Pocahontas, Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, FernGully… the story’s been done a million times, but who cares? It’s a good one, and in this case, it’s all about the eye candy, right?
[Via Reddit]
While navigating the galaxy with a longtime companion, the captain of a small cargo ship encounters some unexpected space turbulence and must get himself and his friend to safety.
Did you know that the Futurama theme song was inspired by a piece of music from the 60’s named Psyché Rock, a creation of French composer Pierre Henry? Check it out:
For the dawn of a new decade, adventurer Bertrand Piccard offers us a challenge: Find motivation in what seems impossible. He shares his own plans to do what many say can’t be done — to fly around the world, nonstop, in a solar-powered aircraft.
After watching this, let us ask you a question: What are your plans for 2010? Do you want to keep on living your life just like you did in 2009, or do you want to take a new approach to it? Maybe you want to find a new job, change something you don’t like about yourself, or accomplish something crazy you’ve dreamed about doing for a long, long time. Whatever are your goals for 2010, we’d love to hear about them in the comments section below!
While many video games based on, or related to, films have a rather bad rep for being clunky, ugly, and often just plain boring, you might be surprised to find that the new web-based flash Sherlock Holmes game, 221b, has actually employed some pretty impressive programming in its design. Called “Chatbot” technology, this allows for players to interact directly with characters in the game, enabling for for direct interrogation during gameplay in an unprecedented manner according to the BBC.
The designer of the Chatbot program is Rollo Carpenter, who specializes in programming human/computer interaction, and is the mastermind behind the Jabberwacky chatterbot. In the early 2000s, I recall coming across a very similar program professing to be John Lennon, and all its answers were directly related to quotes he’d actually said that were vaguely connected to the questions and comments provided.
However, that’s the big difference between Jabberwacky/Chatbot design and other computer programs professing to have human/computer conversation like the Lennon bot. Typically, as in any basic RPG, the reactions and responses are pre-programmed. You say something about a gun and the computer returns a pre-loaded response based on a series of possible outcomes; sometimes being nice might get what you want, or sometimes being forceful.
In other words, most AI in this family of programs, until now, is static. Chatbot, on the other hand—as described in this 2003 article from the BBC—actually learns the more you talk to it. Carpenter has been working on Jabberwacky since 1989, in some ways as a means to reach out, as he says, “I was a self-taught teenager programmer, now known as a geek, and possibly needed a bit of communication.”
In 221b, the process is significantly more complex as it’s necessary to maintain the flow and narrative of the game itself. Explains Alex Champandard, a programmer who’s worked with Rockstar and Guerilla games: “Since the AI characters are completely interactive, each time you play the outcome depends on your actions. Yet in the background there’s a drama manager that makes sure the story keeps going.”
Web-based, Facebook-linked, and designed to compliment the weeks leading up to the film, 221b is surprisingly engrossing for a movie tie-in. The aesthetic is gorgeous, the integration is impressive, and—while I’ve only just begun to play the game—it definitely takes a cool, viral approach to gaming that I haven’t seen before.
No, this isn’t earth-shattering as far as game play is concerned. This sort of slow pace game is not for everyone. What’s particularly intriguing, however, is to see this possibly game-changing technology crop up so innocuously. The last place I’d have expected to look was in a movie related game, for sure. But what’s exciting is considering how such a game may affect future gaming. One of the most irritating aspects of most current RPGs (like Oblivion, Fallout, and even WoW and most MMORPGs) is the fact that a true suspension of disbelief is impossible when everything is so pre-scripted.
I’m particularly fond of the way the BBCs article ended, so I’ll share that with you. Dr. Reddy, a professor at the University of Wales specializing in AI explains, “We have come a long way from ‘All your base are belong to us’ and ‘TAKE AXE. THROW AXE AT DWARF.'”
Tags: AI, artificial intelligence, Chatbot
The holiday season is nearly over, which means that the piles of baked goods might finally be starting to dwindle (just in time for New Years’ resolution diets). Which means it’s also time to eat that gingerbread house! It was fun to look at for a while, though; here’s a few more that caught my eye…
When you take a gingerbread rocketship to the moon, is it still made of cheese? – wallyg (CC)
We all know that in today’s movies, “Green Screen” technology, also known as “ChromaKey”, is being used to create virtual environments that look just like the real thing. The extent to which ChromaKey is being used in a production remains largely unknown to most folks, but the following video will show you just how much can be done with the technology. Check it out:
By this time you’ve likely read plenty of Avatar reviews out there or, more likely, you’ve been to see the movie yourself. My own feelings about the cinematic quality of the film are mixed, but that’s not the point of this piece.
Because watching Avatar didn’t actually make me excited about watching Avatar, if that makes sense–it made me excited about watching future science fiction and fantasy movies in a way that no other film has to date.
I was lucky to be brought up in the 80s, at the height of the Jim Henson‘s workshop, when movies like The Dark Crystal defined my childhood and made me, at such a young age, truly believe in magic. Those were important years, and nothing inspired me so much as fantasy in film. The Last Unicorn, The Hobbit, Time Bandits: the list goes on.
But something happened with the introduction of CGI that, in some ways, have aged films of the last ten years more than those of the 80s and early 90s. It’s like we took a few steps back and had to redraw everything from scratch again. Watching some of the broom-flying scenes in the first Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone, for instance, or even some of the parts of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings already feel dated. It’s strange to think that the puppets and animation of my youth seem to hold up better in some ways. (Not all films held out, of course. There’s the weird case of the Ninja Turtles franchise, which started out surprisingly viable and not that bad in terms of animatronics, and then, by the third film, turned into a complete farce.)
Except now, I think the game has finally changed. WETA has demonstrated that, in the last ten years, CGI has truly gone beyond what seemed so monumental during The Lord of the Rings films in the early 2000s. I kept looking for those glaring errors, kept scanning the screen, the shots, for moments of real weakness (i.e. when Neville went on that errant broom ride in Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone and he looked a little better than a stuffed beanbag being flailed about; or those scenes in LOTR when the hobbits just didn’t look short enough, in spite of the camera tricks). But those that I found in Avatar were exceptionally minimal.
Avatar is not a great film, at least, not in terms of what the movie says or achieves from a thematic standpoint (in other words, it’s been done before… but I digress). However, the presentation, the experience of the film, the detail of the world and the remarkable depth of emotion conveyed in the CGI characters is something altogether new and thrilling for me, fangirl as I am of fantasy. While the 3D was a bit distracting at first, in the end I saw the importance of it. It was another layer of depth, another way to draw the audience into the world.
For years I have dreaded seeing fantasy adaptations for the screen, fearing that the result will never even graze the surface of my imagination. This includes nearly every film with a dragon made in the last two decades. Now, I say, bring it on. Let’s get some Pern on the screen, some worlds teeming with alien life, vast ancient monumental cities. Let’s really push the envelope now that we can do it well.
The aesthetic of Avatar, I think, far eclipsed everything else about it. I believed in the world even if I didn’t think the story was that great. Every bug, mushroom, flying creature, hairless dog, and fern frond was a painstakingly real and believable as my own back yard. And that is the key to good science fiction and fantasy: creating a believable world, a world in which you get blissfully, thoroughly lost, and regret having to come back from.
So, readers. What SF/F worlds do you want to see recreated on the big screen in the coming decade? Do you think that, now that the genre is appealing to a larger audience that we’ll have a chance to see more of our beloved books and TV shows in theaters? Or are there canon books that you’re still dreading, regardless of the advances in technology?