Soft Cinema: Concepts |extended version | 1200 words

Soft Cinema explorers four ideas.

1.
The first is the algorithmic editing of media materials. Each video clip used in Soft Cinema is assigned certain keywords that describe both the "content" of a clip (geographical location, presence of people in the scene, etc.), and to its "formal" properties (i.e., dominant color, dominant line orientation, contrast, camera movement). Some of the keywords are automatically generated by an image-processing software (written in VideoScript), while others are input by hand. The program (written in LINGO) assembles the video track by selecting clips one after another using a system of rules (i.e. an algorithm). Different systems of rules are possible. For instance, one system selects clips closest in color, or type of motion to a previous one; another matches the previous clip in content and partially in color, replacing only every other clip to create a kind of parallel montage sequence, and on and on.

The current version of Soft Cinema software allows the author to define such a particular system of rules, which it then uses to compile a sequence of video clips that best satisfy these rules. However, it is also possible to create other versions of the software that would give the author tighter control over the sequencing. For instance, one version may involve a video track completely edited by the author beforehand. Some shots could be designated as “replaceable” while others would remain unmodified (to keep narrative continuity.) Another version may contain a variable set by the author, which tells the program the probability of any shot being replaced. In summary, instead of posing complete randomness against the complete control of a human author, Soft Cinema investigates a different paradigm: using a computer as an "association machine" that complements / reacts to images selected by the user with other images.

(Interestingly, CD and MP3 players as well as software for music playback, such as iTunes, all include an option to play songs in random order. Can this be another example of electronic music culture being ahead of other cultural forms in applying new computer logic?)

Recently, the dominant tendency in audiovisual computer culture (VJs, Flash and Shockwave audiovisual pieces) is to synchronize image and sound (using video output to control/generate the sound, or conversely, using audio to control video). Soft Cinema adopts another model, one influenced by Eisenstein's theory of audio-visual montage based on musical contrapunct. In Soft Cinema movies, visuals create their own fairly autonomous flow, which runs parallel to the flow of the narrative, but "syncs up" with it at key moments. That is, periodically a particular video clip is selected to “anchor” the narrative events.

2.

The second idea is database narrative. Rather than beginning with a script and then creating media elements which visualise it, I investigate a diffirent paradigm: starting with a large database and then generating narratives from it. In Soft Cinema, The media elements are selected from a database of a few hundred video clips to construct a potentially unlimited number of different short films.

3.
The third idea is what I call macro-cinema. While filmmakers such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis have already used multi-screen formats for fiction films, thinking about the visual conventions of Graphical User Interface as used in computer culture gives us a different way to do macro-cinema. If a computer user employs windows of differing proportions and sizes, why not adopt a similar aesthetic for cinema? In Soft Cinema, the generation of each movie begins with the computer program semi-randomly breaking the screen into a number of square regions of variable dimensions. During the playback individual clips are assigned to these various sections. In this way, the software determines both the temporal and the spatial organization of a work, i.e. both the sequencing of clips and their composition.

Another inspiration for macro-cinema comes from contemporary cultural sites, which have already adopted a multi-frame format. One example is found in news and financial broadcasts, which combine a video of an announcer, a looping text, charts of stocks, etc. in a single screen. Another example is the use of multiple frames in many computer games where each frame may present the environment as seen by a different character. Importantly, in both examples, the information presented in the various frames is related to each other, but also maintains a semantic autonomy (in contrast to traditional cinema montage). For instance, a broadcast announcer would still make complete sense even if all of the ancillary graphics were removed. This example provides some direction in how to use multiple frames within macro-cinema.

Finally, yet another inspiration for macro-cinema comes from the evolution of video production and distribution technologies. While NTSC/PAL analog video and television resolution has hardly been sufficient to present even a single scene, HDTV standards (1920 x 1080 and the like) make it possible to divide the screen into multiple frames. In fact, HDTV television specifications allow broadcasters to break the total bandwidth of a signal (19 GB/sec in the US) in several different ways including transmitting one high-res image with a few medium images, or a larger number of low resolution images, etc. In short, the "fixed resolution—single image" convention of both 20th century cinema and television has already become technologically and conceptually obsolete.

While at present (2002) HDTV equipment is cost prohibitive for artistic use, it is possible to use Quicktime at DV resolution (480 x 720) to experiment with how multi-frame high-res cinema and television may look like in the future. This is the strategy used in the 2002 version of Soft Cinema. The original DV material is scaled down to 320x240, 240x180, and similar resolutions and encoded in QuickTime using Sorenson codec. This allows the Director program to play up to 6 clips simultaneously within one DV NTSC resolution frame (720 x 480).

In both the installation and the PC versions, a Director program assembles movies in real-time. Linear versions of the project are also available on DVD and videotape. To create a linear version, we (1) choose the movies we want; (2) connect a video camera to a computer; (3) run the Soft Cinema software. The DV camera records what appears on a computer monitor. (The linear version is available on DVD and all standard digital and analog video formats.)

4.
The forth idea is to create a truly multi-media cinema. In Soft Cinema video is used as only one type of representation among others: 2D animation, motion graphics (i.e. animated text), stills, 3D scenes (as in computer games), diagrams, etc. In addition, Soft Cinema supplements a "normal" video image with other types of lens-based imagery commonly used today by industry, science, medicine, and the military: low res web cam images, infrared images, edge-detected images as employed in computer vision systems, etc. While some music videos and artist videos already mix some of these diverse types of imagery within a single work, Soft Cinema assigns each type of imagery to a separate window in order to dramatize the new status of “normal” video, photographic and film images today—no longer the dominant form, rather just one source of visual information about reality among many others. An additional inspiration for juxtaposing several different representations of the same scene comes from the display setups that have become standard use in medicine, aviation and other contemporary workplaces. Rather than simply using these different types of representations for a purely visual effect, Soft Cinema investigates the possibilities of using them together for fictional narration.