Odds On: Q&A with the Dante or Die team

Odds On: Q&A with the Dante or Die team

Odds On is an interactive short film about one woman’s addiction to an online gambling app. The film takes you behind the screen, into the depths of the online gambling experience, so you can see how your fellow players are really doing. WATCH THE TRAILER. 

Where did the idea come from?

Co-Artistic Director and Co-Writer, Terry O’Donovan:

It started life intending to be a live project. I was in a betting shop with my Dad, I hadn’t been in one of those places for years, and I just started looking at the rules of the space and thinking, this is a really interesting location for a production. I came back to the team, we started doing some research and checking things out and then of course lockdown happened. But we'd started the ball rolling, and we'd been reading a lot about gambling and then suddenly there was so much stuff about online gambling and how there were so many worries about how lockdown and isolation was going to make it much more problematic.

We reached out to Henrietta Bowden-Jones, who set up the National Problem Gambling Clinic, and had a chat with her about what was going on in the online gambling world right now. And she said yes, online gambling was a massive problem, and specifically for women and slot machine games.

Why did you want to make this piece as a film, and not a live show?

Terry:

I did originally think of the piece as a live show set in a gambling shop, and we might pursue that in the future. But due to lockdown and the rise in use of online gambling apps, the idea transitioned to a digital show.

There seemed to be really rich material to explore developing an online piece and, having just created User Not Found (which was a video podcast), we were excited to use the screen again for a slot machine game as the kind of space that this digital experience could sit in.

What do you want people to take away from watching the film?

Sophie Ignatieff, Producer:

We'd like to open up the conversation about an issue that's very prevalent at the moment, but people aren't really talking about, especially among different demographics, like older women, who aren't seen as traditional gamblers. So for people to think more about this issue, to provoke conversation about addiction in general and to explore what addiction feels like.

Also within the arts industry, we’re keen to push the conversation forward about how to create digital work, the different ways that digital work can reach audiences and how we can collaborate to bring digital work to audiences.

Terry:

We wanted to provoke empathy and an emotional response to gambling addiction. And think about the human at the centre of the story, because there is a stigma and shame around gambling addiction. So if we can help shift the attitude or emotional response around this family’s experience that would be amazing, just to get people talking.

More info and watch the film here: https://danteordie.com/odds-on