Let us here consider digital live storytelling.

In such an imaginary system, like a universe, one example of an initial problem to solve, still taking on a user-centric environment, can be to supply the user with an attractive (part of the) story. In effect the projection of the digital film (content) flows accordingly and meaningful (actuality).

Having described such a complicated virtual film what about the artist? What is an artist? Will machines take over as an artist? Should the film develop in a natural and undirected (chaotic) or cultivated and directed way? Can the machine experiment with the story supporting authors like a next generation authoring environment?

With all of the above including semantic control on the dynamically projected film can we have modular read films balancing the consumers actual interest or limited interest with insight and experience? This way the projector can cut down the projection almost automatically within the reference frame of the story's vision. In this way the technology will help asserting that the story can remain well-organized but still allow for an interesting projection on the display of a cell phone during a 30 min train ride or in another dimensional solution space similar to time, location etc.



Celebration Europe: Clone Wars trailer and digital Star Wars versus Star Wars quality storytelling

At Celebration Europe, on the Plantinium Stage during the session for a trailer of Clones Wars animated TV Series, Steve Sansweet presented an intermediary step for digital Star Wars. Here he presented a clone trooper for the animated TV series rendered in between the picture quality of cartoon Star Wars and live action Star Wars. Steve added that currently Lucas Film would not pretend the animated TV series to be nothing but animated Star Wars thus adjusting facial expressions accordingly.

That is, not animated "live action" characters ... yet. So the characters were "only" developed for animated artistic expression. Beyond that everything else seemed to look close or near to "real" or live.

So the clone trooper can be seen as an example of how to keep digital Star Wars on "the animated" and not "live action" track while working towards next steps in digital film production. The introduction and Clone Wars trailer made me see how animated Star Wars can boost completely digital films and editorial freedom executing accordingly with Lucas vision.

During a session the day after Rick McCallum elaborated on 3D-films and referenced how Lucas Film were about to work with screen writers also seeking to hire among Star Wars novel writers.


What about digital content flows in the context of editing and storytelling?

However, I would have liked Rick McCallum to follow up on alternate representation for story lines taking on digital content, for this matter films. I guess he could answer how Lucas Film is probably working on that or what their position is with alternate story representation? Alternate representation is something you can do about flowing content in the digital world but not in analogue film making.

I am currently part of a developing project on how to control digital content flows on displays as instructed by business processes - at least within one application domain. We want to use that project for displaying hypermedia or web sites. Basically like everyone else working media we too are at media convergence. I think media convergence is really implied by the proper and full use of hypermedia beyond the legacy metaphors having interrupted and obscured hypermedia for almost two decades (pages, print, TV, cd, video etc). So for this reason I find digital Star Wars even more interesting. I simply love behind the scenes stuff.

Let us here consider digital live storytelling.

It would be interesting to see "complete" or maybe we could call that "imaginary" stories. In math something imaginary can be conceptualized simply as a circle. The story would have no real point of entry or exit. In effect there would be no single concrete story but only an abstract story and virtually endless concrete story instantiations depending on observation and optimization.

In such an imaginary system, like a universe, one example of an initial problem to solve, still taking on a user-centric environment, can be to supply the user with an attractive (part of the) story. In effect the projection of the digital film (content) flows accordingly and meaningful (actuality).

Regarding interaction design editors or "readers" could be profiled by originality (classification) for attractive flows or cross-bred (hybrids) for potential flow development.


So what can interactive film making be like for artists?

Having described such a complicated virtual film what about the artist? What is an artist? Will machines take over as an artist? Well, I think the term "artist" relates to hand craft - but extremely good hand crafted stuff. Before industrial age artist painters were just considered to be extremely skilled craftsmen. Even today artists may still be disqualified from industrial participation because they focus on developing their talent and put production second.

So I do not think machines will replace the artist. Machines remain a tool and help control behaviors but raise the bar though for what is a machine trivial skill and what is extremely skilled in that context. The problem for society is that humans began working as machines when industrial age introduced mass-production. We all may remember humans working in place of machines if we recall Charlie Chaplins Modern Times. However, we only worked like that now awaiting what will soon come fully for industry and mass-production leaving behind a hybrid industrial age of both machines and humans authenticating as productive machines. With the lack of globalized network infrastructure at the end of the eighties interrupting automation we are back on track with globally standardardized networks also forking off as Web 2.0 for media. Even the talks of robots or machine animals are back. For instance take journalist and journalism. Journalists go more with creative interpretation while journalism is more like productive syndication. Journalism is trivial and will eventually be completely replaced by machines including story rewriting. This scenario has already been intiated and a complete technology should probably have its market introduction around 2012. By the way, robot means slave. Industry arose from natural sciences and will eventually find its way back to nature with a complement of cultivated machines like nanotechnology and biotechnology. In addition computer science will help assert proper semantics for interaction designs with nature. Well, nature already contains small machines itself. So nothing new there, only we can plant a ferrari in the dirt soon enough or have an elephant the size of 10 trucks.

Enough about perspectives and defacto politics for little natural machines, natural environment and natural behavior ... back to the artist or is that just human labour at its potential beyond simply creations?

Created content elements for potential storylines in Star Wars can bring editorial control to the artist. Can interactive film help more talent fill the abstract role of an artist? If so what can you do with interactive film? Well, similar to everything else Web 2.0 you could have concrete story development with participation or co-authoring.


Should the artistic role be public or private?

Should the film develop in a natural and undirected (chaotic) or cultivated and directed way? Well, original films have directors. So stories are directed by vision or at least goals.

So should the system for digital film have governance? Should a governance system be the director or just a tool for the director governing the editorial line? With semantic governance can the director then have more editors doing half fabrication thus more effective production technology? Can the machine experiment with the story supporting authors like a next generation authoring environment?


Virtually Star Wars

Naturally off track with potential technology. Thinking about Lucas Film joined with Lucas Arts could enhance the impression of Star Wars as an artificial culture. Going that way can we eventually have something like the holodeck as seen in Star Trek creating imaginary Star Wars culture complete with the editorial vision and strategy? Again huge central nervous systems in big whales did not create good stories on display or interesting artistic expressions. Humans did. So I guess it was Lucas Arts that joined with Lucas Film.

Naturally on track with potential technology. With all of the above including semantic control on the dynamically projected film can we have modular read films balancing the consumers actual interest or limited interest with insight and experience? Given the lack of time developing in most current modern lifes maybe because of relativism and so much richness should we consider interpretive communication as a pragmatic solution? This way the projector can cut down the projection almost automatically within the reference frame of the story's vision. In this way the technology will help asserting that the story can remain well-organized but still allow for an interesting projection on the display of a cell phone during a 30 min train ride or in another dimensional solution space similar to time, location etc.
Anyway an editorial role could as an artist organize story encoding while the projector could express that encoding in an actual way given artistic or very skilled creations in parts.

Enough for now. Let's elaborate more on this stuff later on ...

Anyway I find it very interesting that Lucas Film is taking on a next evolutionary step always approaching the next generation of film making. Always interesting what is going on.