01 / 05
Mission Film 01 · Quest for Intelligence Series

How do you know
what someone else
is thinking?

A creative treatment for the MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence — introducing the Social Intelligence Mission, and the first entry in a potential series.

ClientMIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence
Mission LeadsRebecca Saxe & Lily Tsai
Runtime3–5 minutes
StudioBearwalk
02 / 05
// 02 — CONCEPT.SPEC

On a mission to discover

IMG.01 · 16:8
One mind reaching toward another — the film’s opening image

The Social Intelligence mission has not launched yet, so there’s no research and no lab footage to draw from — and that absence is the invitation into the conversation for what will come. This film documents the beginnings of a question, built to live on SQI’s site and to set a tone for the curious nature and incredible work behind the Missions at SQI.

03 / 05
// 03 — REF.CAPTURE

Mood Board

04 / 05
Storyboard

Story Structure

01
The Mission
+Expand

Opens without explaining SQI or the Mission — human observation and mystery. Rebecca introduces the fundamental problem: every mind is invisible to every other, and we spend our whole lives coordinating with minds we cannot see.

Opening Title
+Expand

A brief title card holds on screen — MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence, Social Intelligence — before cutting into the next movement.

02
The Why
+Expand

Lily expands from individuals to groups — parenting, classrooms, organizations, governments — and the enormous collective accomplishments that depend on it. The film moves toward the question of why this matters as machines start to participate in our world too.

03
The Work
+Expand

Rebecca and Lily finally name the Mission directly and what they want to pursue. They don’t have answers yet, and that’s the point — possibility and ambition, the questions they hope this Mission helps answer five years from now.

04
The Promise
+Expand

Jim contextualizes Social Intelligence within SQI’s larger Quest — not an endorsement so much as pulling the camera back. Title card holds; the last human interaction continues a beat past it.

05 / 05
Bearwalk
MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence
Social Intelligence Mission — Creative Treatment
Prepared by Bearwalk for · sqi.mit.edu