*By Max Godnick* Aneesh Chaganty is going from the Googleplex to the multiplex. The former Google staffer is the writer-director of the forthcoming film "Searching," a thriller told through computer screens and devices that rule modern communication. "It's a very classic thriller told in an extremely unconventional way," Chaganty said of his feature-film debut in an interview with Cheddar on Thursday. When a father's teenage daughter goes missing in the film, he goes straight to the source: her laptop. In a self-referential fashion, The movie borrows the vocabulary of techーtext messages, online video, passwords, and boot-up sound effectsーto tell its story. As John Cho's character searches for his daughter (Michelle La), he discovers the real lives of teens often differ sharply from their digital ones. But make no mistake, this is no dystopian lecture on the ills of technology. "This movie is in a lot of ways really showing the positives of what technology can do," Chaganty said. "I think Hollywood, so far, and media in general, they always give technology a very bad rap." So, he set out to make a film that applied tech holistically, featuring both its problems and potential. While Chaganty said that making the movie did inspire him to buy a screen protector for his webcam, he admitted his otherwise optimistic views of technology were influenced by his time making commercials for the ultimate tech boss itself. "/[Google/] taught me how to emote on a computer screen," he explained. "Even though you're not seeing someone's face, even a blinking cursor, or a rainbow spinning wheel of death, or someone clicking a button can still make you feel something." That's not to say technology doesn't frustrate Chaganty. The film's unique form led to a more complex, arduous editing processーthat didn't always go as planned. "We were in a tiny room, computers crashing every hour, we'd lose 20 percent progress. A normal movie is like, preproduction, production and post-production. Our movie was pre-post, post, and post-post." Chaganty said his next movie is a more conventional thriller that only features technology in a minimal way. "Absolutely not will I ever make another project that takes place on a screen," he said. "Searching" premieres in select U.S. cities on August 24 and will be released nationwide on August 31. For more on this story, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/this-big-screen-thrillers-plot-unfolds-on-small-screen-devices).
