Sunny, a brand new sci-fi dramedy on Apple TV Plus, is completely different from most visions of the longer term — primarily as a result of it barely has any screens. As an alternative, the present imagines a time when expertise is extra seamlessly built-in into our lives. Telephones rely totally on audio, pleasant robots assist round the home, and laptop screens seem like they’re product of paper. For showrunner Katie Robbins and the remainder of the manufacturing crew, designing Sunny grew to become a chance to do one thing completely different within the realm of science fiction.
“It was such a tremendous deal with and problem to assume: if we may change issues concerning the world that we stay in, what would we alter?” Robbins explains. “How would we alter the methods we interface with our expertise?”
These variations manifest in a couple of methods. Whereas everybody in Sunny appears to hold round a telephone, as an illustration, they’re lots completely different from fashionable smartphones. Impressed by the design of Japanese lighters from the Sixties, the units are curvy rectangles that may flip open to disclose a display screen. However hardly anybody on the present makes use of them that means. As an alternative, they pop an AirPods-style headphone in a single ear (the telephone doubles as an earbud case) and do virtually every thing by way of voice.
When the characters must do one thing visually — browse search outcomes or play a multiplayer sport — there’s a built-in projector. And when the residents of this future really work together with a show, whether or not it’s the telephone or a pc or a TV enjoying 24-hour information at a comfort retailer, the display screen appears to be like prefer it’s made out of digital paper. Robbins says the shows have been all designed to seem like the shoji screens discovered in lots of Japanese properties in order that they match extra naturally into the surroundings.
A part of what makes all of it work is that Sunny largely feels out of time. The present follows Suzie (Rashida Jones), who groups up with robotic residence assistant Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) to unravel the thriller of her husband Masa’s (Hidetoshi Nishijima) disappearance. It’s set in Kyoto, however when it takes place isn’t actually clear. The present is vaguely futuristic, with its plentiful robots and voice assistants that may really perceive you, but it surely’s additionally decidedly retro in terms of issues like style and music. Robbins says that temporal ambiguity is intentional. “We by no means needed to particularly timestamp the present, in order that it may really feel 10 years sooner or later, 30 years sooner or later, or an alt-now,” she says. “We needed it to really feel acquainted and accessible and never futuristic in a extremely overt means.”
“We needed it to really feel acquainted and accessible and never futuristic in a extremely overt means.”
Lots of the selections concerning expertise — and screens specifically — additionally got here from a sensible standpoint. “We needed to, as a lot as attainable, keep away from display screen inserts and that sort of factor, and characters continually choosing up their telephones and scrolling,” says Robbins. Having most communication occur by way of voice makes for a greater expertise for viewers, conserving the deal with the actors, but it surely additionally creates stress for the present’s principal character. Suzie has lived in Japan for a decade, however due to the ever-present real-time translation expertise present in her telephone, she has by no means really needed to be taught the language. She merely places within the earbud and carries on a dialog.
“Which is miraculous, and in some methods extremely connective and permits her to stay in a spot the place she wouldn’t in any other case be capable to talk with folks,” Robbins says. “Nevertheless, there’s additionally a barrier inside that expertise. Think about should you lived in a spot the place virtually your entire interplay with folks you have been listening to translated in your ear. Regardless that the expertise is bringing folks collectively, it’s additionally making a barrier on this means that I believe is admittedly fascinating.”
As for the robots, and Sunny specifically, the idea for a cute and pleasant assistant equally got here from a narrative viewpoint. Suzie is somebody with a deep-seated mistrust of expertise who can be going by way of an extremely troublesome time with the lack of her husband and son. “What if the robotic is probably the factor that brings her out of that?” Robbins remembers considering.
“One thing that felt very cute, and approachable, and amiable in order that you may think about falling in love with it.”
After some analysis into the sphere of human-robot interplay — and dealing with the staff at visible results powerhouse Wētā Workshop — Robbins was capable of finding a glance that each Suzie and viewers would relate to, full with an enormous spherical face with big, extraordinarily expressive eyes that do a tremendous job of conveying emotion. “One thing that felt very cute, and approachable, and amiable in order that you may think about falling in love with it,” Robbins explains.
At a time when many people appear to be desperately looking for some sort of treatment to our overconnected current, there’s loads of enchantment in Sunny’s imaginative and prescient. The bots are principally pleasant and useful if you want them and simple to disregard if you don’t. In the meantime, the telephones are connectivity instruments fairly than attention-consuming blackholes, and folks really discuss to one another (even when typically mediated by way of a translator). In a world of Boox Palmas, Daylight tablets, and AI instruments that go away a lot to be desired, the Sunny telephone may undoubtedly garner an viewers — which was the purpose all alongside.
“That was the hope,” says Robbins. “We get the possibility to design one thing right here. Let’s design one thing that we might need.”