Selected for Cinéma du Réel in 2023, Sandbox (Bac à sable) is the directorial debut of Lucas Azémar and Charlotte Cherici. Entirely shot entirely within a Grand Theft Auto 5roleplay server, this documentary offers a deep dive into a French gamer community that transcends the conventional or “expected” gameplay.
In gaming jargon, the term sandbox refers to a style of gameplay where players can explore and interact with a world with minimal limitations on their actions. Sandbox games typically offer a high degree of freedom, allowing players to create, modify, or destroy their environment and influence the simulated reality in both minor and significant ways. This can range from constructing buildings to altering the landscape, to creating intricate narratives or scenarios. Given this definition, sandbox as a title for a documentary about roleplay within a game like Grand Theft Auto V is quite apt. In fact, GTA V’s roleplay servers function as a sandbox environment in the truest sense: they provide a framework within which players can live out complex, interwoven lives as characters of their own creation, with the game world serving as an open canvas for their narratives. These servers expand the conventional boundaries of the game, moving beyond its original missions and storylines to embrace a form of play that is driven entirely by player choice and creativity. Players on these servers adopt nuanced character identities and engage in narrative-driven activities, effectively sidelining the original storyline crafted by Rockstar Games. Such depth in interaction is facilitated by mods like FiveM or GTA Network, which make the roleplay experience possible.
Sandbox allows viewers to explore the lives of various characters – doctors, police officers, store owners and workers – each portrayed with unique backgrounds and ambitions. The documentary highlights the importance of server administrators who enforce rules to maintain realism and order, drawing parallels with super partes entities. These administrators are crucial in ensuring adherence to the roleplay’s shared norms and reprimanding those who deviate. Staying in character and respecting the assigned role is non-negotiable.
Through its ethnographic lens, reminiscent of the approach seen in Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier, and Quentin L’helgoualc’s Knit’s Island, Sandbox is composed of self-contained vignettes that focus more on standalone, self enclosed narratives rather than recurring characters, with the notable exception of Astrio, the vigilant moderator depicted as a guardian of gameplay integrity, a Watchmen character donning a white suit and a hat, his face covered by a mask.
The film begins intriguingly with a “machinima within a machinima” – a meta-narrative technique where a shootout scene between thugs and special ops officers, viewed by avatars in a Los Santos movie theater, sets the stage. This is followed by a sequence featuring a job interview for a Weazel News cameraperson, possibly an alter ego of the director(s), intended for “research purposes”, illustrating the “free” nature of roleplay environments where participants shape their experiences within the confines of the world they inhabit.
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Matteo Bittanti
Works cited
Sandbox (Bac a sable)
Charlotte Cherici, Lucas Azémar
documentary, 58’, 2023, France
Production: Jérôme Blesson, La belle affaire productions
Screenplay: Charlotte Cherici, Lucas Azémar
Filming: Charlotte Cherici, Lucas Azémar
Editing: Charlotte Cherici, Lucas Azémar, Mila Olivier
Music: Simon Averous
Sound: Pierre Oberkampf
Mixing: Frédéric Belle
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