At this downtown Los Angeles studio, it seems like business as usual. A young Hollywood actress (Rossum is one of the leads of Showtime’s Shameless and starred in The Day After Tomorrow) is being directed by D.J. Caruso (best known for Disturbia and the recent sci-fi thriller I Am Number Four), whose cinematographer, Mauro Fiore, is among the best in the world (he shot Avatar for James Cameron). But instead of the usual clutch of studio executives huddled around a bank of monitors, whispering about the latest take, the group of suits on this set is slightly different: They’re ad agency reps with their clients. No doubt, the folks from Toshiba, Intel, and their agency, Pereira & O’Dell, were wringing their hands, as they're the co-architects of this interactive film experiment.
"You have Intel and Toshiba, or you have Toshiba and Intel, depending on who you talk to," says Caruso jokingly. But the director, who was hired for the gig through his commercial agents, who usually set him up with the standard 30- to 60-second spot, says he was granted admirable freedom on the set of Inside, which is being called a "social film." "I didn’t have anybody coming to the monitor and saying on the product shot, 'Do you think there’s too much backlight?' They hired a filmmaker because they wanted a film."
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