Filmmaker touts futuristic 'My Name Is Ringo' ahead of Provo festival stop

SALT LAKE CITY — Jon Peter Lewis is a singer-songwriter turned filmmaker and director who was on "American Idol" and "The Voice."

Lewis recalls debuting an album for the first time and opening up for American singer-songwriter Eddie Money. At that exact moment, he discovered how much he disliked being in the music business.

Lewis bounced around for a while trying to figure out what he wanted to do and landed in film. From there, he got into the film program at USC Cinematic Arts and continued his journey in film.

Lewis' short film, "My Name Is Ringo," will be playing at the Provo Film Festival FilmQuest at the end of October. Directing the film brought on unique challenges for Lewis as he was used to producing live-action movies, and this short was a sort of virtual animation.

"The uniqueness of it is (the short) was built in a game engine, so it has a little bit of that video game quality to it," Lewis said.

The movie follows a young girl in a futuristic world where robots and humans live together and reality is controlled through special suits.

"Right now, especially, we're in a time where there's a lot of hand-wringing about what artificial intelligence does to the world, and how that changes and does it bring about the destruction of the world," Lewis said. "This idea kind of takes the other route, where it's like, 'Well, what if we were able to exist as a civilization alongside robots?'"

In order to create the short film, Lewis said he had to spend a lot of time teaching himself how to use new software and programs.

"It was a long process. I feel like I made the movie many times because I would make it and then I'd get to a point and I'd be like, 'Something's missing, or something's not right' and I'd have to, like, kind of retrace my steps and figure out how to do this thing that I didn't know how to do."

Lewis said he spent about a year and four months in front of his computer for about 12 hours a day to create "My Name Is Ringo."

"It was a lot and my wife was very patient with letting me do that," Lewis said.

On the acting side of things, Lewis utilized something called motion capture, where the actors wore a suit which was then recorded and turned into a virtual person on a computer.

Although the process to create the movie took time, Lewis said the work was worth it and he hopes to expand the world of "My Name Is Ringo" by turning it into a series and creating more episodes from the short.

"I fell in love with it, I fell in love with this process," Lewis said. "It's a great way for me to make a movie that is beyond my budget."

Beyond the movie, Lewis said he spent much of his musical career onstage at the Velour Live Music Gallery. In what Lewis described as a full-circle moment, "My Name Is Ringo" will show during the film festival, which will be held at that very venue.

"(I) was so excited at the prospect of being able to show my film on that stage because it's a place where I feel a pretty strong personal connection to and I've spent some real time on that stage."

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