Cast
Peter
Peter is enthusiastic about AI and likes discussing technology. He speaks confidently, sometimes before he has thought an idea all the way through. He takes their group project seriously and is willing to do the work, yet does not shy away from playing around with the models to tease the people around him. The actor should be comfortable moving between technical conversation, teasing, and should be able to take a joke as well as make one.
- Playing age
- 20–26
- Language
- Good conversational English. You do not need to be a native speaker.
- Filming
- Summer 2027
- Days
- Around 12 days
- Where
- Northern/Eastern Europe
- Pay
- From €175 per shooting day
- Expenses
- Travel and accommodation are covered
All six principal roles include outdoor scenes in forest and by a lake, swimming, and evening scenes around a campfire.
Audition sides
The scenes below have been prepared for self-tapes. You can record them on a phone and add the link to the application form below.
Side 1: Backpropagation
Lines of other participants: Nadja (4), Sonja (3), Max (3), Carl (1)
Setup. The first night of a camping weekend at a remote lake. Six university friends have spent the day filming the lake for a group project: a world model with digital doubles of themselves in it. Now they sit around the fire, and a phone is recording their voices for the doubles. Their lecturer, Professor Sinsky, recommended the software they will use to make the doubles. Peter has a sausage on a stick. He likes explaining how things work. For more context, read the extended synopsis.
EXT. CAMPFIRE — NIGHT
In the evening, they sit around the fire. Someone has left a phone recording beside them to start capturing voices for their characters. It lies on a flat stone at the edge of the firelight with its red dot on.
SONJA How is it going to learn my voice from one phone on a rock?
PETER It already knows how to talk. It’s listened to years of other people. Give it ten seconds of you and it can copy you straight away.
SONJA A good copy?
PETER Like Max doing you.
MAX I do a very good Sonja.
PETER But that’s just copying. It listens to you and imitates you. Nothing inside it changes. The other option is to fine-tune it. I’m not sure the software Sinsky recommended does that. We can have a look tomorrow. But if it does, it actually trains on your voice. Every time it gets you wrong, backpropagation fixes it a little.
NADJA Fixes it how?
PETER Backpropagation.
NADJA That’s just the name.
Peter looks round the fire. Nobody helps him.
PETER Okay.
Peter attempts to explain how neural networks are trained and backpropagation. He holds up his sausage stick and uses it to show the route: forward, toward the flames, and then back.
PETER The network makes a decision. Then it measures the error, and the error travels backward through the network to reconfigure its mind, so it makes a better decision next time.
NADJA So it learns by regretting?
CARL Regret as a derivative.
NADJA But you still need something real to compare it with. Otherwise it’s just fantasizing.
MAX How many times does it have to be wrong?
PETER Millions.
MAX That’s a lot of regret.
PETER Think of all the baggage these models bring into every new conversation.
SONJA No wonder it apologises so much.
Side 2: The park
Lines of other participants: Angelica (4), Max (4), Sonja (1), Nadja (1)
Setup. Just after the lecture where the class was given two weeks to build a world model of a real location. The six friends have agreed to do it together and are walking back through the park, the girls pushing their bikes. They need a location. Peter has an idea. For more context, read the extended synopsis.
EXT. PARK — DAY
ANGELICA It has to be somewhere real. And somewhere we can film in two weeks.
MAX We could do the park.
He points around them.
PETER Why would anyone visit the park in a world model? They can walk out the door.
ANGELICA The pond, then. Water is hard to reconstruct. That would at least be interesting.
PETER Half the course is going to do a pond. The other half is going to do the courtyard.
MAX (smiling) And they’ll pass just fine.
Peter walks past them and turns round, so that he is walking backwards in front of the whole group.
PETER Or. Hear me out.
Nobody stops walking. He keeps pace with them, backwards.
PETER Not a park. A world. The lake from the class trip. Three hours from the nearest road. We walk in and capture all of it: the trail, the forest, the shore, the water. And anyone on the course can walk the whole way there without getting out of their chair.
A pause. Sonja claps, slowly.
SONJA Beautiful.
MAX Three hours.
ANGELICA It was five last time.
NADJA That was the scenic route.
A look travels round the group. Nobody takes it up.
ANGELICA And there’s no electricity. Phones, laptops, the drone. What do we charge it all with?
PETER I’ll get solar panels.
MAX You don’t have solar panels.
PETER I’ll get them. Whatever it takes to bring the vision to life.
He is about to walk backwards into a lamp post. Max reaches out and steers him round it without looking.