A short film with a literal message

This new short film takes the world of texting, and the acronyms it uses, and imagines if they were real.

Directed by - and also starring - LAMAR+NIK, Text IRL is a clever and funny two-and-half-minute film which sees Lamar texting a funny picture to Nik which then sets off a chain reaction of acronyms that ultimately don't end well... at least, not for Nik. 

"Everyone has had the experience of texting with someone and, in response to a halfway funny message, we stare at the screen completely serious and type 'lol' without raising a decibel," said LAMAR+NIK, who are represented by Doomsday Entertainment but who shot Text IRL through their own company, Arithmetic. "We thought it would be funny to illustrate the extreme language we all use when communicating in a very literal way. It seemed like an interesting idea to explore the visual of someone actually doing the things they are texting during a fairly mundane conversation. It was also fun to come up with consequences for communicating in hyperbole."

Asked whether they considered using any other texting acronyms in the film, the duo said: "We made a whole spreadsheet of them to be honest; STFU. OMG. BRB. We also had a bunch of texting shorthand terms that we explored. In the end, we decided to hone in on the most basic ones, the ones that have mostly been there since the beginning of texting and the ones that provided a natural escalation of events that ultimately led to Nik's untimely demise"

There's something freeing about making a project with some of your friends simply because you love it.

Short films and short documentaries are the focus for this month, so why did they decide to shoot a short, and what does it offer that other formats maybe don't? "Feature films have always been the goal for us," the pair said. "We've spent a good chunk of our career on music videos and commercials. While those are fun, and can be really creative, there's something freeing about making a project with some of your friends simply because you love it. Short films allow us to do the ideas that we want to do, on our own terms, and there’s always something exciting about those possibilities."