#i would like to clarify that i do think that inception (2010) is one of the best movies of all time for reasons besides joseph gordon-levitt

[dareduffie]

many things to enjoy whilst watching inception

[katiaelizabethanderson-blog]

Video Research

Why does anime inspire me so much?

intricate storytelling - which often blends between reality and dream worlds, which are really interesting to me and relatable to my work / personal life. They often touch upon the different lives we (normal, modern people) - online and offline, real and dreaming, onscreen and off screen. 

What shots are associated with anime? 

Long, still shots, as well as “pillow shots” which are random cutaways to objects in a scene such as a water bottle or a piece of litter. This gives the impression of the shot ‘breathing’ which feels so charismatic and charming about anime. 

In anime we are also able to like in live action to jump cut and match cut between scenes. For example in Paprika we see a lot of ‘matching screen’ transitions. This is when you would cut from one scene of blood dripping onto the floor, to another scene which is occurring in an entirely different time/place however the scene matches and so they cut together seamlessly. Here is the example from the film. 

Woman in alley way stumbles to find a wall she can lean against, wide shot, long shot

Blood drips from her onto the pipe she rests on, and we see this blood trickle down in a close up of the bottom of the pipe

Close up & matching scene cut to the blood dripping onto the floor, however this blood is not dripping from the pipe and the woman in the alleyway, but from a separate occasion which is clarified in the next shot

Where we see a character holding a knife covered in blood. 

The way that these scenes connect is really smooth and clever, and if you blink you would miss out on the next scene, or the information that we have now transitioned to another scene. Paprika was developed by Satoshi Kon, and he also directed Perfect blue (1997). His shots have been copied and used in big movie names such as Requiem for a Dream (2000), Inception (2010), examples below. 

This same technique is used in other cinema, for example it is used for visual comedy in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in the scene below. This movie is directed by Edgar Wright.

Kon has used this technique in multiple ways, exact graphic matches as shown before, as well as the two time periods which mirror each other. However he would take this idea and put it on steroids, and create really dense / intricate dream sequences (like in the intro to paprika) which are all connected by match cuts or graphic matches. You will recognise this in his work when you watch any of his works. He liked to link and stack transitions back to back, so the viewer would never be very comfortable with a scene before it would dramatically change to another one, and like I said earlier if you blink you might miss valuable information.

He does other stuff like jumping through scenes, for example doing a murder scene : he would show us the build up, skip the murder, and then show us the gore-ish aftermath. 

This use of intricate editing, has a immense effect on the viewer, our relationship between space and time is so warped we don’t even know what we are watching. I like his movies because you have to watch them a few times, or think really carefully about what you are seeing to gain information from the shot. His films also read super fast, and watching them over makes me uniquely experience his film differently every time. His style of film and sound tries to interpret his idea that people all interpret the world differently. Our experience of fantasy, space, time, reality, is different person to person, but also collective. The way he moves from scene to scene is something I don’t see often in live-action movies. There is a relatable and nostalgic feeling to the imagery and I always have goosebumps from the editing, story telling, and artistry. 

[just-bu-2017-blog]

Our friend Gord

        On May 17th, 2016 I woke up unknowing that my thoughts on Canadian music and culture would be forever changed, as it began the day of mourning for a man I hardly knew and a band I hardly listened to. That was the day it was revealed that Gord Downie of The Tragically Hip (The Hip) was revealed to be diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I knew of the The Hip as much as any 20 year old Canadian would. I grew up hearing their songs on the radio here and there, enough that I could recognize their hits when I heard them, I knew they were Canadian and that was about the extent of my knowledge. I respected them in that way that most people respect and support artists just because they are Canadian, I was by no means a fan. I live in a household where the kitchen table is scattered with various newspapers and the news is always on television, my parents are very interested in the news. Once it was May 17th, I was completely surrounded by The Hip, all over my kitchen table, the tv, on my Facebook feed, I thought to myself “woah, this is a big deal” but I could not completely understand why. While reading Sulivan, 2013 chapter 6, I realized I had a negotiated position towards the band and Downie. I could see through all the news around me that this was a big deal and I accepted that and agreed, however I used my experience and worldview of a communications major to negotiate the text around me so I could understand the dominant cultural code. This dominant cultural code was clear that the country was in near pandemonium and put the band on a God-like pedestal. I was able to decode the significance of this historical event because I understand the dominant social and cultural codes. If I was American and heard that a Canadian artist name Gord Downie passed away, I would not be phased. As The Hip never had much of a career in the United States, they were not a household name as they were in this country. Their music also reflected cultural themes and events of this country which would not make much sense to an American (or those from any culture for that matter) unless they had extensive Canadian background knowledge. The song Fifty Mission Cap (1993) for example is about Bill Barilko, a player for the Toronto Maple Leafs who scored the Stanley Cup winning goal verses The Canadiens. Barilko vanished on a fishing trip that summer and The Leafs did not win another cup until his body was found 11 years later. That is a fascinating story to me, however it may not be fascinating to those who do not understand our cultural codes and understand the rivalry between the two teams, the significance of hockey and the pride associated with the cup. Author Simon Levinson of the New York Times wrote an article about Downie and attempted to decode him to American audiences by comparing him to notable American artists, people whom they have social connections to. Once this American audience is explained the cultural code, they are able to begin to understand the significance of Downie.              Once I heard about his diagnosis I needed to satisfy my cognitive needs which are “needs related to strengthening information, knowledge and understanding” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 114). As stated earlier, once I learned of his diagnosis I needed to understand why this was such a big deal, I satisfied this cognitive need through research. Articles and videos helped to satisfy this need. Though making connections wth course content from my communications classes I was able to understand why their Canadian success was so monumental. When I was able to connect the dots I had that lightbulb moment where everything made sense. I learned that in Canada we have something called market failure, based on many factors such as language barriers, our geography, proximity and relation with the world’s largest media market are just some of the many ways that Canadian artists are almost predisposed for hardship and possible failure. The fact that they gained popularity in a pre-web 2.0 time is phenomenal. They did not have to rely on social media or YouTube videos to have success in this country. They were also a band that talked about issues of national importance, they did not abandon their Canadian roots in order to chase American fame. This also fulfilled my social needs which are “needs related to strengthening contact with friends, family and the world” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 114). I felt connected to my friends and family who were sharing posts about Downie and The Hip, I was able to have conversations with supervisors at work who explained to me that their best teenage/young adult memories are based around listening to The Hip in the background. When their final concert was broadcasted live on CBC it was appropriately titled The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration (2016). This truly was a national celebration as it brought the entire country together weather people viewed it from the main square in Kingston, at parks and viewing celebration parties across the country, restaurants and bars and people’s living rooms. It satisfied our social needs which is not something that happens too often on this grand of a scale. The only other time I can think of when our country was brought together this closely was during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.             When watching Courage: A Tribute to Gord (2017) a documentary featuring dozens of archived Downie interviews since the band’s inception, there was one particular interview that left a lasting impression. While being interviewed in 1991 the interviewer asks Downie about his lyrics and writing. In particular she asks what was the exact meaning of a particular song. The interviewer said “I don’t wanna analyze your lyrics because they’re so obtuse, they’re so personal. I haven’t got a clue what these lyrics mean to you, I only know what it means to me” to which Downie responded that “I can’t come up with pat answers for you because it’ll ruin it for me too” (Courage, 2017). Audiences are able to create their own interpretations of metaphors in music and art and connect it to their own experiences. That reminded me of uses and gratification theory in chapter 5, more specifically within the chapter; media dependance. According to Rubin and Windahl’s model of uses and dependancy there are many factors that can change a person’s media usage. One being “the degree of which that person relies upon the media for gratification… a particular medium or type of content can become a recurring source of need gratification so that the individual may not even consider or seek other sources of gratification” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 126). When someone connects to music and lyrics, it creates a supported and comforting feeling knowing that there is an artist/song that can articulate their feelings. Music becomes a sort of therapy and one that they become accustomed to seeking, therefore people are less likely to seek other gratification sources.           In Buzzard, 2015 the article discusses sampling errors in tv ratings. The committee demanded that Nielson discloses the margin of sampling error and clarify to customers that ratings are estimates. Although in the Nielson case the errors occurred due to intentional deception, in my opinion the audience numbers released for the National Celebration broadcast also seem to be in error, although not due to malicious intent. It was released that 11.7 million viewers tuned into the concert broadcast (Canadian Press, 2017). However that is not the actual number of people that tuned in. Think of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians that viewed in large populations on one screen, such as parties, bars, restaurants, parks, town squares (etc). If it were possible to calculate these numbers it would greatly surpass the 11.7 million figure that was released. It should be more clear to audiences that 11.7 million was just the amount of devices that tuned in and that the actual number of viewers surpasses this. The ratings both provided by Nielson and the public after the concert are deceptive.          Long Time Running (2017) is a documentary about The Hip’s final tour. The band and their families reflect on the last 30 years and their initial reservations over the final tour. Downie’s Doctors from Sunnybrook Hospital were consulted to explain the unlikelihood of this tour happening, much less be completed. The documentary premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and was set for a November premiere date for television audiences. Political economy from chapter four is “the study of social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution and consumption of resources” (Sullivan, 2013, p. 78). Once Downie’s passing was announced, the country’s social relations changed as they were all brought together in morning and nostalgia. This mass collective outweighed the power of corporations, in this case Bell Media. The distribution was changed as premiere date was moved up several weeks to be premiered the Friday night after his passing.           When Downie was originally diagnosed, my research was to fulfill my cognitive needs. Once Downie passed I was constantly reading new articles, searching websites, watching videos whether they be interviews of the band or notable figures who are paying their respects to Downie. I had nearly 10 tabs open at once all related to Downie and The Hip, I have several pages saved on Facebook of Hip related content to view later. Sundar explains the specific reasons why I was stuck in this trance of research, “the researchers found that people use the Internet for interpersonal reasons, to pass time, information-seeking, convenience, and entertainment purposes… people view and share YouTube videos for convenient entertainment, interpersonal connection, convenient information-seeking, escape, co-viewing, and social interaction” (Sundar, 2013, 507). Nearly every single one of those reasons are applicable to why I spent so much time using the internet and watching YouTube videos. Perhaps the great number of reasons that are applicable to me explain how I am spending so much time on the internet and YouTube. It also provides some escapism. The Hip was a band that helped to create and evolve Canadian culture and brought us together through celebration of music. Downie was a true humanitarian. He was so passionate about his foundation the Gord Downie Chanie Wenjak Foundation and his work towards indigenous rights and reconciliation, such an important issue that does not effect him personally. In his final years he could have spent it relaxing and vacationing, instead he put on a final tour, with his failing health and memory, to say thank you to his fans. Then he spent the last chapter fighting for those who need to be reconciled with.  As Prime Minister Trudeau excellently phrased it “we are less of a country without Gord Downie in it” (Trudeau, 2017).

Works Cited Baichwal, J., & De Pencier, N. (n.d.). Long Time Running. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from http://www.thehip.com/long-time-running/

Buzzard, K. S. (2015). The Rise of Market Information Regimes and the Historical Development of Audience Ratings. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 511-517. doi:10.1080/01439685.2015.1052219

C. (2016, August 22). 11.7 million Canadians tuned in to Tragically Hip's last concert. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2016/08/22/117m-canadians-tuned-in-to-tragically-hips-last-concert.html

Courage: A Tribute To Gord. (2017, October 25). Retrieved November 02, 2017, from https://www.much.com/watch-courage-in-memory-of-gord-downie-now/

Fifty Mission Cap [Advertisement]. (1993, January). Retrieved November 2, 2017, from https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Mission_Cap

Russell, D. (2016, August 20). The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration (TV Movie 2016). Retrieved November 02, 2017, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5987200/

Sundar, S. S., & Limperos, A. M. (2013). Uses and Grats 2.0: New Gratifications for New Media. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 57(4), 504-525. doi: 10.1080/08838151.2013.845827

Sullivan, J. L. (2013). Media audiences: effects, users, institutions, and power. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Vozick-levinson, S. (2017, October 18). Gord Downie, a Canadian Rock Legend, Sings Goodbye. Retrieved November 02, 2017, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/arts/music/gord-downie-tragically-hip-dead-final-album.html

[njawaidofficial]

Elijah Wood Explains His Move Into VR with Psychological Thriller 'Transference'

http://styleveryday.com/2017/07/10/elijah-wood-explains-his-move-into-vr-with-psychological-thriller-transference/

Elijah Wood Explains His Move Into VR with Psychological Thriller 'Transference'

The star’s production company, SpectreVision, has teamed up with Ubisoft to produce a game that’s left players “unsettled, uncomfortable and walking away from it still thinking about what they experienced.”

Elijah Wood is the latest of Hollywood’s big names to dip his toe in the waters of video gaming. 

Teaming up with French video game studio Ubisoft, Wood’s production company SpectreVision (which he co-founded in 2010 as The Woodshed before rebranding to its current title in 2013) has finished its first foray into VR gaming with Transference, a psychological thriller that puts players into the uploaded memory data of a traumatized mental patient. The game is due to be released in spring of 2018 on PlayStation VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, as well as on the Xbox One family of devices, including and Windows PC.

While a number of other Hollywood stars have ventured into the realm of gaming, Wood is unique in that he is producing Transference, not providing his services as a voice actor (though he has done so in the past in games such as Tim Schafer’s Broken Age in 2014).

SpectreVision has exclusively produced horror and genre films since its inception, and while Transference‘s creepy atmosphere matches the company’s pedigree, it is a entirely different experience crafting a VR game than producing a narrative film.

Heat Vision caught up with Wood to discuss his new collaborative project, his thoughts on VR and the possibility of producing more games in the future.

First off, the trailer and demo for this game are creepy as hell.

The demo is very much a teaser. It’s really a prelude. You are experiencing the uploaded memory data of a traumatized individual used for research purposes. That’s really all the information you’re given. You’re not pointed in any specific direction; you really enter into this without any information beyond that, and it kind of unfolds as you explore the environment of the game.

That seems to up the creepiness factor of the game.

There’s obviously a certain degree of mystery around it and certainly mystery as to what the full game will be, but I think what’s inherent in that is trying to preserve one’s experience of discovery. A great deal of what the actual full game will be is going to rely on the player’s sense of discovery without being given too much information as to what they’re going to experience. A lot of the narrative elements will be discovered rather than you being pointed in a specific direction, and I think that’s why it’s not easy for us to speak to the full game, primarily to preserve that sense of being thrust into that experience and not knowing what is really going on.

SpectreVision is known for producing films. What inspired the move into gaming?

We’d been curious about VR for a bit. Certainly over the last number of years VR has grown relatively quickly and the technology has gotten so much better and myself and Kyle McCulough (vp of digital, social and gaming for SpectreVision), he and I grew up with games, so any new addition to that realm, we are immediately curious and fascinated. Coming from a company that primarily focuses on genre and horror, VR really lends itself to that medium, to that idea of thrusting people into a space and eliciting emotional responses. We met the team at Fun House (Ubisoft’s VR division) at E3 a couple years ago, and we got to talking about what we were interested in in regards to the medium of VR. They invited us out to Montreal to meet everyone on their team and just get a tour of Ubisoft, and out of that came an idea for a collaboration. It was really organic. Then we went back on another trip loaded with ideas, both fragments of ideas and more fully formed ideas, and we sort of did a two-day brainstorming session. Out of that came what effectively is the bones of what Transference has become, and we committed to working together. The idea of our experience making narrative features and their experience in the video game world and trying to marry those two things.

The trailer boasts that the game lets you “feel like you’re in a movie.” How was the process of making this game different or similar to that of producing a narrative film?

Specifically in VR it’s different. There are plenty of games over the last 10 years that tell great narrative stories within the context of video games. [In] video games, by and large, you are on a track to a certain degree. If it’s not an open-world where you have a million decisions at your disposal, there is a story, and games have become more cinematic and have leaned on the idea of cinema more and more. The trouble with VR is that narratively you can’t point people in certain directions as much because it’s experiential in nature. When you put a headset on you are effectively in that world and you have free will to walk around the space of that world. The challenge there, narratively, is you can’t choose the shots. There’s no editing in VR, so it brings up really interesting narrative challenges and that’s largely been very exciting for us because the conventional choices you’d make about a narrative, you kind of can’t employ a lot of the same structure. The structure has to be relatively open, so there has to be a sense of discovery. It’s through that discovery that a narrative is found and discovered throughout the process. We (SpectreVision) approach it with our experience and understanding of narrative and [Ubisoft] approach it from their understanding of games. The amount of challenge that we have sort of posed on each other has been really incredible to where they will give us ideas that we sort of push back against. It’s really two different worlds coming together with different headspaces and challenging each other’s conventions.

There have been a number of Hollywood stars who have started doing work in video games, but most are voicing characters in big AAA franchises. Your voice credits are for much smaller, indie games (Broken Age) and now you’re on the development side of making games. What got you interested in being on the more technical side of development?

I don’t think I’ve ever thought or had aspirations to make a video game. (Laughs.) I was quite happy being a player and being a great fan of people’s work. The way in for us was really VR as a storytelling medium. From our perspective, it wasn’t even really so much the gaming side but rather various VR experiences that we have had that were filmed and in the horror space. We were intrigued by VR because of how experiential it is and how that lends itself to horror and genre, naturally. It was kind of through that and ultimately this collaboration with Ubisoft that initially started as us thinking that we would craft a number of stand-alone experiences that then we discovered that there was actually a much broader, full game that we could craft together. It was never my aspiration, but it’s such a dream come true for us. We’ve been gamers all our lives, so to actually work with Ubisoft, a company that we’ve loved and we’ve played many of their games, to be collaborating with them is a dream come true.

How far can you push the boundaries of horror in VR games? Is that something you take into consideration?

I think Transference is not specifically a horror game. I think it’s a psychological thriller, if I were to clarify it very specifically. What we were very heartened by were the reactions out of people at E3 who played the demo were exactly the reactions we wanted to elicit. They described feeling unsettled, uncomfortable, walking away from it and still thinking about what they experienced. That it had an emotional resonance and a psychological resonance over time. We were f—ing thrilled that that came through because that’s ultimately what I think we want to craft within the context of the whole game. That it not so much terrified people or horrified people, but that it leaves them with a sense of discomfort and being slightly unsettled, but also on an emotional level. At the heart of the story, I can’t describe because we’re ultimately leaving that for the release of the game, but our challenge is to include and infuse as much emotion as possible, and can that be achieved within the context of a narrative that is open for a sense of discovery. Can there be an emotional resonance and can there be a connection to the characters that you ultimately encounter within the context of the game and the story that you discover? Those are things that we are most excited about.

Is this something you’d want to do again? Should we be on the look out for more games from you and SpectreVision in the future?

Yeah, I think so. I think it’s opened our brains to game development. We’ve been challenged a great deal by the team [at Fun House], and I believe they’ve been challenged by us in the best way. Out of that has sprung new ideas, so I feel like there’s room for the potentiality of exploring this further. I think any time you delve into a world that’s not your own, you learn it and you grow within the context of that world. It naturally springs forth new ideas, and with that better understanding, ways to apply some old ideas to that medium. I think it’s definitely something that intrigues us now, and I think it might be something that we explore further if there are ideas that we feel are worth exploring.

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