thinking man (...or woman)".
Many reviewers were impressed by the film's originality. Dennis Lim of The Village Voice said that it was "the
freshest thing the genre has seen since 2001", while in The New York Times, A. O. Scott wrote that Carruth had "the
skill, the guile and the seriousness to turn a creaky philosophical gimmick into a dense and troubling moral puzzle".
Scott also enjoyed the film's realistic depiction of scientists at work, saying that Carruth had an "impressive feel for
the odd, quiet rhythms of small-scale research and development".
There was also praise for Carruth's ability to maintain high production values on a minuscule budget, with Roger
Ebert declaring: "The movie never looks cheap, because every shot looks as it must look." Ty Burr of The Boston
Globe commented that "aspects of Primer are so low-rent as to evoke guffaws", but added that "the homemade feel
is part of the point".
Primer (film)
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The film's unusually complex plot and dense dialogue proved controversial. Esquire critic Mike D'Angelo claimed
that "anybody who claims he fully understands what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant
or a liar". Scott Tobias writes for The A.V. Club: "The banter is heavy on technical jargon and almost perversely
short on exposition; were it not for the presence of voiceover narration, the film would be close to
incomprehensible." For the Los Angeles Times, Carina Chocano writes: "sticklers for linear storytelling are bound to
be frustrated by narrative threads that start promisingly, then just sort of fall off the spool". Some reviewers were
entirely put off by the film's obfuscated narrative. Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter complained that
Primer "nearly gets lost in a miasma of technical jargon and scientific conjecture".
"Primer is hopelessly confusing and grows more and more byzantine as it unravels," Chuck Klosterman writes in an
essay on time travel films five years later. "I've watched it seven or eight times and I still don't know what
happened." He nonetheless says it is "the finest movie about time travel I've ever seen" because of its realism:
It's not that the time machine ... seems more realistic; it's that the time travelers themselves seem more
believable. They talk and act (and think) like the kind of people who might accidentally figure out how
to move through time, which is why it's the best depiction we have of the ethical quandaries that might
result from such a discovery.
Ultimately, Klosterman says, the lesson of Primer regarding time travel is that "it's too important to use only for
money, but too dangerous to use for anything else".
The film has been selected to be part of The A.V. Club's New Cult Canon.
Donald Clarke, film critic with The Irish Times, included Primer at No. 20 on his list of the top twenty films of the
decade (20002010).
Awards
Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival in 2004.
Alfred P. Sloan Prize for films dealing with science and technology, the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Best Writer/Director (Shane Carruth) at the Nantucket Film Festival in 2004.
Best Feature at the London International Festival of Science Fiction in 2005.
Physics and science
In this Feynman diagram, an electron and
positron annihilate producing a virtual photon
that becomes a quark-antiquark pair. Then one
radiates a gluon.
Aaron and Abe start the film by attempting to create a device to
somehow counter the effects of gravity. They have plans for such a
device from another development team, but wish to improve on the
viability of the design. Their main approach to achieve this is to
discard the coolant bath for the required superconductors. They
instead increase the transition temperature of the superconductor to
"something more usable" by "knock[ing] out the interior magnetic
field". The machine operates on the principles of the Meissner
effect. The characters allude to this as they design the machine.
Aaron and Abe require palladium to build their machine. This is the
reason they take the catalytic converter from a car (catalytic
converters contain small amounts of palladium).
The principles of time travel in the film are inspired by Feynman diagrams. Carruth explained: "Richard Feynman
has some interesting ideas about time. When you look at Feynman diagrams [which map the interaction of
elementary particles], there's really no difference between watching an interaction happen forward and backward
in time."
Primer (film)
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References
[1] Box Office Mojo - Primer Domestic Total Gross (http:/ / www. boxofficemojo. com/ movies/ ?id=primer. htm) Retrieved 2012-2-11
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Primer (film)
Official website (http:/ / www. primermovie. com/ )
Primer (http:/ / www. allmovie. com/ movie/ v301328) at AllMovie
Primer (http:/ / www. imdb. com/ title/ tt0390384/ ) at the Internet Movie Database
Primer (http:/ / www. rottentomatoes. com/ m/ primer/ ) at Rotten Tomatoes
Village Voice interview (http:/ / www. villagevoice. com/ film/ 0441,lim,57519,20. html) with Shane Carruth.
Allen, Mark. "Filming Locations for the Movie Primer" (http:/ / www. markallencam. com/ ?p=175).
MarkAllenCam.com.
Primer: The Perils and Paradoxes of Restricted Time Travel Narration (http:/ / www. nobleworld. biz/ images/
Gendler. pdf)
Sports, Repetition, and Control in Shane Carruth's Primer (http:/ / www. jgoodwin. net/ academic/ papers/ primer.
pdf)
Re-Membering the Time-Travel Film: From La Jete to Primer (http:/ / blogs. arts. unimelb. edu. au/ refractory/
2006/ 07/ 04/ re-membering-the-time-travel-film-from-la-jetee-to-primer-corinn-columpar/ )
Awards
Precededby
American Splendor
Sundance Grand Jury Prize:
Dramatic
2004
Succeededby
Forty Shades of Blue
Precededby
Dopamine
Alfred P. Sloan Prize Winner
2004
Succeededby
Grizzly Man
Article Sources and Contributors
7
Article Sources and Contributors
Primer (film) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=616115210 Contributors: *drew, 1dragon, 2rusty22, 97198, Aaron Bowen, Aaronw, Abelson, AbramTerger, Abyssopelagic,
Acasson, AdmiralMemo, Agentknight, Ajshm, Alexanderdavis, Alexandru Stanoi, Alexf, Algae, Allium, Ameliorate!, Andrzejbanas, AnonMoos, Apoc2400, AquaTsubaki, Aranel, Arichnad,
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Christopherlin, Cinematical, Civilinformer, Cognitivelydissonant, Comicist, Commander Keane, Comrade009, Cop 663, Crash Underride, Crowmanyclouds, CyberShadow, Cybercat,
DAPeterson, DMCer, DabMachine, Dachannien, Daedalus969, Daniel Case, Daniel J. Leivick, Danno uk, Danr7, Dany0, Darktower 12345, David Gerard, David spector, Davidbspalding,
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Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
Image:Time Travel Method-2.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Time_Travel_Method-2.svg License: GNU Free Documentation License Contributors: derivative
work: Tom-b (talk) Time_Travel_Method.jpg: Original uploader was William lee0 at en.wikipedia
Image:Feynmann Diagram Gluon Radiation.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Feynmann_Diagram_Gluon_Radiation.svg License: Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported Contributors: Joel Holdsworth (Joelholdsworth)
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