Day: January 20, 2010

If I were to tell you it is possible to make a movie about a book people would kill to have and to protect, you would probably think Shaw had gone off her grammar rocker again. But trust me, that movie is possible and now playing in a theater near you.

But before I go any further, I have three admissions to make.

1. My life is rather busy and I am sad to say I rarely get to the movies.

2. I am a very forgiving movie watcher and I am happy to just be entertained.

3. I love Denzel Washington and will watch anything he is connected to whether it is good or not.

All that said, this past weekend I had the chance to see the new Denzel Washington movie The Book of Eli. And it was AMAZING!!!! Not just because it had been so long since I had seen a film on the big screen; my last time was this summer when I saw District 9 (more on that one some other time). Also not just because I was entertained, and I was so entertained. And not because Denzel Washington ROCKS, though he does.

This movie had it all. Strong story. Great acting. Excellent cinematography. The trailers do NOT give the whole thing away, not even close. The movie delivers all that the trailers promise and more. I was speechless at the end. It moved me. And I must admit I was skeptical. At first glance I thought this might be a rip off of the Mad Max franchise storyline. Thankfully, I was so wrong.

The story itself is brilliant. You were always left with one more question you wanted answered….why does Carnegie want this one particular book? Why will he kill for it? Who is Eli really and why is he walking? Why does everyone always ask to see you hands before doing business with you? There are more questions, but telling you those would give away too much of the story. Suffice it to say, this is not a movie that uses a top named actor and fantastic fight scenes to prop up a weak plot.

The gritty, barren landscape was believable. The lighting bothered me at first until I realized why they were using the effect; it fits perfectly with the storyline about what happened to create this post-apocalyptic landscape.

I could go on, but I would be revealing too much, taking away the power of the film, and I would rather you discover it for yourself. Go see how Hollywood made a movie about a book worth dying over. And even if you could care less about books, the world created in this film is worth exploring anyway….road gangs, kicking fight scenes, great one-liners, and even an amusing scene involving an elderly couple that came at just the right time to break a bit of the tension in the film. Trust me, you will be entertained.

Tell me if this hasn’t happened to you. You’re sitting in the video production room after Shaw has given you your latest video assignment pondering what your video will be about. Suddenly, the idea comes to you, every detail falls into place, you can picture each scene and frame of the video as if you’d already made it. It’s complex sure, and will probably be difficult, but your image of it is perfect.

So you go ahead and shoot the video, trying to stay faithful to your vision. It doesn’t come out just how you pictured due to the variables you have to deal with when filming. Tech problems, talent problems, time constraints, etc. This is to be expected, after all, how can people follow your vision if they can’t see it?

What if I told you that you could simply download the images you see in your brain and extrapolate the film straight from that? Put your vision up on a monitor so your cast and crew understands exactly what you want.

It may sound like science fiction, but the idea is really only one step removed from current tech. I was reading an article in the February edition of Popular Science entitled “The Mind Readers” (article not available online yet) and I learned of a new application of fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) machines. You know, the donuts that scan your brain? New research has discovered how to use the brain scans to reconstruct what the subject was viewing at the time of the scan. Lets say you were shown a picture of a building like this one.

While you are staring at the picture the fMRI is scanning your visual cortex for the signals your neurons are firing off in response to the image. Then the information is run through a complex algorithm. Once the algorithm is complete, the researchers can display the image you were looking at simply from the scans of your mind. The finer details of the image are lost, but you can more or less make out what is going on.

The building shown here is just a representation I created as it is very difficult to find real examples online, though according to the article such examples do exist. The only image I could find was this one, which reconstructed the word “neuron”

It isn’t high quality, but for being plucked directly from your mind, it’s pretty damn good. Now what does all this have to do with video production you ask? Well, aside from the fact that they can also pluck video from your brain, I got to thinking about the possible future applications.

What if it could work in reverse? What if that perfect film you have in your mind could be scanned by an MRI and extrapolated into the video? If that day comes then anyone with an imagination could make a film. It would come out exactly how you wanted it.

Now I’m going to be realistic and assume that we won’t ever be able to pluck hi-def video from our minds. But at the very least this could be used for storyboarding. You could show people exactly what you wanted the shot to look like in low-res. Using this technique could improve the quality of films because everyone, not just the director, could see that burning idea.

All you gotta do is just read his/her mind.