Hi, I would appreciate any opinions on a dilemma regarding a character for a short film I recently wrote a script for. It is a 5 minute short film about a woman who is in a deep sleep and is confronted through a neural interface with an advanced computer; this takes place sometime in the future. My dilemma, since the computer is a virtual representation of itself through the interface with her brain, is whether to have the computer represented on film as (a)just a voiceover, or (b)as a futuristic computer box that I could build such as a UV reactive cube computer case with glowing and flashing lights, or (c)an actual actor so that the computer is personified as a human avatar in the form of a real person, with white background, or (d)a virtual computer generated avatar, a talking head of a sort, such as I would create by using iclone software to generate a computerized talking character. So that is the dilemma, which of the four possibilities would be best for the dramatic effect, to make the short film work best on a cinematic level.
If the woman is in a deep sleep, then the computer may offer the only 'action'.
Watch this clip of a 1984 apple commercial. Pretty powerful stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
I was one of the lucky ones that got to see the one and only showing during a superbowl.
Also, mush depends on what the interface is supposed to accomplish, or its personality.
Floating heads and computer interfaces and computer voices are bland. This is especially true with the other character being asleep. I believe you should act it out.
Use a man in a nice suit as the computer. Shoot the seperately with different lighting to give an "off" feeling, and occasinally flicker the opacity of their layer to make it more etheral. Have the computer tell the person they are a computer. It might also be nice, depending upon what sort of story you have here, to have power issues and the computer comment on them, hoping to keep the human calm.
The power issues could then be shown by shooting the same scene in an all white room and cutting to that room and back quickly as the scene continues. "Oh, the backup generators kicked in. We better wrap this up because you know Paul in Maintanance probably forgot to fill up the diesel."
If you want to go humorous you could have the asleep ladies clothes change as one section of th network goes down. "Sorry about the sudden change in clothes. The customization program was loaded on Server B and that just went down, so I guess you'll have to accept that horrid Hawaiian shirt for a bit. I apologize."
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
I agree with RJ, if this is an unspecified futuristic context then a human-looking visual compouter interface is definately more viable than a slightely cheesy flashing box.
I think RJ is suggesting doing a sort of obiwan style effect on the computer character but it could be more powerful if the 'computer' was just the actor in the room- behaving exactly as a human would etc. I'm not sure what meaning/theme/values you're going to convey in the movie, but having the computer represented as a aestehtically normal human would open up all sorts of avenues for you.
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There's daggers in mens' smiles
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There's daggers in men's smiles
quote:
Originally posted by rizzo
I agree with RJ, if this is an unspecified futuristic context then a human-looking visual compouter interface is definately more viable than a slightely cheesy flashing box.I think RJ is suggesting doing a sort of obiwan style effect on the computer character but it could be more powerful if the 'computer' was just the actor in the room- behaving exactly as a human would etc. I'm not sure what meaning/theme/values you're going to convey in the movie, but having the computer represented as a aestehtically normal human would open up all sorts of avenues for you.
Thank you all. I agree with your comments. My instinct is that to use anything other than an actual actor for the computer would cause the short film to just look cheesy, real cheesy.
Who knew 50 years ago we would be where we are now. Try to think where we will be in 50 more years. Holography?
I think the 'human as computer' has also been overdone.
Try to apprach this from the computers POV. How does the computer see the sleeping lady? Can it read her vitals? Can it monitor brain activity? Or spy on thoughts?
If for example, the woman is dreaming of some past event and reliving it, the computer may interact with that scene, and interpret the events. or it may try to catagorize the emotions.
Deinatly tell this from a computer POV, and show us what the computer sees.
A
quote:
Originally posted by alex whitmer
Who knew 50 years ago we would be where we are now. Try to think where we will be in 50 more years. Holography?I think the 'human as computer' has also been overdone.
Try to apprach this from the computers POV. How does the computer see the sleeping lady? Can it read her vitals? Can it monitor brain activity? Or spy on thoughts?
If for example, the woman is dreaming of some past event and reliving it, the computer may interact with that scene, and interpret the events. or it may try to catagorize the emotions.
Deinatly tell this from a computer POV, and show us what the computer sees.
A
That could take the story much further and deeper-- if the computer shows the viewer memory sequences/scenes the woman recalls, I like that idea.
My opinion is that in 50 years computers will probably have some kind of face because it's easier for humans to interact with that way. I'm thinking the disconnected head in RED DWARF is probably the best example. Computer as human may be overdone but that is because it's the best and most likely metaphor.
If for example, the woman is dreaming of some past event and reliving it, the computer may interact with that scene, and interpret the events. or it may try to catagorize the emotions.
This has also been done a number of times, by the way. Both the ending of 2001, and the pilot Episode of Star Trek Deep Space 9 come to mind. With dreams and metaphors played out to help understanding.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
quote:
Originally posted by rjschwarz
My opinion is that in 50 years computers will probably have some kind of face because it's easier for humans to interact with that way. I'm thinking the disconnected head in RED DWARF is probably the best example. Computer as human may be overdone but that is because it's the best and most likely metaphor.If for example, the woman is dreaming of some past event and reliving it, the computer may interact with that scene, and interpret the events. or it may try to catagorize the emotions.
This has also been done a number of times, by the way. Both the ending of 2001, and the pilot Episode of Star Trek Deep Space 9 come to mind. With dreams and metaphors played out to help understanding.
Some japanese robot scientist made a robot of himself, and it can mimic his expressions, it looks JUST LIKE HIM and is freakishly identical, very very creapy. So yeah I see robotic computers looking just like humans in the not too far future. Maybe someone can find that video on youtube where it shows the dude and his robot twin moving side by side, it is quite creapy!
First, how and why does the interaction begin? The woman is in a deep sleep where? At home? A hospital?
Don't give away the idea, but just food for thought.
I think the whole thing of having robot and computers that look like us will quickly give way to what we ''would like to look like'', and computers with ''human'' faces will soon look like anime or another fantastic 'self-analysis'.
If you do the human thing, make it far beyond what we imagine now. Every time we invent something new, it goes through it's own metamorphose. What will the human computer become, and how will it interpret. Will we use them as shrinks? Data banks? Sounding board? Or, will they replace 'MAn's best friend'?
I imagine that AIs will have a "face", possibly we'll have a pull-down menu of choices for face and voice and can texture map our mom's face onto the thing or something but it'll still have a face.
I see robots as going the other way. The whole idea of robots passing as humans will become too good and it will creap people out and robots will generally be made so they are obviously robots. More like C3P0 than the Terminator. Probably not the law, but the preference. Of course the pleasure robots would be the exception and the downfall of the human race.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
There's a graph out there somewhere by a historian/robot scientist done about 50 years ago that still holds true. It shows how robots and AI will gradually become more and more lifelike until it gets to a point where they are lifelike enough that it starts to creep people out and they will become less lifelike from there. I think that it should hold some form we're familiar with, but slightly perverted. Such as a bird, but it is human sized, or something we know but that is a little bit different.
"We all have the potential to be great. It is our inability to do so that makes us miserable." C.S.Lewis
"We all have the potential to be great. It is our inability to do so that makes us miserable." C.S.Lewis
