November 30, 2004
Flights booked
After several months of heads-down lets-get-on-with-admin it's time to leave the nest, push myself out of my comfort zone and fly back to Sydney. Don't get me wrong. Sydney is the best home town in the entire world BUT I'm a Londoner these days. Rarely leaving zone 1, working in my flat, it's not the easiest move to have to suddenly pack up and go. But that's what has to happen.
We're shooting in Aus and now it's time to pull the team together. Internet comms are working smoothly. We're getting more and more support coming out of the woodwork. All we need now is a film to play with!
It's only been four months or so since the project started but it feels like a lot longer. It's easy to forget that this is only a ten minute film. The volume of concept art alone is making this seem like a far larger enterprise. I guess that's the key to it and has been all along. If we can get a wider community to invest in the story, dabble in the materials and leave their trace on modfilms.net then we're much closer along the path to demonstrating a new way of film-making and the interest in this film world. Time to get more Aussies in the mix!
Character study - CD
CD is a cheeky, and somewhat unhinged, crudely-drawn stick figure guy created by Blake to be Blade’s companion in virtual worlds. The “Customised Dude” has various functions but ultimately he is a guide.
Although usually depicted as humanoid, CD is completely flexible in terms of appearance (like Genie in Aladdin). Fluid transformation is part of his hyper-active antics (Roger Rabbit). He is capable of mimicking any voice or appearance given sufficient information. He is based on illegal software – in the wrong hands he is dangerous.
CD is a digital imp, a shadow, a screensaver, visual entertaining yet cobbled together from existing software. His face is recognizable in any form that he takes. He is designed as an amusement, kind of funny looking, a little strange.
Blake is not a visual artist. She has sketched out CD badly but this is indicative of her focus on substance over style, functionality rather than form. We need to get the sense that more attention has been paid to CD (customising his code) then has been paid to the real world by Blake. CD stands in stark contrast to the beautifully rendered villains he encounters. Minimal effort on visual appearance, maximum personality.
Where did CD come from? Blake started with a copy of FRANC (Federal Reactive Agent Non-Classified), illegal agent software that she found on one of Dad's machines. The 'Customised Dude' has gone through heavy modification and extension to arrive at where we see him today.
CD is illegal because his programming is both powerful and unstable. He's a little like a loaded gun. Blake is still working out his capabilities. This is a walking talking virus/graffitti/tamagotchi style character that demands attention from Blake.
CD has a bug which has yet to be been ironed out. He cannot function in isolation. Blake/Blade has to be in constant contact, rather like dealing with a small child, otherwise he starts to mal-function. Blake has been meaning to attend to this.
CD has one easter egg. The sound of the macarena acts like an override to his system. If heard, CD will start to jump around dancing like a lunatic and be unable to function normally. This was coded for Blake's amusement and like many things she has never gotten around to switching it off. He is her pet after all.
CD is the most difficult (and most interesting) character in the film and his styling needs to work both in 3D as a character and also in 2D (as part of the State’s GUI). Stylistically, CD, the State GUI and the DENR logo all come from the same place.<
CD's humanoid shape must contain nodes that can double as rhythm game notation - e.g. the nodes in the wavy line in Gitaroo Man
November 25, 2004
November 24, 2004
Sanctuary synopsis
Sanctuary is a re-mixable live action graphic novel. In the near future, Blake is a sixteen year old girl in small town Australia. In the space of 24 hours she goes from being an unruly school kid to one of the State’s Most Wanted. After witnessing the death of her father, Daniel, she adopts his legacy in a way he would never have imagined.
Blake vs Daniel
A teenage girl is traumatised by seeing her father killed, convinced that she is responsible for his death, and plagued by guilt that they parted on bad terms.
The Activists vs The State
Someone in government has devised a plan to discredit a group of activists by framing them as terrorists and implicating them in the destruction of a wildlife sanctuary.
The Real vs The Virtual
The development of Virtual worlds in 2012 is accelerating at the expense of the real world
Running in circles and loving it
The challenge of this project is to keep three totally distinct beasts moving forward. It's only when I force myself to get out and get some fresh air that I realise that we've actually come quite a long way since July. And I'm relieved at how fun today was. It's not every day that you get to jump from software design to script writing to video editing and back again, and more of that to come.
It's been an exciting week with the arrival of our first developers and Jan 7th identified as our first milestone code drop. I'm hoping that by then we will have a rudimentary system for MODDing Shakespeare and a much clearer sense of what a re-mixable film looks like under the hood.
We've also had an invitation to bid for a game fund and distribute another short film that's in development. All good signs that people are taking notice of the project and that there'll be eyeballs on whatever pops out.
I'm feeling exhausted. Gearing up for moving back to Sydney for pre-prod means making sure that things are all chugging along this end and it's a long ride if you forget something.
Thanks to everyone who's chipped in the love and attention to life that's keeping me sane (honest!) The bubble's got a lot bigger.
November 23, 2004
Introductory talk at Science Museum
NESTA kindly gave us recent investees some training and the opportunity to pitch our projects to an audience at the Science Museum.
November 20, 2004
Linguabots and CD
Phil Hall who's joined the team as an advisor is a linguabot expert. Thinking about how CD can function as a film character, online community bot, and dev knowledgebase personality.
Links:
elzware.com
personalityforge.com
kiwilogic.de
creativevirtual.com
botcreator.com
November 19, 2004
1st draft animatic
This is very crude but still it's the first full run-through.
VIDEO NOW OFFLINE
UI and screen details need to be honed in on to make the narrative work but hopefully its starting to become clearer.
November 17, 2004
Meeting with Phillip Noyce
Notes from my first meeting with Phillip Noyce, nearly three hours worth.
- He didn't understand the concept of re-mixable film
- His principle reservation was that directors like himself have been fighting a losing battle to prevent 3rd parties modifying and distributing their work (e.g. "family values" edited Hollywood films from cleanflicks.com). The Republican party in the US has threatened legislation to protect censorship-based businesses.
- He successfully sued a TV production company under moral rights for buying Clean and Present Danger rushes then re-assembling them to mimic the released film's final cut as part of a TV show.
- He thought it was an interesting idea
- He wanted to understand where you could make money from this model, saying he simply sells off all his rights (for a given period of exploitation) because it is simple to do this (i.e. MOD Films have to offer a very simple alternative)
- He didn't understand the script until seeing the boards. Dad being an activist wasn't clear to him.
- Said it sounded like "you have everything under control" and "don't need a producer"!
- Recommended shooting out of Sydney to keep budget down
- Recommended focus on getting a line producer
- Recommended getting down to Sydney asap and spending solid time networking to source the best cast/crew from whoever is around
- Recommended guerilla post network rather than established production houses
- Indicated that he could be a mentor but his availability is severely restricted (busy in South Africa until end 2005) so he can't make any commitments and would have to think about it. Didn't know about the NESTA mentor agreement
- Said my explanation of the story was more eloquent than the script.
- Wants a copy of my films on DVD to give feedback on
- Said not to lose sight of the film being more about post than production, only one adult dramatic role
- Said it is not worth bothering to try and get name actors involved
- He got the virtual world aspect by saying "Don't worry about continuity between short and feature, Blake can look like anything"
November 15, 2004
November 10, 2004
Text previz UI
Brainstorm of UI and sample MODs for plaintext pre-viz.
November 03, 2004
Day Something
I'm not good with numbers and I really don't care what day of the project it is. All I know is that today has been a good day to take stock of where things are at. Positive discussions across the three areas, cinema, console and community, great developments like the first draft of the storyboards, interesting new faces like the tool developer applicants, a good half day, personally, thinking about nothing but the characters and what they're doing mucking about onscreen.
There's a real tendency on this project to forget about the story and get absorbed by the mechanics of putting the production together. Mechanics of the world, the props, the re-mixable film player, the licensing scheme, the patent opportunities.... It's crazy. The only point of doing this thing is story. That was the idea. The film is no use without it being a believable experience. Otherwise it's a badly funded corporate video. Only time will tell if this mix of sysadmin/directing and other stuff is truly useful or a distraction from "the process". Reminder to get a brief from someone who went to film school.
I really need to watch My Dinner with Andre, a feature film of two men sharing a meal at the dinner table. No FX, no virtual world interfaces to design, no confusion between avatars and their owners. Shit... what am I doing?
There is something so exciting about having got to this point and to realise that there is no FILM funding at risk here and no COMPUTER GAME funding at risk either. We've got license to make something new with nothing to lose except a business model. And yet storytelling is as old as the hills. It can't really be a new storytelling process. Can it?
Anyway, the business side is the least of my worries. Balancing an online community and a self-serving individual approach to story-telling is more the challenge. Maybe there will be a fundamental conflict being a company director and a film director at the same time. Fortunately, the story is all about people falling foul of corporate interests. So any horrible incidents *touch wood* will have to work as inspiration.
November 02, 2004
Artistic direction for cinema
The key approach to Sanctuary is minimalistic storytelling. This is sci-fi where the details of the technology can be ignored. We are trying to communicate to two diverse groups. One that loves character driven narrative. One that loves a high concept idea.
Successful examples of mixing the two, in this genre, include La Jetée (1962) and Blade Runner (1982). Unsuccessful examples include Hackers (1995) and Matrix Reloaded (2003).
This is a re-mixable graphic novel with live action sequences
The simpler the overall construction of the film is, the easier it will be for the audience to rip it apart in the interactive version. There is a narrative context for static imagery and interrupted frame-rates. This is what I call the “dodgy systems” aesthetic oppoortunity (and "get out of jail free" card when thinking about budget concerns).
The bush action sequences must stand out in sharp contrast in terms of colour and movement.
We're juggling the telling of a good yarn with the introduction of a new paradigm and the ability to engage with it (through MODs). The telling has to be straightforward for the rest to work.
The devices I'd like to explore are:
- Use of static and strobing images
- 360 degree panaroma integration
- CG character integration
- Virtual set overlay on physical set
- GUI overlay on footage
- VR aesthetic using physical props and make-up
4.1 released
The latest version of the script - minor updates.
November 01, 2004
We pledge allegiance to the penguin...
An article in wired about Brazil's attitude to IP law, and their adoption of creative commons licensing:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/linux.html?tw=wn_tophead_5