Lucasfilm Predicts the Future

There have always been three stages to the filmmaking process: pre-production, production, and post-production. These three components rely on each other to create a polished final product. Regardless of being a documentary, a promotional video, or feature film, all film productions require these three steps. 

"Over the next decade video game engines will be used in film-making, with the two disciplines combining to eliminate the movie post-production process."

This is the ambitious claim made by Lucasfilm, the production company behind the Star Wars franchise. 

Speaking at the Technology Strategy Board event at BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), the company’s chief technology strategy officer, Kim Libreri, introduced a new style of filming: 

As you can see, the company has figured out a way to implement special effects in real-time, moving a large amount of post-production work into the pre-production and production phase. Although Lucasfilm is able to show off this technology now, it is still more of a future concept and calling it a complete replacement to post-production is laughable. As you can see from the video, the graphics are not exactly feature-film quality. But this is, more then anything, is a sign of things to come. It could also be considered an advanced style of storyboarding, enabling special effects artists to see their work before actually implementing it.  

All of the effects in the video have been possible in the past, except before you had to process, tweak, and render the footage. Now they are able to do it incredibly faster to the point where it's instantaneous. In movie making time is money, so what this means is that films will be able to implement special effects on a much smaller budget. I know some people favor practical effects so this may not be an entirely good thing... but I'm very interested to see what happens when high-end graphics become assessable to a very wide audience.

Oh... and speaking of the future. Check out this cool film I found that interviews Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese. They ask them about the future of movies... but in year 1990. Quite the interesting perspective.

Video Game Graphics: Do They Matter?

Recently a whole slew of new video games have been released. Among them are Halo 4 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. With these new releases i have been constantly overhearing conversations concerning things like how certain aspects of these games are but one thing always seems to be a serious topic within the discussion. Im talking of course about the graphics. It seems that graphics is one of the most important things to gamers these days. It makes sense. Why wouldn't you want to play a game that has the best graphics around.

While games like Halo and Call of Duty improve there graphics with each new release, there has a computer game released recently that challenges the idea that graphics are one of the most important parts of the game. The game i am referring to is called Minecraft. The concept surrounding this game is very simple. You are a character in an extremely blocky world, mining resources like coal and iron in order to build things. You can build anything from a house to a scale model of the starship enterprise. The graphics in this game are incredibly simple. Everything is made out of blocks and the coloring is very simple. There is no such thing as shading, all of the colors are basic and simple. The most interesting thing about this however is that this game is extremely popular. I found this very interesting because while it is fun to play (albeit extremely time consuming) the graphics look like something that would have been released 15 years ago. However Minecraft is extremely popular. Once released, all over the internet there were forums and screencaps popping up concerning the game and who could build the most ridiculous thing in there chosen world. I really like that this is as popular as it is. It has always bugged me when people get really serious about the graphics in there video games. I personally have never really cared. This shows that there are others out there like me who do not really care that much about graphics and are more concerned with the actual gameplay.

Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical

It is interesting how even the New York Times, prodded by falling number of subscribers looks to present data in a way that can truly add to your experience. In this very simple "audiolization" they convert time data in a fun way that our senses can clearly understand. It is apparent from this forage into creative data visualization that the makeup of their work force is actually being renewed. Click on the title of the post to go to the permalink.

Freebase

Since many of you are using or want to use data let's take a look at FREEBASE, which is a special breed of data aggregator, wiki, social network etc. The data is being generated by the users, as is usually the case, and can be utilized by you in a variety of ways, the simplest being to link to it of course. Others can add to your theme or subject etc. By creating your own Freebase you are adding your experience or knowledge about the subject to a bigger comprehensive pool. Of course the internet itself is like that, but these pools are the equivalent of specialized areas of the brain that are more focused on certain subjects, skills or concepts.

For example, I started one as a test called Interactive Storytelling which you would find as a top domain if you searched for those keywords in the Freebase link. I have not used it much at all, but I just noticed that some people actually added related themes to it.

So I suggest you all type some keywords in there and see what other related stuff you find that is of interest to your project. I am sure you will be surprised.

Jorge Luis Borges,
in my opinion one of the most extraordinary storytellers of all times.

Tableau

I found this very useful site that provides you with a data visualization tool that graphs in a variety of formats and I believe you can come up with your own (in C++) for those of you who speak those OH TOO CLEAR languages:-)

All you need is to find a good set of data, for example from AGGDATA which I showed in class. Some of their datasets are free to experiment with (and make sense off).

Or just search for government databases, there are thousands on every imaginable subject and they are free.

The data can be in different formats, for example Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft Access or plain vanilla text file (like CSV) If you want more professional databases like Firebird, MySQL and such you do have to upgrade. But for playing around and understanding the power of these types of tool the freebies are more than enough)

This example is fully is interactive so you can see lots of relationships. (I decided to just link to it because it kept expiring since it is hosted by the Tableu service. It is also easier to understand and use that way)

Then check their how-to demo, download some formatted data and have fun.

Online Resources For Creativity

One of the only places on the web that I know of to provide public access to free video editing tools is a relatively new website called One True Media. It offers other services as well, without the need to purchase expensive editing software. I believe this falls into the category of Cloud Computing, a precept of which is that the public can work on projects using technology without having to own or update the software. I favor this idea as I am not a big fan of upgrades.

Another interesting site is called Aviary. It is a suite of graphics tools much the the pricey Adobe software, but also includes the ability to save your files on their server. This was extremely useful this summer when I was teaching at a tech camp for migrant teens which was under the auspices of the School Board and the Alachua Multi-county Migrant Program. Many, if not most, of these kids did not have access to a computer at home, but could create their designs for tee shirts and save them to the website. Now that the camp is over, they can still access their work online at any public library. This is an important solution in the struggle to address what is known as the Digital Divide.

Data and Design

In answer to Edward's previous post, another useful website to know about is called Many Eyes.

It allows users to try out various types of graphic representations of data sets, either their own or sets provided. I thought the graph of football quarterback's salaries on page two was interesting, because what people choose to focus on is telling.