By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)
One of the ground breaking possibilities of doing digital projection is that there’s the possibility to re-edit a film on the fly with audience feedback. There’s little downtime other than rendering required and if you can streamline the process by automating it via a complex algorithm, like the Rufus Corporation and Eve Sussman have done, you can re-edit your film before EVERY SHOWING! Here’s how they did it…
“We shot a lot of grainy Super 16 film at sites built 60 years ago. The Soviet government created a master plan for places where it was almost untenable to live. Our main location was a town near the Caspian, on the edge of the desert, where there was no fresh water. We took these modernist visions of planned societies, filmed them in a way to make them look almost archival, and fit them into our retro-noir science fiction story that’s saying, “Well, what if this is the future?” – Eve Sussman, Director of whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir
Sussman’s goal for the film “whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir” was to be sure viewers never saw the same film twice. To accomplish this amazing feet, she took over 3,000 film clips, 80 voice-overs, and 150 pieces of music and pushed them through a series of complex computer algorithms which edited and re-edited the film between showings. The computer designed for the task (dubbed the “Serendipity Machine”), would automatically and randomly choose between the vast amount of source roll to piece together was Sussman would call “a movie that isn’t really a movie.”
The film’s basic story line is of a geophysicist who comes to realize that his work and his very life is being manipulated and controlled by his employer and the city government in which he lives. So each screening provides a different peak into the world the character, who’s name is Holst, finds himself in. The computer algorithm sees custom tags that are included in each film clip media file’s metadata and uses those tag words to piece together the sequence IN REAL TIME as it’s being screened. The metatags give the computer the ability to create a kind of narrative that propells the story forward.
The film was shot and the computer program written over the course of two years and Sussman hopes it will appeal to viewers who tend to watch a film more than once. It made it’s world premiere at Toronto Film Festival back in September of 2011. Currently, it’s part of a Time Lapse exhibition series that is showing at Site Sante Fe in New Mexico over the next three months. Even YouTube has gotten in on the game as according to Sussman’s YouTube page, the 5 minute trailer of the film doesn’t repeat and is as original as every showing of the film.
The feel of the film rather reminds me of THX1138, George Lucas’ seminal thesis film that was shot while he was at USC Film School. And it just leaves me to wonder who amazing that film would’ve been if Lucas had all the technology that filmmakers are enjoying today. I’m not talking about the endless re-releasing of Star Wars that has overtaken Lucas’ professional career or his mega corporation based on that one idea, but George Lucas the filmmaker, who when making THX1138 had plenty to say on film about where he thought society was going. And looking forward, we can only imagine what the future of filmmaking will be like with a powerful tool like the Serendipity Machine in their back pocket. Here’s hoping it isn’t like the Apple Commercial 1984.
Hat Tip – The Digital Visual
About James DeRuvo
