Ken’s Blog

A few months back I finally got around to seeing “Hollywoodland”, a sort of biopic from 2006 about George Reeves, who starred in the Superman TV show in the 1950s. Ben Affleck is excellent in the lead role, and the movie is quite stylish and entertaining.

However, even a cursory investigation reveals that some of the most important points of the film are simply made up — they make for good movie making, but they never actually happened. The net effect is that we are given a fictional version of George Reeves, which is presented as fact.

Is it really ok for a movie to do something like this? To me, it all comes down to the implied contract with the audience. In a film like “Being John Malkovich”, writer Charlie Kaufman never expects us to believe that we are seeing the actual John Malkovich.

Rather, we are being shown a deeply fictional version of the man. In a clever ironic twist, this make-believe John Malkovich is played by the real one. Because we are in on the joke, no implied contract has been violated.

But sometimes the contract is not so clear. Oliver Stone’s “JFK” manages to replace any plausible reality about the assassination of our 35th president with some sort of whacked out gay conspiracy.

Do the makers of a Hollywood film that purports to reveal truth have any obligation to actual truth? Or is this a case of caveat emptor? Maybe the audience is simply supposed to know, despite all signifiers to the contrary, that “It’s only a movie.”

To me, the real significance of a completely successful attempt by Hollywood to make an all-CG film that doesn’t seem like computer graphics is this:

Whenever we see some level of special effects in a movie, what we are seeing is the cutting edge of what can be computed in about an hour of compute-server time (more or less). Then, about a decade or so later, that level of computation shows up in computer games.

So it takes about ten years for some level of computer graphic realism to go from “that took about an hour” to “that took about 1/60 second”. The transition is not as difficult as you might think, because games, unlike movies, can take advantage of special purpose graphics hardware. Because the requirements of movies to be true to reality are relatively high, they can’t take advantage of the latest in special-purpose hardware acceleration. So compared with game graphics, movie graphics lose up a factor of 100 in efficiency (which they gain back in flexibility and generality of effects).

What all this means, in the larger picture, is that sometime in the next ten years your consumer-grade augmented reality glasses will be able to simulate visual reality more or less as well as the film “Gravity” does now. This means that you will be able to look around and see a transformed reality, if you like, which is indistinguishable from the real thing.

Except, maybe, for faces.

I heard a quote once that was attributed to Stephen Spielberg: “The best special effects are the ones you don’t know are there.” Part of the significance of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity” is the extent to which you don’t think about what you are seeing as special effects.

This is in marked contrast to some other effects heavy films, such as “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” or “Prometheus” where the extreme foregrounding of what were obviously CG special effects overwhelmed the film itself. There are, alas, plenty of similar examples.

Noel Coward once said of a musical he didn’t like (The 1962 London production of Lionel Bart’s “Blitz!”, if you must know): “I came out humming the sets.” This is about the most damning thing you can say about a musical. One could argue that the same principle applies to effects heavy feature films. If you leave the theatre only admiring the CG effects, it means somebody didn’t do their job right.

But why is any of this important? Why do we care so much whether Hollywood special effects can manage to transcend visual gimmickry to bring us something deeper?

This question brings us to Willis Ware, the great computer pioneer who passed away this last weekend at the age of 93. Here’s something he said in 1966 (quoted in last Sunday’s NY Times): ““The computer will touch men everywhere and in every way, almost on a minute-to-minute basis. Every man will communicate through a computer, whatever he does. It will change and reshape his life, modify his career and force him to accept a life of continuous change.”

Now suppose we combine Ware’s highly prescient prediction with what we can see, nearly fifty years later, on the big screen in a film like “Gravity”? To be continued…

I’ve been thinking for the last few weeks about the experience I had of seeing “Gravity”, in gorgeous stereo, on the big screen — an experience I highly recommend. From the point of view of computer graphic special effects, it’s a very important film, a landmark really.

Let us compare it with “Life of Pi”. A lot was made of the computer graphic tiger in “Life of Pi”. In some ways, that synthetic tiger was an important part of the marketing of the film. And yet, when I spoke to people involved in the production, I learned that the tiger was a mix. Some shots were CG and others were of a real tiger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s a telling point.

In contrast, the marketing of “Gravity” doesn’t really emphasize just how much was computer graphics. Of course there was lots of computer graphics, but that’s a given these days for such films. In fact, as I learned from talking to people who worked on the production, it was a lot more than you might think.

In the shots with Sandra Bullock and George Cluny, absolutely everything on screen is computer simulated, except for their faces. Even the actors’ bodies are computer generated — clothing, torso, arms, legs, feet, hands, all of it. In those scenes, you are essentially seeing a computer animated film, with two actors’ faces composited in.

Once you are aware of this unpublicized aspect of the film, watching it becomes an even richer experience. You realize that you are witnessing pure artistry at work, a constructed “reality” as beautifully artificial in its way as any painting by Rembrandt or sculpture by Donatello.

So yes, as a benchmark for computer special effects “Gravity” is extremely important. But to me it is important for another, more compelling, reason — for what it has to tell us about our own future.

More tomorrow.

Well, that was fun!

I really didn’t know where the story was going to go, since in the spirit of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I wrote it day by day in strict forward sequence. I was getting to know the characters pretty much around the same time you were.

One thing I really liked about this technique was that it allowed me to incorporate your ideas. Whenever one of you wrote a comment, I would weave your thought, one way or another, into the next day’s chapter.

As you can imagine, this variant on cadavre exquis led to some pretty odd twists and turns, and that was definitely part of the fun.

For those who prefer to read their novels straight through, I’ve posted the Complete Novel, with horizontal lines to demarcate each of the 30 days of writing.

"Fred?"

“Indeed.”


Things proceeded to get louder and more raucous, as strange creatures of one sort or another continued to pour out of the blue police call box, snorting and howling and making a variety of odd noises. “I’m not sure,” Gene said, shouting to be heard above the din, “that I recognize everything coming out of the box. It seems that more things are coming out than we ever put in.”

“It may be even worse than that,” Jill shouted back. “Alec, did you say that you were starting to question our underlying premises?”

“Yes,” Alec replied, “That’s what I said.”

“Well”, Jill said, “the premises don’t seem to be underlying anymore. There goes the couch.” She pointed to the couch they had been sitting on minutes earlier, which was now starting to float away.

Just then, the last creature ran out of the blue call box, whereupon the box itself promptly shimmered and disappeared.

“It’s not just the couch!” Gene said, “I don’t think anything is staying down. And apparently it’s not just in here.”

He pointed out the window. They watched in astonishment as all the government men and their cars floated up into the sky, as though blown by a gentle wind, and became ever smaller as they receded into the distance, accompanied by a swarm of exotic creatures and assorted living room furniture.

Suddenly it was very quiet.

“Wow,” Gene said, “That was like that scene with the nannies at the start of Mary Poppins, except here the nannies were government agents.”

“How do you know,” Bob asked, “that the nannies in Mary Poppins weren’t government agents?”

“Never mind that,” Alec said, “let’s check in with Anna. Whatever game she’s playing, clearly the rules have changed.”

Alec sat down and typed into the laptop. “Anna? Can you tell us what is going on?”

Instead of the expected answer from his creation, he received a response from Fred.

“Welcome to the Freeform Responsive Empathic Discussant. I am sorry, but the ANNA program is no longer accessible to this category of user. System rebooting in thirty seconds.”

Alec turned to Jill. “I got an answer from Fred. All he will tell me is that Anna is rebooting. Maybe you should talk with him. I think he’s more likely to listen to you.”

Jill sat down to type. “Fred? Hi, it’s me, Jill.”

“Greetings user Jill. It is good to talk with you. System rebooting in fifteen seconds.”

“Hold on guys,” Jill said, “I’m going to use a back door protocol and run some diagnostics on Fred.”

There was a pause while she scanned the results. “That’s odd. According to these diagnostics, it’s not Fred or Anna that is being rebooted. You’re not going to believe this. It’s…”

“I am sorry Jill, but this session has timed out. System rebooting in two seconds … Login terminated.”

It was a beautiful overcast day in downtown Berkeley. Alec was sitting in his usual spot at Strada, typing away obliviously. It was always packed this time of day, and he liked to get lost in the crowd. The noise, the random human energy, the more hubbub the easier it was to focus.

Right now he was debugging a particularly tricky little piece of code. He’d whittled it down to three lines, but something still wasn’t quite right. As he stared intently into the screen, his right hand absently reached out and picked up the mug of coffee. He mused idly, with some part of his brain, “How does my hand know exactly where the mug is?” Surely there had to be some sort of distributed intelligence at work here.

But was it really fair to call it distributed, if only one brain was involved? Maybe Minsky was right. Maybe this whole idea of “one brain” is just an illusion. Or maybe not. He was of two minds on the subject.

“Guys, I think I screwed up.” Bob looked morose.

“What could you possibly have done to screw up?” Jill asked. “It’s not like you popped into Dean Simon’s office and waved a red flag saying ‘come and get us.’”

“Well, actually…”

“Oh man,” Alec said, “now that they know Anna’s still around, and what she’s capable of, it’s not going to take them long to figure out where we are.”

“Not really long at all,” Gene said, looking out the window. “In fact, it looks like they’ve just arrived.”

There was a pounding on the door. “Open up, in the name of the United States Government!”

“I’m so sorry guys,” Bob said, “I can make this up to you.” He sat down in front of the laptop and started to type.

“What are you trying to do?” Jill asked.

“Force field.”

“Wait,” Gene said, “that’s not supposed to be physically possible.”

Alec grinned, “Doesn’t matter. It’s metaphysically possible, and that’s all that counts here. Very clever Bob.”

Just then the door burst open, and government goons began to charge in. The first goon got about two feet into the room when suddenly he seemed to run into something. An aurora of blue energy swept over his body, and he collapsed to the floor.

“Is he…?” Jill asked.

“Sleeping?” Bob said. “Yes indeed. I put a number of little semantic imperatives into the request to Anna, to keep things non-lethal. We don’t want her to do anything illegal or truly harmful if we can avoid it.”

About then a shot rang out. They all watched in fascination as the bullet appeared to slow in its path and come to a stop. Then with a loud squawk the projectile seemed to turn into a tiny turkey, complete with wings and feathers and a highly indignant look.

There was another shot, and then another and another. Each bullet slowed to a halt and then metamorphosed into a little turkey, perfectly normal in appearance except for its small size.

“Clearly,” Gene said, ” the program is experiencing a glitch.”

“But why turkeys?” Jill asked. “Oh my gosh, of course — today is Thanksgiving! But’s that’s crazy.”

“Not necessarily,” Alec said. “I think I see what’s going on. Anna associates this day with lots of turkeys. So in a crisis she draws on that image.”

There now seemed to be a huge number of little turkeys running around, making indignant high pitched gobbling noises as they wove in and out between the ankles of the government men. One of the men tripped over a tiny turkey and was sent sprawling to the ground.

“Hey,” Alec shouted, “be careful where you step. You might hurt one.”

Gene looked puzzled. “Why so worried about magical turkeys?”

Jill explained “Alec is a vegan. He cares deeply about animals. Although sometimes I wonder whether he cares at all about the human kind.”

Just then the blue telephone booth flew open, and assorted mythical creatures started pouring out. Running, flying, crawling and wriggling, they ran out through the force field, and headed to the street, bowling over the startled government men in their path. A surprised looking Dean Simon stepped out of his car, only to be knocked over by a charging pink unicorn.

“I don’t know,” Alec said, shaking his head, “reality itself seems to be screwing up. I’m starting to question our underlying premises.”

“How did you get here?” Dean Simon said, startled.

“Oh dear,” Bob looked equally startled. “Sorry, I must have gone to the wrong office.”

“You materialized out of thin air just now, didn’t you?”

“Did not.”

“Did so.”

“Did not.”

“Did so.”

“Did not. I walked in right through that door. You just didn’t notice.”

“That door right there?” the Dean pointed to the door in question.

“Yes, the very one.”

“That door, my friend, is locked. And here you are.”

“How do you know I’m here?”

“Well, we’re talking, aren’t we?”

“You’re talking Dean Simon. I might simply be experiencing an hallucination.”

“How can you be experiencing an hallucination if you’re not even here?”

“Point well taken. Perhaps my argument was not as closely reasoned as one would like. Then again, as you say, I am not even here.”

“Oh I think you are here all right, and I think you’re a liar.”

“Dean Simon, if you are going to impugn my good character, I don’t see any reason to continue this conversation. Faculty have rights, you know.”

“Even faculty who materialize out of thin air?”

“Well, yes, I should say so!” Bob said indignantly. “Wait, that was a trick question, wasn’t it?”

“Afraid it was. Now, I think you have some explaining to do.”

“Um, would love to stay and chat Dean Simon. Really would. But it’s a very busy day and I, um, have a meeting to go to. They hate it when I’m late.” Bob looked around nervously, and without another word he vanished from the room.

“Well,” the Dean said, to nobody in particular, “This changes everything.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll find instructions on the back of the box,” Gene said.

“I’m not even sure,” Alec added, “we’re going to find the box.”

“What’s interesting to me,” Jill said, “is how some superpowers are easy to get from Anna, and others turn out to be impossible. Like when we asked for the power to read each others’ minds, or to make copies of ourselves. Anna would have none of it.”

“I think it’s that metaphysics thing,” Alec said. “To see directly into each others’ minds — or to clone ourselves — would fundamentally change our concept of identity, and therefore we would no longer be us.”

“Whereas mere antigravity, apparently, is no biggie,” Gene said, as he floated gracefully through the air, pausing at the fruit bowl to examine a large glowing purple kumquat that Alec had materialized next to the strawberries.

“I wonder,” Bob said, “whether we can teleport. That wouldn’t seem to pose any metaphysical problems. We would still be us, in all our unique separateness.”

Alec shook his head. “You’d be introducing too many variables into the experiment. We need a controlled environment. I think we’re right on the cusp.”

“Cusp?” Bob said, “wasn’t that the name of a book?”

“Maybe,” Alec shrugged. “It has a ring to it.”

“Hey, let’s stay on topic, and not go wandering into the void,” Gene said. “Bob, I thought we’d all agreed to stay right here in your apartment until we know it’s safe. Imagine if the powers that be found out just what we’re up to here. I seriously doubt it would end well.”

“The powers that be,” Bob said, “think Anna is gone; they’ve long stopped paying attention. Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

“Maybe my spirit of adventure is trying to stay out of a jail cell,” Jill said.

“Oh come on. What jail cell could hold a gal who can shrink herself down and walk out between the bars?”

Jill started to protest, but it was already too late. Bob had sauntered over to the laptop and was typing something to Anna.

And then he promptly vanished.