◡◶▿ SOFT01 | Imaginary software
💾 A practical science-fiction of filmmaking. Luis Buñuel's plot generator. Plus: new media lab, LGBTQIA+ mentoring, LSFF. | Imaginary Software of the Filmmaking Future Week 01
Hello. And welcome to a new semester at our absurdist film school: Unfound Peoples Videotechnic.
This term’s module is called Imaginary Software of the Filmmaking Future: How to use, confuse, or avoid your new robot crewmate.1
Sounds serious! But also a little bouncy. And kind of crunchy, right? We’ll cover some crunchy ideas this semester! And you don’t need a computer to do it.
That’s right! You can go on making movies with your Bolex or your pencils or your tin cans. I can already reveal that the moral of this module is that the greatest piece of software of all is your mind. This notion will come up again and again. Great!
What will we cover? We will cover these sorts of things and more:
🧶 How to untangle the knitting patterns of your mind and zap them up onto the cinema screen.
🤘 Friction, danger, and accidents - or, What Gets You Out of Real, Physical Bed In the Morning. And Onto An Actual Film Set.
🤖 Naive robots and the deep programming of daft assumptions.
🎛️ Appendages, interfaces, and cheats.
And who is it for?
Beginners, mid-career cine-cadets, industry elites, and cineaste elders,
filmmakers, image-makers, movie thinkers, other artists, and curious souls,
looking for strategies to utilise, avoid, and/or defeat generative AI and other pervasive computer-generated filmmaking tendencies.
Clearly, the module is, in part, a response to the emergence of AI filmmaking tools and other generative or synthetic media/art. Sorry!
I know that the AI phenomenon worries or terrifies a lot of people. And annoys others. This program is for you, anyway. We're going to frame an understanding of it all, together!
No spellbooks on set
We won’t use the A-word (AI) too much. Indeed, the module is not about AI so much as software: which is to say, ideas and possibilities patterned into obstinate, semi-conscious magic spells - machine-run or otherwise.
So there’s no need to worry. No step-by-steps on making ‘content’ with Runway, ChatGPT etc. The course is, rather, a “soft science-fiction.” A soft imaginary science for conceptualising the film arts in (and beyond) this moment of radical retooling.
The intention is that you might internalise these lateral approaches to synthetic media. And utilise them in your meatspace, bricks-and-mortar productions where appropriate. Or in your tests and experiments with computer filmmaking, if you wish. Because no movie is made in a vacuum; every picture is made in conversation with humankind’s foolhardy efforts to make sense of ourselves through art, science, and politics.
Indeed, generative art has been around for a long time. As have:
‘tools,’
‘assistive software,’
‘formulaic movies,’ and
‘exploiting the corpus of non-consensual artist work.’
The evolution of these phenomena is inevitable. But we have a chance to divert the future-history of AI before the creative counter-revolutionaries and productivity kings make it normal. We can do this using AI, subverting it, or creatively ignoring it. In other words, re-imagining the software of the future before it finishes installing.
Resistance is both necessary and fruitful. Indeed, resistance or friction become valuable forces in an age of auto-dial filmmaking.
Don’t worry about reading these lessons out of order. Each functions independently. They are sent in a sensible sequence but hardly reliant on it.
But let’s reiterate! Whether you plan to use AI or not, this module will:
provide strategies for creating in/despite the AI age, and
reassure you that the most powerful piece of software remains the mind -running on a rickety old, tea- and wine-greased piece of hardware we call the human body.
We’ll start with an anecdote. From none other than Luis Buñuel.
Ugarte’s ending
You can hear me deliver this lesson by scrolling up to the header and clicking Listen and/or the play ▸ button.
Many years ago, Luis Buñuel told a story from his life that we might apply to how we think about algorithmic filmmaking today. Useful for thinking about making movies with generative software. Useful for thinking about the power of human creativity and how we use it!
“In my frequent moments of idleness,” wrote Buñuel, “I devoted myself to a bizarre document—a synoptic table of the American cinema. There were several movable columns set up on a large piece of pasteboard; the first for “ambience” (Parisian, western, gangster, war, tropical, comic, medieval, etc.), the second for “epochs,” the third for “main characters,” and so on. Altogether, there were four or five categories, each with a tab for easy manoeuvrability. What I wanted to do was show that the American cinema was composed along such precise and standardised lines that, thanks to my system, anyone could predict the basic plot of a film simply by lining up a given setting with a particular era, ambience, and character. It also gave particularly exact information about the fates of heroines. In fact, it became such an obsession that Ugarte, who lived upstairs, knew every combination by heart.
One evening, Sternberg’s producer invited me to a sneak preview of Dishonored, with Marlene Dietrich, a spy story which had been rather freely adapted from the life of Mata Hari. After we’d dropped Sternberg off at his house, the producer said to me:
“A terrific film, don’t you think?”
“Terrific,” I replied, with a significant lack of gusto.
“What a director! What a terrific director!”
“Yes.”
“And what an original subject!”
Exasperated, I ventured to suggest that Sternberg’s choice of subject matter was not exactly distinguished; he was notorious for basing his movies on cheap melodramas.
“How can you say that!” the producer cried. “That’s a terrific movie! Nothing trite about it at all! My God, it ends with the star being shot! Dietrich! He shoots Dietrich! Never been done before!”
“I’m sorry,” I replied, “I’m really sorry, but five minutes into it, I knew she’d be shot!”
“What are you talking about?” the producer protested. “I’m telling you that’s never been done before in the entire history of the cinema. How can you say you knew what was going to happen? Don’t be ridiculous. Believe me, Buñuel, the public’s going to go crazy. They’re not going to like this at all. Not at all!”
He was getting very excited, so to calm him down I invited him in for a drink. Once he was settled, I went upstairs to wake Ugarte.
“You have to come down,” I told him. ”I need you.”
Grumbling, Ugarte staggered downstairs half-asleep, where I introduced him to the producer.
“Listen,” I said to him. “You have to wake up. It’s about a movie.”
“All right,” he replied, his eyes still not quite open.
“Ambience—Viennese.”
“All right.”
“Epoch—World War I.”
“All right.”
“When the film opens, we see a whore. It’s very clear she’s a whore. She’s rolling an officer in the street, she . . .”
Ugarte stood up, yawned, waved his hand in the air, and started back upstairs to bed.
“Don’t bother with any more,” he mumbled. “They shoot her at the end.””
!
Please share your thoughts, queries, and exercises from this week’s lesson in the comments.
Field work: virtual media labs and LGBTQIA+ career development
Oh, you like learning? The good people at
are running a “7-week online studio/residency program for new media, inter- and multidisciplinary artists who wish to refine, develop, question or reconsider their own practice in an online and international collaborative environment and virtual studio/exhibition space.”And for their pilot term only, there is a “flexible pricing model to offer artists from all backgrounds a chance to apply.” The lab will “accept offers ranging from 50€ to the recommended 700€.” So perhaps you’ll apply.
Meanwhile, UK-based LGBTQIA+ filmmakers can apply for BFI Flare x BAFTA until February 7th. A year of labs, networking, and meetings. Could be hell! And/or could help you take the step from a successful short towards your debut feature or “major broadcast.”
And the London Short Film Festival has started and has a pretty epic program. Naturally, the best things are on when I’m already busy. Plus, I have developed an awful cold. But perhaps I’ll see you there! Don’t touch me.
Thanks for reading. Once more, it is a huge help if you can share these lessons with your:
friends,
colleagues, and
networks.
You probably know which weirdoes will get it. Sharing is the best way to help the school to thrive and grow, since social media networks throttle our links. So let’s put one ‘in the eye of Musk’ - this week, and as future lessons unspool.
Next week, we’ll consider what a film is. Or what it was. What it might be! And where to find it.
Class dismissed!
~Graeme Cole.
(Principal)
📹 Unfound Peoples Videotechnic | Cloud-based filmmaking thought. ☁️
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Note to faculty: the module code is SOFTXX, which deviates from the standard module naming protocol, since a module labelled IMAGXX would appear to primarily be about ‘the image,’ which Imaginary Software of the Filmmaking Future is not.
Hurrah for the start of semester! 🙏