HRH MEDIA

So, now that I’m directing the feature-length documentary THE ONLY HUMAN IN THE ROOM about deepfakes, synthetic identity, and the war for verifiable personhood, how do I prove that my own video footage is real?

The film’s premise is that we can no longer trust our senses as organized crime and authoritarian states deploy readily available AI tools of deception. Human presence in a live digital interaction such as a job interview, a phone call, or a Zoom meeting is not assured. Fraud abounds.

My primary camera has no C2PA support (a credential to track media provenance and authenticity). Most professional devices don’t yet, hence this bleeding edge experiment.

This is an image of a custom provenance slate I concocted for my production. It’s a digital clapperboard that runs as a local HTML file on my iPad while in the field. And yes, I like that it appears as if it’s an artifact from THE MATRIX.

Before each shoot, I’ll fill in the shot details, “liveness” attestation, consent status, and GPS coordinates. I’ll then photograph the slate with my Google Pixel 10 Pro, which does have native still image C2PA capture support at Assurance Level 2, the highest security rating currently defined by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity.

That C2PA-signed image becomes a cryptographic witness. It doesn’t prove the video footage is unaltered. But it does attest to physical presence at a specific location, at a specific time, with a named subject, with a camera rolling. It creates a verifiable anchor in the chain of custody even when the primary capture tool can’t provide one itself.

It’s a deeply imperfect solution. The chain breaks the moment I start editing the footage. Yet documenting where provenance holds and where it doesn’t is part of the film’s thesis.

The slate is open source. If you’re a journalist, documentarian, or content creator thinking about proving original content in your own work, I’m happy to share…unless you prefer to take the blue pill.