fortyseven

On Future Artisans

2022-08-14 

We have this near wizard-level magical technology emerge that can create, at our written direction, artistic visions never before conceived.

Instead of excitedly embracing it as a powerful democratizing agent allowing you to explore new ideas, and kick start your own creative juices, a portion of the creative community is utterly terrified.

“They’re stealing from me!”, “Nobody will buy my art now!”, “My work is meaningless!”

But you can see how capitalism caused that pain, right? In order to stay afloat, you have to optimize your skills in order to maximize profit. If you’re very lucky, you’ll find an intersection between that and a creatively satisfying job. But most are not that fortunate.

I’m not sure what I can say to ease that mindset. All I know is that you can’t put technological genies of this caliber back in the bottle.

You’ll either go with the flow and find ways to live with it, or… well, you’ll have a real bad time going forward.

I know “adapt or die” is not what anyone wants to hear, but it’s on the table whether we like it or not.

Robot automation is estimated to have cost the jobs of over 400,000 people since 1990. Dangerous, monotonous work now done safely by machines. New roles inevitably fill the vacuum; hopefully those new jobs bring a higher quality of life.

Despite that particular topic also being controversial, automation is much easier to understand as a ‘positive’ in that light. Having these kinds of game changers affect something as core to the human experience as artistic expression, well… yeah, that’s on a whole other level, admittedly.

I’m a programmer. We’ve already started seeing the early exploration of AI-based automation.

Maybe in a decade I can simply roll up to a terminal prompt and describe the functionality I want to see in a website. A minute later it’ll grind out a tarball for me to inspect, make a few changes to, and (hopefully) run a security audit on.

As long as the technology was proven and solid… would I be out of a job?

Quite possibly.

But there’s also been a whole slew of potentially fun side projects I might have worked on if I didn’t have to slog through the drudgery of getting there. My barrier to entry would be lower, and I can just get on with the fun parts of programming.

Frameworks like Express and Laravel basically do this already, in a sense. Game engines like Unity and UE, as well.

None of that comes anywhere near the level of “Computer, create an X with Y that does Z.”

At least not yet.

Clearly the the die has been cast, and the path towards that day is already in place.

The future is always coming, by fits and starts… and occasionally in gushing fountains, like with AI-driven art.

So, while I may not be an artist or musician, I can at least sympathize with the existential “threat” being felt. It’s just closer to your doorstep than mine at the moment…

One day, if I’m still around, I’ll be staring down the barrel of this, too. What will I do when my primary means of income no longer exists?

I’ll have to adapt.

Hopefully, quite prosperously. 🍻

Editing an ‘Imagine Dragons’ Music Video

2022-07-01 

Along with other elements of filmmaking, I’ve been putting a lot of focus into video editing lately.

You don’t get experience from just reading, of course — though, Blink of an Eye was a surprisingly good read.

So I’ve been enjoying not just the Slack Injection TV stuff (though that’s more of a chaos-collage kind of thing), but also seeking out projects like what this Adobe article offers.

It’s a collaboration between Adobe and the band Imagine Dragons where the band provides a master audio track and a whole bunch of their video footage from the music video for Believer. It was clearly intended to promote sales of Adobe Premiere Pro, but I’m using Kdenlive for all of this. Oops. 😉

Kdenlive is a very capable, cross-platform non-linear video editor. Some of the Premiere Pro features covered in the article, however, aren’t yet available in Kdenlive, but lacking those features just means having to be that much more creative with how you approach things, so I was not daunted.

After going through all the footage, there was clearly a boxing thing going on (with Dolph Lundgren!), and a guy sitting in a chair who apparently also boxes against Dolph. There were other bits, like of the band playing, and some ambient background stuff.

I made sure I didn’t look at the official, completed video to keep myself free of influence. While going through the clips I was struck by the lengthy clip of Dan Reynolds sitting in his little egg chair, just staring at the camera.

Being a perpetual jokester, I felt the urge to grab the wheel and drive the car off the road — instead of making a music video, I’ll come up with a skit about how guys in the booth are waiting on him to start the video. They chatter to themselves, confused about why he’s just sitting there doing nothing.

As I was assembling that joke (which involved very precise trimming and cross-fading of the clip — it worked well, surprisingly), I started to kind of feel like it could be ‘something more’.

Instead of 3 minutes of just uncomfortable staring, I played a bit with cuts over to an equally uncomfortable close up on certain parts of the song, until finally, as the music hits it’s final climax, he transforms into a child (a separate series of footage swapping Dave out for a “mini-Dan”) who is seemingly ready to judge you, and begins quickly scribbling something on his notepad: “BELIEVER”.

What does it mean? No fucking idea. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s a music video, after all, so it doesn’t have to! 😀 But it’s a VERY different take from the official version, thankfully.

But this was so cool! It’s the soul of what’s attracting me to film editing in general. It’s like being given a bag of LEGOs for a Star Wars vehicle and creating something else entirely from it. It’s like what I imagine forming shapes out of clay is like. Creativity just emerges from the process as you knead the cuts.

I learned very quickly that, in reality, no matter how pleased I am with this cut, it would never ever work in the real world — nobody would have the patience to sit through 3 minutes of that pseudo-artistic nonsense to get to the heart of it at the end, so I cut it down to about a minute. 😉

And here it is:

Slack Injection TV – 004 – The Voyage to X-Day

2022-06-30 

Time for more Slack Injection TV! Religion, fire, and UFOs conspire to take you on The Voyage to X-Day!

Backups: archive.org

In this episode…

CLIPS

MUSIC

Slack Injection TV – 003 – The Search for Chargertron

2022-06-10 

Backups: archive.org

In this episode…

Slack Injection TV – 002 – The Wrath of Garco

2022-05-30 

ANOTHER?! Yep. Making these shorter, too — longer they are, the more easy it is for me to get distracted and forget.

Only the slightest effort towards an actual ‘theme’ for this. But still hella random. Working on that. Trying to find what works.

Backups: archive.org, Vimeo, Odysee

In this episode…

Slack Injection TV – 001 – Intellectual Property Violation Extravaganza

2022-05-22 

Starting a new video collage series!

Somehow this will be easier to keep going as a regular thing than, say, the podcast version of Slack Injection. I just love video editing. 😛 Anyway, sometimes there will be a theme. Usually not.

Typically this is just a collection of pseudo-interesting and/or weird amusements that I come across and are certain to never get monetized. Enjoy!

Backups: archive.org, Odysee

In this episode…

Review – The Batman (2022)

2022-04-18 

That was, maybe, the perfect Batman film.

I mean, Batman ’89 will always be my personal favorite. It’s infinitely rewatchable.

But I can’t deny just how great nearly every corner of The Batman is. The overall mood. The music (oh god, the music).

It just all FEELS RIGHT.

The plot may not be terribly original (good luck finding a fresh Batman story after all these decades), but the nearly flawless execution of that story cannot be ignored.

More like this, please!

🐀🐈🦇❓

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

https://letterboxd.com/drfortyseven/film/the-batman/

Realtime Observations – Doctor Who – Legend of the Sea Devils

2022-04-17 
  • Why can’t anyone do convincing cracking animations in VFX?
  • This is, uh, some acting that people are doing.
  • John Bishop!! Oh wait, I’m thinking of John Noble. Still, welcome back.
  • Legend of the Orange and Teal LUTs 💤
  • Hijacked jewelry. 😆
  • Oh no, it’s one of those big-eyed dogs. Sea pugs.
  • They coordinated a net trap while talking to the sea devil for a second? I mean, they do show them in the background ever so briefly, so… alright.
  • These things are SUPER silly looking. Even for Doctor Who. Modern Who, at least.
  • Not only are they silly looking, but they… don’t move their lips, and do like Wheeljack does where some shit just glows and it represents them ‘talking’. What a bizarre throwback of a design.
  • Oh, okay, okay, I had to pause and go look. These can’t look THIS bad by accident. And sure enough, I was unfamiliar with Pertwee’s Third Doctor adventure, quite literally “The Sea Devils”. Alright. Fine.
  • Sure, let’s abandon Dan centuries away in this VERY TRUSTABLE time machine that literally got pulled off course by a stray geomagnetic anomaly. 😉
  • Oof, some bad stunt man work when that guy gets tossed over the the ship. You can see the actor grab the edge and pull himself over. Not quite Luke Skywalker on Jabba’s barge, but geesh. 😉
  • Steven King burn outta nowhere. Damn.
  • WHOA, what was up with that time vortex animation? That was cool. Looked like almost caves of time. That was neat.
  • Not really into the whole relationship thing they’re trying to pull with Yaz. I wasn’t crazy when they tried to do it with Amy, either. (Even if I do love me some Karen Gillan.) Just doesn’t feel right. The Doctor/Rose stuff was pretty great, though. But that just clicked with the right combination of actors and writing. Natural chemistry after a looong time together, I think? Just haven’t felt anything like that on-screen since then.
  • CHOMP.
  • Pullin’ out some nice visuals in this ep.
  • Who doesn’t keep an ear in a box?
  • We’re on a surprisingly long bit of exposition once we get underwater.
  • A gem with infinite powers, you say? An Infinity Stone, you might say?
  • What about the TARDIS? I guess we’re going BACK on that ship at some point…
  • Okay, it’s the Soul Gem. (Soul was orange, right? Or was it yellow?)
  • Told you we’d be back on it. But… HOW?
  • The Doctor is doing a LOT of heavy lifting on the exposition, even for this show.
  • Everyone’s got decent sword-fighting skills, apparently.
  • “Don’t let the swords touch your skin.” — advice you can use even in real life.
  • “Is it always like this at sea?” — how awkward.
  • Dan just slaughtered five sea-pugs at once after we got done chastising the other guy for killing one dude.
  • “Yeah! Hopefully. Probably. Definitely. One of those.” — my favorite kind of Doctor dialogue. 🙂
  • Despite being a surprisingly simplistic story, it still feels like this whole “will they won’t they” nonsense is something we don’t have time for. But I’m betting it’s planting seeds for the next episode.
  • Ah, I see.
  • Aaaaaaaaaahahaha. Thank god THIS guy is with us to pop in out of nowhere and save the day. 🤣 He was kept alive specifically so the Doctor didn’t have to do the Heroic Sacrifice thing. Just pops into the shot like the Kool Aid Man and takes the cable. No argument from the other two.
  • Hey, an ocean view without a dramatic sunrise/sunset — how quaint.
  • I think “Our Flag Means Death” has made me less judgmental of pirate ship scenes taking place on a set.
  • “I can’t fix myself…” — shit, I thought this was like an “I’m dying” thing, knowing this is her last couple eps of the series.
  • The Doctor’s reasons for not getting “fixed” to someone is the same reason I wouldn’t choose to have a pet again. (Probably.) And that’s kind of what it would be like for a time lord and a human, honestly. Except their “pets” last at best 80 years, not including the 15-20 years before they’d meet them.
  • Next ep looks crazy. Could do without the Master, though. I really don’t like this Doctor’s version of The Master. The guy is WAY too vicious and cartoonishly unhinged for my tastes.
  • I’m always interested in seeing how they handle the regeneration process, though. Smith to Capaldi was jarring and sudden.

Not fantastic, but not terrible. Inoffensive is a good word. Shame she’s leaving; she finally feels ‘comfortable’ at this this point.

⭐⭐⭐