Vintage Tomorrows Interview at Comic Con

Learn all about this steampunk documentary with director Byrd McDonald.

Transcript

00:00So, Comic-Con isn't just a nerd fest, it's also a film fest and one of those

00:03films is called Vintage Tomorrows, directed by Byrd MacDonald. He's gonna

00:08break it down for us.

00:12Can you define steampunk?

00:14Oh, it's so tough. That is the hardest question. It really, really is.

00:17Steampunk is a literary sub-genre that is typified by stories set in Victorian England,

00:22stories that have technology, sort of imagining technologies that we have today

00:26but place them back then and imagine that they run on steam-powered engines.

00:31From there, it trickles out into everything. It's become its own aesthetic.

00:35It has its own visual tropes that you can spot. We're at Comic-Con.

00:38I've seen 20 steampunk outfits. It's now permeated everything.

00:43What first got you into steampunk?

00:45I think, for me, the initial hook was this is a very visual medium.

00:49A lot of the objects that the steampunks make are just beautiful and they're fun to film.

00:53And I thought, well, for a documentary, you've got some ready-made wonderful B-roll if you just hang out with these people.

00:58The curiosity that it created in me and the thing that kept me going when I was making the film is,

01:02okay, this is what you're doing when you're out at a con dressed up in steampunk,

01:06but I want to know what goes on at home. I want to know, behind the scenes, what is your life?

01:10And I wanted to understand where they were all coming from.

01:12So can you give us a little hint as to what their day-to-day is?

01:16For some of the other people in the community, you know, they take off their attire and they go to their jobs.

01:21You know, it's something that they do in their extracurricular time.

01:24But by and large, a lot of them spend as much time as they can thinking about steampunk, writing about it, blogging about it.

01:30And the end result is not just dress up and play, it's let's make stuff, let's create.

01:35The time where instead of people looking at technology seeing us in such a negative way that it was incredibly optimistic.

01:39There is nothing too far away that we cannot reach.

01:41And so it's full of mad inventors building incredible, fantastic contraptions.

01:45What's the most ambitious or memorable steampunk idea?

01:49For instance, our Uber driver last night was big into steampunk. He was talking about having a flying boat.

01:55The thing that I always say is the Never Was Hall. You know, it's not an empty shell of a three-story house.

02:01It's actually a three-story house. It has, you know, it has a library and a parlor and rooms that you can hang out in.

02:07And the fact that they can take that from San Francisco down to Burning Man every year and that it works.

02:11And that's incredible to me. It's sort of like something out of Howl's Moving Castle, you know, come to life.

02:16And they did it, you know, with five dollars in their pocket. That's sort of a miracle.

02:21It's kind of an exciting thing to have worked on a film for so long and now I actually get to enjoy the film.

02:26I want to enjoy it right now. And if people want to know more about the film, please visit www.vintagetomorrows.com.

02:33We're going to have more information about how you can watch the film, how you can download it later on.

02:37Be sure to check out Vintage Tomorrows and follow at Hollywood on Twitter and Facebook.