Directors On Technology
Still at the beginning of the curve
At last year’s Digital World, Allee Willis, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner and Shelley Duvall spent an evening batting around how entertainment might change as a result of digital interactive technologies. This year, Seybold and the Advanced Technology Council of The American Film Institute pulled together a panel of “digitally hip” film directors and writers to discuss the impact of digital technology on the art of film making.
The resulting discussion didn’t go nearly so far as to reveal storyboards for the next generation of interactive movies. Most of the panelists are already heavily involved in digital effects and production, and subsequently as much of the discussion focused on today’s problems in the film business — cable “scooping” movie theaters for first-runs, and the growing business in ancillary products — as it did on the future of digital movies.
Engaged in the struggle.>> After the panelists warmed up a bit, it was clear that they’d given the matter some thought and had some logical ideas about where they’d like to direct their efforts, so to speak. Most interesting was to see that as both artists and business people, they’re engaged in the same struggle as the rest of us: trying to figure out how to retrofit their craft for a new medium.
Panelists were screenwriter Mike Backes, directors Jim Cameron and John Badham, and producer Gale Anne Hurd. Their formidable list of credits includes the creation of the computer graphics in Jurassic Park and the screenplay to Michael Crichton’s upcoming Rising Sun (Backes); the Terminator and Alien movies, and The Abyss (Cameron); War Games, Stakeout and Point of No Return (Badham); production of Cameron’s Terminator movies, Aliens and The Abyss (Hurd).
DIGITAL PRODUCTION TOOLS BECOME INDISPENSABLE
The increasing sophistication and accessibility of digital production tools for the film industry has been one of the driving forces behind the concept of interactive media. Backes said that changes in the film business wrought by digital technology have been “encompassing.” One reason that Jurassic Park was so successful, he said, was that it was in preproduction for two years to perfect the special effects. Cameron agreed, saying that the making of Terminator 2, for example, actually had to wait for technology to make the cyborg character possible.
Special software had to be written for a specific problem in Cameron’s The Abyss — he needed to create a photorealistic character (the water critter) using computer-generated animation. The villain in T2, he said, required that the same technique work for the better part of an entire movie. “We created new things to do with it, and moved the state of the art forward.”
Not just effects.>> Backes adds that technology as fundamental and (today) uninteresting as word processing has dramatically changed the revision process for screenwriters. Storyboards are often sketched out in Virtus Walkthrough, a 3D modeling program. But while powerful general-purpose computers are taking over a wide variety of tasks in the film industry, Hurd notes that progress is not absolute.
“It’s great to have these tools,” she said. “But (today) the capitalization of new companies puts people at risk because the technology (they buy) is outdated so quickly. You can spend $10 million on computers that are outdated immediately. It used to be you’d worry about what you’d spend on a screenplay. Now you have to worry about technology spending.”
Bring back the gladiators.>> As far as Backes is concerned, the cost of technology is coming down just in time to bring back the blockbuster. Digital techniques such as George Lucas has discussed — replicating extras in post-production so that it looks as if you hired 500 extras instead of 50 — as well as using blue-screen techniques are going to make a huge difference in production budgets.
“Movies are getting smaller,” Backes said. “Sets are so expensive that there aren’t that many sets anymore. Digital sets will bring back large-scope movies, like the gladiator movie, that require very elaborate sets.”
Hurd half-joked that “(virtual reality) characters will start getting residuals,” but in fact there has been talk of how to pay actors who are replicated digitally after the initial filming.
CAN WE CREATE NEW WAYS OF TELLING STORIES?
More important than the technologies themselves, asked Badham, what kind of stories will we tell with them? Unlike some in the crowd, Badham didn’t see that digital technology necessarily “empowers” would-be filmmakers. “I think you’re looking at a sinkhole of money. There are cheaper and easier ways to make movies than this,” he said.
“Cameron built T2 on making the morphing work,” Badham added. “That’s the right use for technology. If there’s no good organic use, integrated into the story telling, it’s not worth it.”
But if directors or writers are willing to re-gear thinking that’s been around since pre-Greeks, to abandon linear story telling, then they’ll have a new art form. “Even if you decide you want to give the audience five choices, a designer has to set it up,” said Badham. “It is a new way of approaching stories, but you have to shed a lot of old habits (that work).”
CREATING ENVIRONMENTS VS. LINEAR STORYTELLING
Backes, echoing much of the feedback we got during Digital World about the interactive movie concept, wasn’t sure that the concept of providing choice via interaction to the audience was such a good one — or at least not via the present model, which, like it or not, is based on video games.
“Games are stupid,” said Backes. “They are not interactive — they give you fewer choices than anywhere outside the Marines. This is about creating interactive environments.”
Cameron believes that any writer creates enough “back story” and parallel plot lines “to have stuff left over for nonlinear.” As a science fiction writer, he said, it appeals to him because it allows him to explore “entire different worlds based on ‘what ifs’.” (This sounds to us like a Hollywood version of Maxis’ SimCity or SimEarth games. Interesting idea.)
Creating the new cinema.>> The most promising part of the discussion came when the panelists started really chewing on the problems of the interactive cinematic experience.
Badham mentioned I’m Your Man, the interactive movie that played in New York City and Los Angeles, which put the audience in the peculiar (and, it turns out, rather boring) position of “voting” for which way the plot turned via pushing buttons installed on their theater seats.
Backes ripped the concept. “Storytelling by committee is network TV and it doesn’t work,” he said. Badham was less vehement: “Interactive movies aren’t that big of a deal. They’re interesting and fun, but when you go to the movies, you want to be overwhelmed. You want to be had, not play around with a joystick.” Cameron said, “Part of the fun of a movie is surprise.”
So what’s the interactive experience going to be, then? Badham mentioned a play in Los Angeles called Tomorrow that’s been running for nine years. The audience starts in one room and follows whichever actors they choose through a house; obviously there are dramatic situations running in parallel, quite unlike anything we’re “presented with” in theater or cinema today. The production gets a high percentage of repeat business from people who want to follow what’s going on in the rooms they missed. “People really like the interactive experience,” said Badham. “They feel not so passive.”
Couple that with Backes’s and Cameron’s ideas for synthetic character creation and open-ended situations, and Badham’s and Hurd’s belief that film writers want to be freed from the two-hour limitation of film, and the future of interactive cinema is sounding an awful lot like virtual reality. As digital production tools become even more sophisticated at producing photorealistic simulations, we expect this is exactly the direction in which the technology-savvy artists in Hollywood will head.
Denise Caruso