Experimental Short Film - Epistemological Study

2 Farmers saw a Sheep is an independent experimental short film that investigates a core epistemological problem: when two individuals observe a sheep in a field, what is it they are truly witnessing? The film serves as a narrative exploration of the volatile boundary dividing true justified knowledge from mere belief. It challenges the audience to examine what it means to state an untruth without having the internal knowledge that your statement is a lie.

Designed around the classic philosophical Gettier problem "A Sheep in the Field", the film forces a direct confrontation with an unreliable narrator. We start the film by introducing a "grain of salt" motif right from the opening statement. The underlying narrative cannot be entirely trusted. To execute this conceptual film, we relied entirely on Creative Commons and archival imagery.

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“When one truly believes in their truth but is made aware of their mistake, is correcting your mistake with another lie a sin? The thin line between knowledge and belief is what we seek to explore.”

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The project was originally conceived as part of a collaborative creative challenge between friends during the final stretch of the pandemic's lockdown. Created quickly over the span of a few days using exclusively openly available material, this served as both a sketch as an experiment. To read a further breakdown on this philosophical problem read this research on Epistemology.

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