Cinema as Doodle Art
Cinema should be a doodle-art but far too often its not. Cinema, as the art of the moving image, is rarely thought of as an artform of brain-storming, of un-directed experimentation, of idea bouncing and of... well, Doodling.
Cinema tends to fall under the banner of production, of assembly and construction and, sometimes, an even factory-like processional of steps with an air of the pre-ordinaied.
Now get me wrong. Im a pragmatist and at the International Film School Sydney where I teach we focus a great deal on making self sufficient filmmakers with a strong streak of pragmatism and business savvy. Art is useless if it remains unable to be manifested into a tangible engaging experience for a viewer. The artist/producer is infinitely more powerful and effective than just the artist.
But, there is an incredible power in doodling, in playing with ideas and images, of approaching the creative development and inception of an idea from a more free-form position. A film need not start with a script. A script need not start with words. Why should a script start with images, or sounds?
Over the years I have engaged a variety of approaches to fueling creative endeavor and of prompting new-thinking in my students. Its the driving impetuous towards my adoption of CELTX; a creative writing development system that whilst designed to develop screenplays doesn't privilege the Word or the even the Script itself. Unlike other screenwriting; tools, Celtx allows the idea of a script to be attacked in whatever creative manor suits the creator and the creative product. Pictures, Video clips, Sounds, Images, Index cards, Storyboards, alternative script layouts; these are all legitimate means to an ends. In simple terms Celtx allows for doodling, it allows for other influences. traditional filmmaking process so very often does not.
Its in this vein of thinking, of seeking digital tools that allow for cinematic doodling that I have stumbled one of the most exciting Web2.0 inspired, online tools I have yet seen. MOODSTREAM comes from the Getty Images company, the worlds largest supplier of stock media. MoodStream is a dynamic, real-time, brainstorming and creative development system that sits astride the massive repository of the Getty media file database.
The concept is simple; a panel of controls allows the user to choose their mood. The choices on those settings set the MoodStream engine in motion drawing upon the Getty database to draw forth images, video files, photos and music in real-time up onto your screen. See something you like, something captures your eye in an interest net then you click a button and its added to your palette. Its effectively a form of digital media scrap book assembly; the sort designers have used for decades (perhaps even centuries) to collate ideas and inspiration.
You can control transitions between images, the rate at which they cycle, use preset moods or custom sliders, control or change the music, and gather all these media assets together into a swatch palette you can save and retrieve.
For production designers this is a gold mine of experimentation and doodling. For Directors its a great way to form a visualized construct of a cinema experience. A perfect medium to communicate visual ideas to a production team in the early development phase. Its uses are virtually infinite and its most definitely highly addictive.
The creators of MoodStream describe it as
a concepting tool. The modern version of the fireplace. An interactive art piece. TV for the future. It's a website we created for and with Getty Images to showcase all of their offerings - still, video and sound - and inspire interactive creatives. And it's really, really fun to use.
Usually I baulk at this kind of marketing speak, but not this time. They are dead-on and theyve created soemthign very special.
Posted at 12:00AM Jun 30, 2008
by Mike Jones in motion graphics |
