Brave New World

 First published February 19, 2013

Previously, I outlined some major actual or impending changes taking place in the film industry. Many of these are related to distribution strategy.  But there are even more significant changes in the works. These will affect not just the production of films but also how the creative process is conceptualized. Some impending changes may even alter our conception of humanity.  But, before we lose our grip altogether, let us go back and look at film’s early beginnings, since the patterns of the future usually can be found within the rubble of the past.

The first film experiments were conducted in the late 1880s, with moving images.  These were very simple bits of film, like Roundhay Garden. The link I’ve included is to a reworked version with added title cards. The surviving version of the original is about 3 seconds long.  By the mid-1890s, Thomas A. Edison http://www.thomasedison.com/ and his company were experimenting with sound movies.  Developed for Edison by William Dickson, these short films attempted to synchronize the moving image to a wax cylinder.

The first step toward the development of color motion pictures took place at the end of the 19^th Century.  An early form of color film stock was successfully created in 1909.  A version of Kodachrome color film was tested and available by 1922.  Experiments in color were used in various silent films such as the 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera.

Almost all of these early experiments were half ignored and, in many cases,  forgotten. The clips I have provided links to are all relatively recent discoveries. Yet, in many respects, the technical history of the entire first century of movies can be found within these early experiments.  It just took a long while before the industry caught up with the implications.

The same process is happening today.  Two recent little films on the internet are major examples of the future.  At the moment, they are easy to ignore.  They lurk on the fringes and mostly play like an exercise in digital punkin’.  For example, there was the recent YouTube clip slyly entitled UFO Over Santa Clarita.  Like a lot of UFO videos on YouTube, this quickie visual extravaganza is an exercise in digital effects.  The space ships are not real.  Nor is anything else in the footage.  Even the skyline isn’t real.

As detailed in a recent Wired article (“The UFO Is Fake in Animator’s YouTube Prank — But So Is Everything Else“) the film is a highly sophisticated creation of digital programming created by Aristomenis Tsirbas.  Though Tsirbas is already employed as a digital designer for a wide range of films, TV shows, and lots and lots of ads, he is spending his free time developing the totally synthetic image.  Movies that exist solely within the software.

For now, the creation of a totally digital film is a time consuming and costly process.  But that will eventually change.  So far, attempts at creating a feature movie that operated in this form has largely failed.  Despite the technically ambitious efforts of the 2004 production of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the audience was mostly unimpressed.  Admittedly, the dang film played as if it were written by a machine….

Which gets to the next experiment, the short film Do You Love Me.  Directed by Chris R. Wilson and scripted by Cleverbot, the movie is an oddly amusing take on Artificial Intelligence and  its inability to fully grasp certain ins and outs of human language and thought.  This isn’t exactly the point of the movie, but it sort of comes off that way. You can easily watch the movie for a few cheap chuckles and leave convinced that a computer cannot achieve the conceptual and linguist level needed to “write” a movie.  However, I have personally dealt with computer systems that have a greater verbal level than Cleverbot (to be honest, the system strikes me as a little old guard and half funky).  As for story lines, get real.  Most mainstream Hollywood movies are already practically plotted by computer.

Eventually, there will be a totally computer generated production.  Everything from script to images to music will be solely generated from software programs.  Will it be any good?  Probably not, but who knows.  That will not be the point.  The technical possibility is the point.

Being just a tad cynical, I suspect that the computer script will be incorporated into the industry faster than the total digital production process.  The film industry is weirdly conservative in many odd ways and the idea of replacing Brad Pitt with a program called Pitt 2.0 will be a hard one for the industry to accept.  Heck, there goes all of the flashy publicity and brief bursts of glamor.

But computer scriptwriters?  Let’s face it, there are some distinct pluses.  Computers don’t drink.  They rarely go on strike and when they do, you simply reboot.  And they never, ever demand creative input.  From the viewpoint of a studio executive, it is a dream come true.

Of course, it should also be noted that a computer could eventually replace most studio executives.  We really are not that far from Hal 9000 and eventually the average round of negotiations in a Hollywood office may sound a bit like the classic scene in 2001.

And it will all be coming very soon to a digitized automated theater near you.