Daughter of God

What does memory look like? What do thoughts look like? What is the magic ingredient that makes reality real?

I dunno.

Let’s make some language. We’ve already got B roll, an antiquated term for supplementary footage used to cover audio edits in an interview. The concept of turbo charged B roll is experimental, so let’s call it exroll or xr, cause it sounds cool and avoids controversy about pronunciation later, (is it zeeroll or exeroll?).

So what do we need to make xr? Here’s what clobbered me in the Barnes and Noble yesterday – I’d like to be able to code visually again as in the bygone days of Director and Lingo. I’d like to be able to deal with a variety of media. I’d like the host application to be open source. Can you say – Open Source After Effects? Not yet? So it looks like I am stuck with After Effects.

After Effects is pretty great, and it’s got Javascript built in – expressions. I’ve already experimented with algorithmic animation in AE, so I’ve got a clue what’s possible.

Now we’ve got another piece of the puzzle. I just sent Patrick back with some After Effects tutorials, we’ll see how far he gets. I need lots of rotoscoping done for DOG, but now I’ve got another reason to climb the AE learning curve, XR. It’s almost time to start recruiting.

I had a flash today while listening to a Democracy Now report on http://storycorps.org, a huge oral history project catching the compelling eloquence of regular folks. That’s sort of what ALM is about too – finding extraordinary answers to global survival in ourselves.

I was thinking how cool it would be to visualize Storycorp histories with maybe animation or collage. It could be fun to listen to these stories and make sketches, to draw what came to mind and then match the sketches to the audio later. There’s power enough in the human voice alone, especially when the speaker is recorded in a dark room without the distractions of camera, bright lights and staring interviewer. With a shift to the internal world, memory playback becomes more vivid and descriptions more intense and compelling.

The brilliant colors that fire in the dark theater of imagination could be rediscovered. Rather than complementing narrative audio with contextual b-roll or a sync shot of the head that’s talking, interviews could be illustrated from inside that head. Then it hit me, this is the enhanced b-roll idea I need for the ALM interviews.

Backstory – While talking to Steve Elrick about his thoughts on the November 28 ALM sneak preview, I proposed the idea of enhanced b-roll for the interviews. I’ve got these heads talking and some cutaway imagery to edit to (b-roll), but we’ve seen all that before. It’s the same old, here’s the talent speaking and here’s some contextual shots to cover the edits. But what if there were b-roll custom built from scratch that took the moment to another level? What if we could see what the talent saw, an impressionistic glimpse of the talents own experience? Is this an opportunity to innovate the whole technique of b-roll beyond present art, redefine b-roll? Perhaps…

So here’s how I can start. I identify the audio for the segments I want to use and sketch some new visuals, forgetting completely about the live action. I can pull from the vast vocabulary of animation and live action to visualize them – cell, collage, clay, 3D, visual remix. I could recruit a slew of visual artists to help, especially my talented visual friends currently sucking wind in the not yet recovered economy. Viola, turbo b-roll. Illustrate it as if it were oral history, that’s the ticket. Make art, yay!

The “evolution” of Hello World is already leaning in this direction. The stop action treatment works, folks like it. Andrea said it was projected my delightful personality more accurately than my actual live action improvs. Sounds like a direction to me.

09-09-05 Hello World Evolution (newer OS)
09-09-05 Hello World Evolution (older OS)

That’s where The Daughter of God has been since I packed it up over a year ago, after a wide eyed comparison of what was required and what I had available. Back in October 2008, I seemed to face a mirror trail of glowing screens, chained to my cave in the cliffs of the concrete canyons, (or brick in my case). Life in Brooklyn can be a very romantic, edgy and even epic, but when a chance to sail Hawaii comes along, well… who among us wouldn’t go?

That didn’t happen, but what it morphed into was probably precisely perfect, praise Pele. I’m talking about On Desire and Around Lake Michigan, Search for Sustainable Civilizations, http://ondesire.com. That became the flavor of epic 9 out of 10 Dans prefer, combining self reliance, makerismo and low impact exploration.

Bravo, decrypting my mission on Planet Earth is always a good thing. I’ve made significant advances on what my process should feel like.  We want to take Joe Campbell’s advice and “follow our bliss”, but what if we are really, (ahem), well endowed? When one is blessed with so many gifts, so many avenues for fun and fulfillment, finding projects that implement and integrate everything is the ticket. ALM pushed my envelope big time, I deployed like never before.

Now I’ve got two incomplete projects – a narrative short (Daughter of God) and a feature documentary, (ALM). My flash this Christmas morning is that finishing them requires an even more robust deployment of self. An intriguing concept.

Let’s explore how this might go in the next few days. Merry Christmas!