Tag Archives: art

Blue Screen Of Creativity (BSOC)

In the current issue of Wired, Jason Silverman writes:

Michela Ledwidge wants her film to be more than watchable. She wants it to be remixable. By February, the director plans to post all of the raw material for Sanctuary, her 10-minute sci-fi movie about a girl, her computer, and a mysterious murder, on www.modfilms.com. Expect nearly nine hours of production footage, 90 minutes of sound effects and dialog, plus hundreds of storyboards, concept drawings, and still photos. Viewers will be able to manipulate the cinematic elements with downloadable software called Switch. Ledwidge was inspired by game modding: Fans spend untold hours performing retrofits on their favorite titles (famous examples include Half-Life and Quake III). If her project catches on, Sanctuary could turn into the first massively multiplayer online movie.

This is an excellent idea. In pushing the idea further, it would be interesting to develop a series of similar projects, each of which would move closer to blue screen with which others could create a story/movie. For example, the next step would be to have a similar setup but with no audio or blue screen substitutes available. Interested parties would dub over their own vocals (which would be paired, but not synced, with the movement of the actors’ mouths) and background imagery. Taking it further, we might have blue screened outfits for the actors and blue screened boxes in the foreground, letting people apply clothing and props to the scene.