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| "'His body was covered in Coke fizz?'
But what does that mean?" |
This movie also contains explicit educational content. |
This page is about the 2000 film. For the 2008 film, see Artifact.
WILLIAM MATHESON'S
"THE
ARTIFACT"
Now available to watch online!
("Life After Y2K" also available.)
|
|
| "'His body was covered in Coke fizz?'
But what does that mean?" |
This movie also contains explicit educational content. |
The Artifact is set in the year 2010. It's a show about unconventional high-school relationships. Where does one find happiness? What is life? What is love? We ask the hard-hitting questions and have a few (sometimes unintentional) laughs along the way. White Lance Films (Rocky Lake Pictures' parent company) has provided willmatheson.com with unlimited, exclusive internet media rights to the classic 2000 film on a time-limited free basis*. Enjoy!
Read the screenplay. Watch
the movie (new!!).
Listen to the opening theme**.
Look
at the crew.
More screenplay and credits options. See
some screenshots.
(if you would like to do everything, just scroll
down the page)
* - There is the remote possibility that if we were to
do something commercial with this thing,
we might be required to remove some of the images and/or
video from willmatheson.com.
** - "Chain" by Yasunori Mitsuda (MIDI) - not that
we obtained the rights to it or anything.
Some things people who live around here may want to know:
There's also a lot of local colour in the movie, as it's filmed at Charles P. Allen High School in Bedford, Nova Scotia. In The Artifact, the school is under a threat of closure, and the plan is to send the few remaining students to Sackville High, which is fitting, as that's where the CPA community began. Actually, CPA itself has since split into two communities, with the creation of Lockview High School in Fall River. Also in this story, Fall River was destroyed by a nuclear accident (actually, it was destroyed by the fallout from the explosion of CPA2 in Sages of Time, but of course that never happened so it's really hard to judge things like that from any perspective) and is now referred to as the Fall Badlands. Bedford Junior High is in a building called the Sydney Stephen Building (... which was Sydney Stephen High School, which was replaced by - you guessed it - Sackville High. I guess we're a growing community.). Mind you, the story doesn't have anything to do with any of this stuff, but it does acknowledge itself as taking place within this continuum.
I would also like to take this opportunity to deeply and sincerely thank those who came out to the premiere on June 6th, 2000 (You were a great crowd, and more than I expected. Thank you.), as well as our cast and the teachers who helped us take this vision in my head and make it into a movie. I would also like to thank Michael Fox for his continued dedication to this movie, including but not limited to the screenshots he provided for me to post here.
This movie does suffer from a few moments of stupidity, but at no point is it banal. If you sit down to see this with the knowledge that this movie is going to be way "out there," then I think you'll enjoy it. And even if it is bad, it's so bad it's good. Sometimes I think it would be nice to go back, flesh out the script a little more, take a month or so more to shoot and edit... but then I realize I ought to be moving ahead to bigger and better things.
Most of these people were diligent, hard workers.
Film and Video Club Photo, from left to right: Heather Sawers (Producer/Meghan, Life After Y2K), Ashlee Staratt (Molly, The Artifact; Art Director, Life After Y2K), William Matheson (Writer/Producer/Craig, The Artifact; Director/Josh, Life After Y2K), Shannon Quillan (Comm Officer, The Artifact; Actress, The Silent Treatment), Brooke Barnard (Leader, The Artifact; Director, The Silent Treatment), Blair Doyle (Writer/Producer/Actor, The Silent Treatment), Alex Percy (Camera, The Silent Treatment), Pat Savage (Executive Producer, Life After Y2K; Executive Producer, The Silent Treatment; Mild annoyance, The Artifact), Joe Chisholm (Theadore, The Artifact; Keith, Life After Y2K), Matt Gardiner (??, The Silent Treatment), Nancy Higgins (Nola, The Artifact; Sound, Life After Y2K).
What they're up to now (August 2003): Heather ran for the Nova Scotia Party in the riding of Waverly-Fall River-Beaverbank in the 2003 Nova Scotia election. She attended University of King's College and obtained a journalism degree. Ashlee and William are students at Saint Mary's University, while Brooke went to University of Toronto. Mr. Savage is now teaching Film and Video at Lockview High School in Fall River. Joe is attending Trent because he's smarter than all of us put together.
Most of these people did absolutely nothing. I think
they 'joined' just to be in the yearbook photo.
Film Fest photo, from left to right: [Rear] Eddie Chesal, Michael Fox (Director/Camera/Executive Producer, The Artifact), Steve Yorke [Centre] Brian Momborquette, Matt Langille (Michael, The Artifact; Matthew, Life After Y2K), Kristi Langille (Amy/Director's Girlfriend, The Artifact) [Front] Charlotte Jewer (Meghan, The Artifact), Jonathan Bathurst, Donna Safatli (Herself, The Artifact), Ryan Cox.
What they're up to now (August 2003): Michael is currently briging the third realization of Film Amateura through the post-production stages, preparing for a momentous 2004 release. Steve Yorke, Mike Daniels (not shown, Alex, The Artifact) and William Matheson, among others, are featured in this film. Matt is attending Saint Mary's University and has been a Frosh Leader alongside William Matheson. Kristi (no close relation) is attending Dalhousie, and Charlotte is probably out modeling somewhere. Charlotte also starred in Michael Fox's Lylian True, his first main feature following The Artifact.
SCREENPLAY, CREDITS, AND MOVIE DOWNLOAD OPTIONS
With special thanks to traked.org for having hosted our videos in the past (as well as to Michael Fox for encoding them in the first place)! We suggest downloading the files to your computer for later viewing, but depending on your configuration and connection speed, you may be able to view them in your web browser.
These downloads are of the 2000 film. For the 2008 film, see Artifact.
"The Artifact" Main Feature:
Download artifact-original.wmv
(47,512K, Windows Media) - Right-click on the link to save the video to your computer.
Instead of downloading this large file, you may want to view it on YouTube instead.
"The Artifact" Featurette:
Download artifact-featurette.mpe
(45,039K, MPEG) - Right-click on the link to save the video to your computer.
Also available on YouTube.
("Life After Y2K" is also available.)
Download / View artscr.htm (112K, HTML) Simply click on the link to view the screenplay in any web browser. Firebird, Camino, Konqueror, Netscape, or Internet Explorer will do nicely.
Download / View artifact.txt (106K, plain-text) A plain-text version of the screenplay - the best for keeping on your computer to read at any time. Right-click on the link and select Save Link As... or Save As..., then view it in a good text editor such as EditPad Lite or Arachnophilia.
Credits:
Download / View artcred.txt (2.53K, plain-text) - View the official credits for "William Matheson's 'The Artifact.'" You can do this in a web browser since the lines aren't long.
You can also visit Michael Fox's "Artifact" Page. However, I wouldn't recommend going there until after you've read the script or seen the film because it gives away spoilers without warning you first.
Be careful through here, because while I've filtered out the major spoliers, there are still some necessary minor spoilers that go along with some pictures and dialouge clips. If you're the type who wants to discover everything for themselves, see the movie first. (Soon I'll make that easy for everyone, provided that they have enough space left on their hard drives.)
"He must have had something bad to say to me on his mind. He's so mean."
"Um, Mike, I was thinking... don't you think it might be time to tell
someone about that thing?"
"What's your status, Gamma Bravo?"
"And the moon's gravity creates a tidal bulge on this side..."
Is he going to put that on the test?
"I hate being in this class with that kid."
"One of our agents inside this miserable building has given us the
secret to infiltrating the CPA network: "Press 'Cancel' to gain full access
to our local intranet." Press 'Cancel!'"
"Symmonds, your men will proceed down the Ramp and launch a suprise
assault on the Main Office."
(Rick Dunn, pictured here, was a wrestler in the EWO
(Extreme Wrestling Organization). I'd throw up a link but I don't know which
EWO is the right one.)
"Alright, new CRS project. Twenty bonus points to anyone who can restore
our network!"
"Yeah!!"
"I wonder why I didn't see anything... I wonder why - Wait a second,
no, that can't be it... can it?"
"B-but, Julie... Julie, I love you... Why can't we be together anymore?"
"Well, you... I want you to go away."
"Could I hide in a classroom until nine o'clock?"
"I don't see any problems with that. Don't drink too much beforehand."
"Try disrupting the 5D anchor again, and see what happens."
"I heard what happened."
"Yeah, me too."
"I came here to find copies of the Student's Council's Minutes."
"Oh. Are you sure you're not here just to stare at my beautiful body
in this awesome uniform?"
(Please disregard the fact that the minutes are actually
in an envelope taped to the door =) - we were much too frantic to notice
such things at the time of shooting.)
"The FBRT runs the school now. And why are you so anxious to get back
to class?"
"So... you're the one who's been making my life difficult."
"You can't get away from me, you know. I am everywhere!"
"Get... out... of... our... school!!"
"Why the hell's the power out?!"
"According to the lead singer of The Cranberries, that's impossible."
"The Sydney Stephen Building? Michael, that's been abandoned for years!"
"What am I doing here? I've got things to take care of, but I just
can't take my eyes off of..."
"Not defenseless, Officer. You and I will stay here. We can handle
this crowd."
"What are you doing here?"
"Why should you be so lucky? ... I see absolutely nothing! Nothing!!"
"People gathered here, know that she is full of bullshit."
"Too bad that they will all have to die. Now with the pleasantries."
"Now... now you die, Michael."
"I don't care!"
"My name is..."
"I feel like having an intelligent conversation."
"You came to the right place."
I guess we can call that the teaser trailer. We've covered pretty much the entire movie without giving the plot away.
I've switched from using the big PNG bitmaps to smaller JPEGS because the source images were pretty low-res to begin with and the smaller JPEGs minimize the artifacts. Ha-ha! Get it?