Cinema Redux

A subforum to discuss film culture and criticism.
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Jem
Joined: Sun May 01, 2005 11:03 pm
Location: Potts Point

#1 Post by Jem » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:14 am

Processing.org

Cinema Redux

This explores the idea of distilling a whole film down to one single image. Using eight of my favourite films from eight of my most admired directors including Sidney Lumet, Francis Ford Coppola and John Boorman, each film is processed through a Java program written with the processing environment . This small piece of software samples a movie every second and generates an 8 x 6 pixel image of the frame at that moment in time. It does this for the entire film, with each row representing one minute of film time.

The end result is a kind of unique fingerprint for that film. A sort of movie DNA showing the colour hues as well as the rhythm of the editing process. Compare Serpico to The Conversation. You can see there's far more edits in Lumet's classic compared to the more gentle slower pace of Coppola's Conversation. This is also down to the editing style of Walter Murch who prefers to only make cuts when absolutely necessary. Have a look through the eight movies and make your own mind up.

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Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

#2 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:42 am

While it's late, and I'm tired, and I really should be in bed (been correcting an essay), and I don't have anything close to the proper time to fully consider this and its implications (yet I'm posting anyway?), this is by far the strangest, most interesting thing I've seen on this forum for a long time. Even if upon consideration I find it flawed or blasphemous, I'll stand by that statement.

Love the overview of the colour pallette.

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tryavna
Joined: Wed Mar 30, 2005 4:38 pm
Location: North Carolina

#3 Post by tryavna » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:03 pm

Doesn't seem to make a lot of sense for b&w films (like the Cohens' MAN WHO WASN'T THERE), but it is kind of interesting to see the change in colors, the shifts between brightness and darkness, etc. Seems more like a parlor game to me than anything else, though.

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skuhn8
Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:46 pm
Location: Chico, CA

#4 Post by skuhn8 » Thu Nov 16, 2006 12:20 pm

Mr_sausage wrote:While it's late, and I'm tired, and I really should be in bed (been correcting an essay), and I don't have anything close to the proper time to fully consider this and its implications (yet I'm posting anyway?), this is by far the strangest, most interesting thing I've seen on this forum for a long time. Even if upon consideration I find it flawed or blasphemous, I'll stand by that statement.

Love the overview of the colour pallette.
I don't think you'll find this blasphemous in the end, any more than anatamy of a scene or the likes. This is a swift anatamy of an entire film in a way. Would like to see this with some kind markers indicating important sections of the film, for instance that spurt of red activity. Been a little while since I'd seen the film so I don't recall what it is.

Fantastic.

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Jem
Joined: Sun May 01, 2005 11:03 pm
Location: Potts Point

#5 Post by Jem » Fri Nov 17, 2006 1:24 am

I'm glad you all enjoyed this, I too thought it was quite beautiful and interesting.

I' d love to see a film represented that has a very distinctive color palatte, something like Suspiria or Juliet of the Spirits.

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