Hello, welcome to Sock Talk
with JNab and the Sundance Kid.
We are going to explore the frontiers of
technology, art and the human experience.
Hello welcome to Sock Talk
episode number insert number here.
Today we have two guests with us over
from the United States of America.
Paul and Matt, why don't you both
introduce yourselves.
Hello, I'm Matt.
And I'm Paul.
Thank you gentlemen for the
comprehensive introduction.
Yeah, maybe looking for a little bit more
than that, why don't you tell us a little
bit about your
background and what you do.
I know what you do.
Oh yeah.
Well why don't you go first.
Alright, I'm Paul just in
case we didn't establish that.
So I work in production in Hollywood,
California, Los Angeles.
I do a lot of commercials and so forth.
And I met Matt, he was
my neighbor at one point.
We met through my girlfriend at the time.
Well still my girlfriend.
But she had a little scare with a bug and
the rest is history.
We kind of got to know each other through
Game of Thrones and
hanging out and working.
And here we are.
Nice.
What's your background Matt?
It was very detailed.
Funny.
Yeah.
Well I'm Matt, I'm
from Minnesota originally.
Well I live there now but I spent like 14
years in Los Angeles.
I worked in
production all around I guess.
I worked all facets of
the entertainment industry.
I'm quite known for my quick inserts in
Ford vs Ferrari where
Matt Damon makes eye contact
with me.
For those of you who know Cardi B, I was
behind the scenes of all her live stuff.
And Paul's right, he was my neighbor.
And what he didn't mention
as I guess he was mentor.
In the film industry.
So I have a master's in filmmaking,
specifically
directing and I like to write.
And I'm a member of Crow House Films.
Yeah and there for additional context
both me, Paul and Matt
are founders of Crow House
Films which is sistered
with Crow House Projects.
The other things I do
other than lecturing at RGU.
But anyway you guys are over because we
were doing some other
things and now we thought
let's just do a podcast because sometimes
it's nice to have
guests rather than me and
John just rambling the
same old things at each other.
And today we were wondering what a theme
would be but we came up
with one off the top of
our heads.
Last time we had Nicky on who's another
member of Crow House Films
but couldn't be here today
because he felt ill all of a sudden.
Hope he gets better.
And that time we talked about the history
of film technology which then immediately
sparked your guys mind to talk about some
crazy new contemporary
film technology being
4DX.
I don't know how many people of you know
what 4DX is at home.
You might have seen it,
you might have tried it.
But John you didn't know what it is.
I still don't.
Yeah so why don't we explain first to
John and any audience
listening that doesn't know
what 4DX is.
What is it?
4DX is I think it's an immersive
experience into a movie.
Chairs move, vibrate, spit water, air.
Smell?
Smell.
They use scent.
A lot of theaters have
that feature already.
Literally.
I'm a part of that.
Here's to say.
So we watched Romulus last night.
Oh and 4DX.
What was it?
I quite liked it.
Paul and Nick, we went with Nick as well.
And they both enjoyed it.
Did you stop why Nick is sick today?
Probably.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's not a big deal.
So it was hell for me.
So yeah to set the stage a little bit.
I didn't know what to expect of you.
This is my first time.
I didn't really know what 4DX was.
It was the only ticket available at the
time slot we were there for.
So we got it.
And when we first got in
the chairs they start to move.
It's not too violent but it kind of gets
you adjusted to the
fact that things are moving
and air is smooshing and whatnot.
But then I don't remember what scene.
But some scene started to occur and I
went up kind of high and
the chair started bouncing
around a lot.
I almost dropped the
popcorn out of my lap.
And I was like wow that was intense.
And I look over and I see Matt.
He's just shaking.
Just trying to hold onto the seat.
And it was violent.
It was actually very intense.
After the fact one of our friends
mentioned to us that you
can adjust the intensity.
I didn't see it on the chair but you can
turn the water off or turn the water on.
It just sounds like they
really have control here.
But it started off really interesting.
You it vibrated when something in the
background was like a ship
was taking off or something.
It moved fluently with the camera.
So kind of like you were
flying with the camera.
But then I started to notice it was doing
these movements and
vibrating the chair violently.
When in unnecessary moments.
Like we're walking down the street.
For example we're walking down a street
and we're with the characters.
But next to the characters are the
vehicles driving by.
So you would think cool
vibration would be nice.
But they act like the chair acts like
you're in the vehicle.
So you're bumping and you're
growing and you're up and down.
The passer by vehicle.
Yeah.
Right.
So I thought that was weird at first.
But it just continued out throughout.
When someone was climbing a ladder.
Right.
Every time their hand would grab onto the
ladder the whole chair
would vibrate and move
in a very aggressive way.
So it was tough.
Tough stuff.
Yeah.
And it got bad.
Got worse and worse.
And I don't know how many people have
been on roller coasters out here.
I don't know if you have theme parks.
Yeah we have we have theme parks.
I mean I see the Ferris wheel but I don't
know for roller coasters we're.
But it's very akin to a roller coaster.
Yeah there's a roller
coaster at the beach.
Oh it's been a while.
It's just not very big as one loop.
I mean I've been a
roller coaster in 10 years.
Oh maybe they took it down actually.
I think they took it down.
I'm just going to very quickly turn on
this room because it's
getting I know I won't
be good broadly.
I'm sweating.
Right.
Yeah.
Well you're sounding good both of you.
Sorry for the discomfort.
That's all right.
Just a nervous feeling to and I was
forced to put on a jacket.
That's the part that bothered me.
Yeah.
I feel like you have to put on a jacket
then all of us should put on jackets.
One thing I'm learning too
let's all try keep our hands off.
Yes I'm hearing a lot of knocky knocky.
It's as if any of you have listened to
our previous podcast
which I know some of you
do.
You'll see we've got a
bit of a new set up here.
So bear with us as we figure it all out
because this is literally
the first time we're using
it and we're figuring it out as we go.
Yeah anyway at 4DX I saw
Top Gun Maverick in 4DX.
Yes.
A bit of an upset stomach.
Did you but it didn't work?
It worked for some scenes.
Probably the action scenes.
And when you're in the plane.
Yeah.
That's pretty cool.
So that's what I thought
was interesting about this.
Not all movies are made
for something like this.
My example of a movie
that would work was Maverick.
It worked.
You know one thing I thought.
I remember seeing the
latest sequel Star Wars.
What was it called?
The latest in the sequel trilogy.
The last one.
Jedi.
What was the last one?
Force.
The last Jedi.
There was Force Awakens then the last
Jedi and then Skywalker Returns.
Skywalker.
The Revenge of Skywalker.
People are shouting at us right now.
They're welcome.
They should be.
I've literally forgotten the name of it.
Yeah it's well it's been so long.
But I saw that.
We all still remember the
names of the first three.
Like Not a Hope or The
Return of the Empire.
Something like that.
It's trolling.
It's trolling.
But that film I remember there's a whole
sequence at the start
and I was just thinking
this section is made for 4DX.
This is definitely this whole sequence is
definitely just made for 4DX.
There was no reason for it.
Literally felt like I was in Disneyland
and you could tell that
you know it's made for
it.
So you enjoy it.
No I wasn't.
That wasn't 4DX.
I was just in a
normal cinema watching it.
This section near the start where the
Millennium Falcon's
randomly getting away from some
TIE fighters and some iceberg in space.
And I remember just thinking for sure
they made this for 4DX.
Either for 4DX or for
the Disney park ride.
Yeah.
That was going to come out of the film.
Yeah.
And they were building at the same time
that they were shooting the movie.
Yeah.
Galaxy for I can't remember.
It's got a name.
I'm sure it does.
I don't know.
I don't even know that
there is such a thing.
I just assumed that there is.
Back in the 1970s a movie
came out called Earthquake.
About a greater California earthquake and
the theaters that it
premiered in launched
a technology similar to this
where your chairs would move.
And for a while people thought that they
also had extra
background screaming in stereo
or quadraphonia.
But really that was just the people in
the audience being
freaked out by their chair
shaking.
Everyone said this is it.
Now this is going to be in all the movies
from now on and it
wasn't because of two things.
It caused some people unexpected pain.
And for others it.
It's kind of close to.
Because some people unexpected pain.
And for others it wasn't
in sync with the experience.
And I think that's what
you guys are talking about.
Years ago I had the chance to speak with
a fellow who was
developing a multi-sensory
feedback from a computer monitor.
And so a few extra devices that would sit
under the monitor
change the humidity offer
a few smells that could be
eventually combined into more.
And it had a fan.
And the fan was to give you the feeling
that you were moving
with whatever was moving on
your video game.
And I had a very hard time getting
through to this very young
engineer that the experience
isn't direct.
That our bodies are interfaces that
perceive things in different ways.
And explain your conscious mind is
constantly experiencing the
world around it not directly
but indirectly through
mental models of what's going on.
So you don't need to have a gale force
wind blowing into your
eyes to feel like you're
experiencing wind
coming towards your face.
In fact if the wind is too strong it
distracts from the rest of
the experience and overpowers
everything else.
And I tried to explain this to the guy
and he kept insisting
no no at these points the
fan has to be really
high and at this point.
And he had all these ideas none of which
were based on
neurophysiology or neuropsychology.
And it sounds like maybe the 40X guys
have gone down the same route.
It's spot on.
I mean 40X so the way they had wind right
they had cold the temperature.
We felt it but it didn't immerse us into
the into the movie
that actually distracted.
They used like electrical
shock poles like in the film.
But they tried to have they tried to have
us experience that
with a like strobe light
in the theater.
That's right.
I didn't do anything.
I didn't think we were
actually getting shocked.
It just illuminated the you know the the
stuff that all the all the
all the gimmicks and stuff
up top it just illuminated all.
Yeah yeah.
Showing you that you're not.
And so it made me it made me take my eyes
from what was happening to look up at the
strobe light.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it didn't work.
Now if it was maybe in the chairs in
front of it was hidden where
it was like in a peripheral
or something maybe.
But I don't think I think it just takes
away from every aspect of
what the film was trying
to tell you.
Right.
It forced it forced it forces your forces
you to react to what
they think is the moment
to react.
So when I'm watching something and I'm
thinking it's going to be
this is this is a moment
I'm going to be scared.
And then all of a sudden the chair starts
vibrating before it even happens.
Right.
Or if it does vibrate I completely get
sucked out of the film.
And I'm like I'm grabbing the handles.
I'm like oh my god.
Not this again.
I'm with you entirely.
Years ago did you guys know
the Michael Jackson song Ben?
Ben.
Ben.
Ben the two of us need look no more.
We both found what
we've been looking for.
It sounds like a love
song to a man named Ben.
It's actually the theme song to a movie
Willard about a young
man who could control rats.
Okay.
And his it starts with his
pet favorite rat who is Ben.
The reason I mention this is because the
best virtual reality
experience in a film I ever
heard of and I've been in a few in France
in the 1960s and 70s
in the US and in Canada.
I've been in a few.
The best I ever heard of was when this
horror movie Ben was
out or sorry Willard.
Ben was the sequel.
When Willard was out a friend of a friend
of mine in Los Angeles
his father ran a Fourier's
and he went into the balcony of the movie
theater with a bag full of fur scraps and
at the scene where everyone was being
swarmed by rats he dumped
the bag out onto the people
underneath the balcony and they all ran
screaming from the theater.
They were immersed in the
moment because of what he did.
And at the time was people didn't well
one they didn't expect
it to how much at home
actually well I don't like yeah
experienced an immersed movie.
Yeah.
I bet the director of Romulus had nothing
to do with the 4D novel right.
So it's like sure maybe if a director is
on board from the
beginning and is thinking about
using it as a tool properly as a creative
tool then there might
be a better experience
but there's not much of us I mean some
we've directed films
short films at least we don't
we've never I've
never thought about that.
You don't go into making a film thinking
about when when is it going to rumble.
Yeah right.
I mean I'm sure people I'm sure it's fun.
You bring in kids or well not
to Romulus but you bring in.
It's a ride.
It's a ride.
And I know people might like it.
I'm unfortunately my body
doesn't like it anymore.
But when I go to movies I expect to.
Well I like the silence I like just never
being distracted outside of what's on the
frame and they asked me when we walked
out of the theater
they're like what did you think
of the movie I said I don't really know.
I don't know I missed a lot of it.
They're like we missed a lot of it.
It's like I really did.
I'm constantly looking up and like what
the hell is going on.
There's drips drips of water.
And so it's supposed to
represent the alien breathing on.
Druelling.
Druelling the acid drool.
Yeah.
And so you just get drips.
Paul didn't feel it because
he had his brim of his hat on.
But I was like Jesus
what is going on here.
That's the alien breathing on.
Then I'm almost. Then I'm almost.
Well both right.
There's one in the back peeing on me.
Oh yeah.
I don't know how you
guys in Minnesota do that.
So so that's I think and it's more
expensive to go see it's more expensive.
You're going to pay more for the liberty
of being distracted.
So they so I mean I guess cinema goes in
waves of trying to find a new bet.
The thing to get people back in because
it goes through cycles right.
So TV came along and people were like
people are going to
come into cinema anymore.
So they're like wide screen.
Yeah.
Can't do that at home.
So we've got a
massive bigger wider screen.
So come in and watch.
It's more immersed because you've got
more screen coming up
the sides and then color.
Yeah color 3D.
They tried 3D.
He was going for a
while in the 60s and 70s.
There were experiments
at really wide screens.
There was 180 degree screen in the 270
degree screen that were
only briefly in cinema.
So normally with a few films because they
were very hard to shoot for.
Yeah.
And we've got IMAX now as well which I
guess is it's on bigger.
IMAX works.
IMAX works.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's because I think a lot of
filmmakers take it more seriously.
That's why it works.
So like you get Christopher Nolan.
He's like I'm shooting for IMAX and I'm
going to master the audio for IMAX.
And if you watch it at
home and can't hear a tenant.
Tough shit.
Because that's all he was caring about
which is why it works.
I remember seeing was in New York and I
saw Interstellar and IMAX.
And there's like a shot of just Saturn
and then really like a spec.
When you watch it on a TV there's a spec
of the ship flying by.
But in the IMAX you could see all the
detail on the ship just
like moving across the screen.
It really kind of works.
Yeah.
But IMAX was developed as a special film
technology for doing
high resolution film.
That's what it was for.
For space.
I mean for.
Yeah.
Well for space and for
nature documentaries.
Right.
It was to shoot the kind
of things that they wanted.
It was sort of I guess as I understand it
was a co-development of
saying what is possible
with film.
And saying what do we want to capture in
ways that hasn't ever
been captured before.
I remember the whole development of that.
It was a big deal in Canada because
that's where it was being developed.
And it used to be that there was the
Sinosphere in Toronto down at Ontario
Place on Lake Ontario.
It was a huge Buckminster Fuller style
dome structured like Buckminster Fuller.
And you'd go in there and
that was the first IMAX theater.
And so it was three stories tall and you
could go in there and
watch movies for free because
they were just short little documentaries
that were testing how this works.
Eventually it became it started to show
movies from the theaters.
I think I saw it in our
science museum in Minnesota.
We have a big massive screen that went
beyond your peripheral.
And that was and they showed dinosaurs.
They created what
dinosaurs were like or in space.
Yeah, there was a lot of they were
bringing you in mercy into.
Yeah, I remember the
first wasn't an IMAX.
But one of my first experiences, I feel
like I was in an IMAX
at Disney or something.
Or somewhere.
And there was a Terminator 2 3D.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure they did that stuff.
I'm talking about is like 1960.
Yeah, 1969.
Try to remember my first experience.
I'm pretty sure that was the case.
So I think that's the difference is IMAX
was developed as a
technology that was expected
to be used with film.
And people had a couple of decades of
seeing what it could do.
So then when they introduced it to actual
commercial films, the
idea was that you have
a whole team that comes in.
It used to be that the team
arrived, not just the equipment.
Right. And they did the
shooting in IMAX, as I understand it.
But so directors who use it now, they've
got decades to look back on.
They've got a whole history of that
technology that they can
draw on when they're filming
with it, they're
filming with great intent.
And like you say, I'm absolutely certain
no director has been
asked to figure out what
the the for whatever it is, 40 X X 40, 40
X 40 X 40 X 40 X just
sounds like the size
of shirt I'd have to buy if
I were back in the States.
Yeah. Have you ever read Heinlein's
future history novels
from the 40s, 50s and 60s?
No. No.
Yeah, you caught us.
One I strongly recommend to everybody and
I've recommended it to
Jamie before is called
The Door to Summer.
And it's just a great time
travel story in a plausible way.
It's quite fun.
But when this character goes into the far
future of the 1990s,
I think it is, he goes
into a movie theater wanting to relax a
bit and comes out
completely shaken because movies
have become feelings and he just wasn't
prepared for all of
that stuff to be happening.
Have become what?
Feelies.
And what is that?
It's it's a movie
with a lot more going on.
Okay.
I think another term that's
used in other novels is grabbies.
But the point is instead of movies,
meaning moving
pictures, it's multi-sensory.
Yeah.
So you're maybe being bounced around in
your chair, maybe
having alien drool drip down
on your face.
But whatever it was, his experience of it
was very much like yours.
Jars.
Yeah.
I do know my VR class, History of VR,
maybe even talked about
in here, but there was a
guy came up with the Censorama, which
was, if you thought it
would kick off and it would
be the next big thing.
It's like this screen, you sit your head
like this and the head
in the screen and it kind
of shakes you about and
blows on you and does all that.
One person per experience.
Didn't kick off.
Imagine that.
What was the, I'm sorry to be bringing up
obscure things from
decades before you were
born.
Do you remember the Transvestite Divine?
Started in a number of movies.
Okay.
Do you remember the
guy who made Hairspray?
John Waters, I think.
Is that right?
Hairspray.
Five, 10 years ago, popular.
Challenge roll to.
No, no, he's in that.
No, he's in it.
He's in that in the Transvestite role.
Yes.
Yeah.
So that team made a film with Divine in
the 1970s, which was
Scratch and Sniff, which is
another multi-sensory experience that
people tried to get to
catch on for a while.
So when you went into the
theater, you got your ticket.
In those days, people got paper tickets
and with it, you got a
great big card that had
numbers on it with scratch away chemicals
and sort of like a lot of scratchers, but
without the lead poisoning.
I'm kidding.
I don't know if a lot
of scratchers have lead.
I just said that to terrify people and
start a new conspiracy theory.
So during the film, a number would come
up on the screen and
you had to scratch it and
sniff.
And it was really
silly and really foolish.
And the best part of
all was the surprise.
I think it was around number five on the
ticket, whereas you
scratch it, the character
on screen bends down and picks up a
handful of dog shit
and puts it in her mouth.
So all of a sudden, this thing that
you're scratching and
trying to breathe deeply of
is smells like dog shit.
And oh, ho, ho, what fun
they had planning that.
Did it work?
It worked.
Yeah, it was revolting.
Funny.
I wonder why again, that didn't take off.
And that was what decade was that?
That was the 1970s.
70s.
So what was happening around?
Like, you know, it's interesting to see
where all these
gimmicks are happening because,
you know, the theaters are dying.
Yeah.
And so what is it they're trying to do?
You know, the 3D back
in the day didn't work.
The panorama maybe worked for a little
bit because it was like Vaudeville stuff.
Right.
So they had in between.
Yeah.
You know, breaks and they had dancing.
And yeah, it was around the same time.
Yeah.
The synaplexes were coming in.
Sure.
And so were theaters, you know, classical
theaters were closed with the war.
Right.
Was there war in the 70s?
Yes.
No, there was there was
there were lots of war.
When was Vietnam?
Vietnam had ended and it ended in the.
So maybe they were trying to maybe the
theaters were dying.
I mean, what they say, they have some of
you learned in in film
school is the godfather
right saved cinema.
I think what's that 71 right.
And so it's kind of been so ever since
the godfather, a new form of filmmaking.
Then people started
to go to movies again.
So before that, it was how
do we get people to come in?
How do we get people to come back?
Right.
Yeah.
Before Godfather came out,
television had gotten much better.
Television was now in color.
There were more channels.
They operated through the night instead
of closing down at night.
And so I think that's
part of why cinema was dying.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I think maybe that's what we're
going through a new wave of it.
Is that what this is?
You think?
I think so.
I think I think because like Marvel was
just throwing knocking
out of the park and knocking
out of the park.
Right.
And for a while and now
it's kind of slumped a bit.
God that Wolverine,
which is doing very well.
But highest grossing
our rated film in history.
Exactly.
Other films, more
recent ones, not so well.
Oh, to be fair, they weren't that great.
Yeah, exactly.
That doesn't happen.
But then, yeah, so
are we in another slump?
And there's you competing against five
big streaming services.
I think another part of it, and I agree
with everything you just
said, but I think another
part of it is that now film is competing
with video games because
video games have overtaken
them in terms of profitability and in
terms of production value
and in terms of just about
everything that matters to someone trying
to sell to a consumer.
And they're very immersive.
And increasingly so.
Right.
And I think that's what's going on is
that I think that's
what's going on is that they're
trying to create more video game like
experiences for the film goer.
So I think that's a big part of this.
You know, we can't make you jump up and
down the way you do when
you're playing alone in
your basement with some thousand other
people who are playing
simultaneously, but we can
bounce your chair up and down.
I think that's part of the thinking, that
and this dissociation
about how sensory perception
works.
It's a shame.
Hollywood, if you're listening, I offer
reasonable consulting rates
and will gladly come in and
help design these effects for any film
you've got in
production, as long as I agree with
it ethically.
In other words, almost none.
I'd be interested if we
could make our next short.
We're doing re-insure from the get go
think about 4DS for no reason.
Make the perfect moment for 4DX.
Use it as a tool correctly.
We just get all of our
PAs to sit behind a chair.
Yeah, we can't actually afford to show it
in 4DX, but no, we've set up this room.
The lights go off.
There are people around you.
They do grabbies.
What is it called?
Grabbies and feelings.
We've got a grabby for you guys.
What you do is instead of chairs,
everybody sits on the lap
of one of your employees.
Dressed like a chair.
Yeah, but no, only selling
10 tickets per show though.
Another interesting element to all that
with new technology,
virtual reality is a big one.
There's been this same conversation for
ages like, "Oh, VR is the
most immersive technology
we've come up with, and
it's going to overtake movies."
This is probably we talked about this in
one of our first
episodes, but there isn't a set
of tools and a language of how to do a
story correctly yet.
Because in cinema, it took everyone a
long time to figure out how to do it.
How to edit well, what to show when, how
to do the music right.
And so many still did it
wrong after a century of film.
And they definitely came out with...
Bat Bander?
Band or Snatch?
Band or Snatch, yeah, that was good.
Where you choose which way.
It's like a choosing...
So I watched it and you choose which
direction, but no matter
what, it leads you back to a
choice that you made wrong.
No matter what, the
endings are already predicted.
But it was good that they did that
because that tied to the theme.
They were purposely making it like...
The theme was it was
supposed to be inevitable.
Okay, yeah, I forgot that.
So they used it as a thematic tool.
I think another film came out on Netflix,
where it was like an
eight part episode, episodic,
where it doesn't matter what order you
watch it in, but you're
supposed to solve a murder.
Oh, wow.
I don't know what it's called, man.
It's super interesting.
Yeah, there's some
books like that as well.
You go through all these episodes, you
find the clues, and then
maybe what's awesome about
it is maybe you have to
go back to another episode.
So you're constantly maybe watching.
I haven't watched it, but
that sounds interesting, right?
Yes.
Like if you can do it, if you can grasp
an audience's attention where they're...
It's a fun game.
Yeah, adding another dimension of
creativity to something.
I'm always looking for something.
It's literally thinking outside the box.
Yeah.
So now maybe...
So I'll go back to the VR, right?
Maybe that's something more interesting
is you create a game, right?
So not just watching, say, "I want you to
go this way or that
way," but actually being
able to look around at the props, at the
setting, the set dressing,
and whatever the clues that
you're looking for.
Yeah, that's what makes it
ultimately harder for VR.
A lot of designers are having the problem
of doing stories
because cinema or when it's
on a 2D screen, if it's a film or a video
game, you can still control.
You can just take the camera and make it
look at things, but you
can't do that when someone's
got a headset on because they feel sick.
If you move the camera and force them to
look at something,
they're like, "Whoa, what are
you doing?"
So you're reliant on the user to look at
the right things at the right times.
Right.
Wouldn't you say that the way of
manipulating that then
comes down to storytelling?
Yeah.
Have you guys ever
played role-playing games?
No.
D&D or any of those?
I was just invited to do that.
I haven't done that before.
Actually, because I'm
here, I'm not doing that.
I recommend taking the
chance the next time it comes up.
One of the cool things about it is that
it's this collaborative storytelling.
That's an interesting experience for
thousands of reasons,
psychologically and whatnot, and
just entertainment-wise.
The person who designs the game has to
design it in a way that
causes the players to go
where they want them to go because you
put people down in a
virtual world and they could
walk off in the
direction you haven't mapped.
You want to get them to go in a certain
direction in order to have
the adventure that you planned
out.
If it's well done, then like the first
Netflix series you
mentioned, no matter which way
you go, you're going to end up being
directed back towards the
puzzle that's awaiting you.
If it's poorly done or if people behave
in a totally
unpredictable way, they reach the
edge of the map.
I've been playing role-playing games
other than a brief 15-year hiatus now.
I've been playing
role-playing games since the 70s.
I've run into a few cases where the Game
Master just had to say,
"Okay, it gets foggy and
you can't really see where you're going
and we're going to take a break."
Or I've had Game Master say, "There's a
sign up ahead that
says, "This area closed."
They just have to come up with something
that says to you, "For
Christ's sake, guys, you're
walking in the wrong direction."
The last time I tried to Game Master, I
could not get them to
start the adventure the way
I planned it.
For about 40 minutes, they did things I
did not expect one after
another and we just had
to end the game.
I had no way of getting them from where
they had gone to the
adventure I wanted without
starting again from zero.
After 40 minutes, no
one wanted to start again.
We were bored as hell and so was I.
Henry Cavill loves Warhammer.
I'm sure there are directors and writers
now who love virtual
games like that, role-playing
games.
If so, maybe they're the ones who can
build the virtual reality entertainment.
Yes.
There are better and better.
Well, there are good games
coming out more and more.
Some rules are being picked up.
Well, not rules, but tools.
As any technology grows, people will not
steal from each other or
are influenced by things
that work.
It comes down to good design as well.
All of the Zelda games have
really good design in this way.
For example, the first one, it was mostly
an open world where
you can walk around, but
if you go the wrong way first, there's
just enemies that if you
don't have the right tools
to equip, they kill you immediately.
That's just naturally guides the player
to go, "All right, not there.
I'll go somewhere else."
Is that a link to the past?
There is that.
Or is that Org of Time?
Or which one was it?
That was the original.
The Legend of Zelda.
Legend of Zelda.
Just any of us.
Just Legend of Zelda.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I did it too.
It's a completely open world, but there
is a nice easy path
that most people naturally
end up going to because everything else
looks like, "Maybe not there.
Maybe not there."
Then you have the speed runners who just
blast themselves to the final challenge.
Douglas Adams made a computer game,
text-based computer game
that apparently was completely
open-ended.
I know I've mentioned this on the podcast
before, but the idea
was that you could just
play it forever.
I don't know.
I played it for about 10 hours, which in
those days was an awful lot of time.
That was the idea.
He was a brilliant
science fiction writer.
This is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Getlinde and Dirk Gently's
Holistic Defective Agency.
He wrote for Doctor Who
and all kinds of other stuff.
He was an absolutely brilliant comic
writer and science fiction writer.
He wrote a game where the intent was.
It doesn't matter
which direction you go in.
There's enough randomness built into the
responses of the
different characters you're
going to encounter that they will give
you different
interactions almost every time you
encounter them.
If you encounter them in series, the
combination will be different
than what you've had before.
You played it for 10
hours, and then what happened?
Then I got bored.
I was interacting with characters who
made me laugh, but I
wasn't able to figure out what
to do to advance the story.
A lot of early games had that.
The textual ones were pointing clicks.
It would be so hard.
Just be escape room logic that even
escape rooms are designed better.
It would be weird logic of, "Oh no, you
needed to take that
screwdriver over to that tiny
screw over there," which then opened it
so you could see the
wires that undoes the wire
for that thing that was over there.
With no design
language to help guide you.
Exactly.
That's what they call affordances.
The design of something tells you at a
glance what it is for so
that intuitively you can
add it to your mental map and use that to
help solve puzzles around.
Like the handle on a door.
Is the door handle just a flat plaque,
which means push, or is
it something you can grip,
which means pull?
Simple affordances, which often are
wrong, used incorrectly.
Which reminds me, funnily enough, there's
an alien video game,
Alien Isolation, which
is really, really good.
Very good because it doesn't give you a
gun, so you're forced to hide and run.
You can't actually kill the alien.
That's what a lot of video games get
wrong when they're trying to be scary.
If you've got a big gun, you feel
empowered and you just run
around and kill everything.
That one, you rarely get
a gun or it does nothing.
You just have to hide.
The only thing you can do is hide, so it
really gets you scared.
This is my friend who told me, I don't
know how real this is,
but in that game, I think
you can save the game with this kind of
telephone box, like a phone.
Every time you knew that was going to
happen, it was like to
save point because the next
bit is about to be hard, to the point
where it was a trope.
Apparently, in Alien Romulus, every time
an alien's going to
appear, there's a telephone
in this shot.
I missed it while I was
bouncing around in my seat.
This isn't a spoiler or anything, but
they do bring guns into the film.
They're like, "Do you
know how to use a gun?"
It's like, "Yeah.
Well, you can't shoot them."
"Then why'd you give me a gun?"
Because basically, if you shoot the
alien, the acid's going
to create a hole in the hub
and suck everything out.
I thought that was interesting.
They probably use that part of the game.
That works.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Add rules to your horror
story to make it scarier.
It's a good idea.
We can character's hope by holding a gun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pro-gun.
Americans.
I'd love to see just once one of these
action movies where the
gun behaves realistically
and horrible consequences ensue.
Like when the cops are shooting at the
bad guys as they run down the street.
You just end up looking back at the
street and there's 12
dead pedestrians or people
inside a building screaming because their
child has been shot while still.
It's funny I see that a lot more in films
when there's a ...
well, it's probably more
the comedy ones.
Yeah.
What's the film where he goes to put the
gun in his trousers and
he accidentally shoots
himself in his leg?
Sounds like Eminem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What is that?
Eight-mile.
What's his name?
I forgot.
Yeah.
I can't recall a film, but I've seen
recently a bunch of gun
fights where the people in
the background are getting killed.
Well.
Like in The Boys, there's
a lot of collateral damage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, they do that well, but they do that
well because it was a comic that did that
one.
Yeah.
Right.
It didn't come from a movie or TV trope
that came from a comic.
Oh, you know what I was watching?
Well, you're watching.
It was a total recall.
The new one.
The new one.
Oh, the new one.
And well, yeah.
And you were Colin Farrell.
Colin Farrell.
Yeah.
And the wife, the fake
wife was just shooting at him.
Yeah.
And everyone else
around him was getting shot.
Yeah.
Wow.
That film had a piece of science
technology in it that I
also came up with when I was
in school.
It was like, well, hold on.
If you drilled a hole through the whole
center of the earth and
then drop something, you
should need no energy for it to get to
the other end of the planet.
Because the center of gravity in the
middle of the planet, so
conservation and momentum
just would stop perfectly at
the surface of the other hand.
If it was a perfect circle all the way
through the center of the planet.
But wouldn't the gravity pull it back?
Yes.
But if you catch it just to the top, it's
like throwing a ball.
It'll go up and down.
Okay.
So you'd have to drop it like 20 feet
above the surface and it
would stick out about 20
feet.
And at that moment it would stop and you
could just catch it again.
Not really sure that's how entropy works.
It's pretty close, but it's impossible
because you can't drill
through the center of the
earth.
It's very liquidy down there.
But that film had that randomly.
It was a big elevator.
Yeah, a big elevator that goes through
the center of the earth.
Oh, Jules Rim.
Yeah.
So I don't know who stole it
from me, but I want my money.
I did the calculator.
I sat and calculated.
Really?
Calculations.
It works.
I don't remember any of
it to do that anymore.
It's all gone.
So you think the inertia would pull the
object through the center
and the core wouldn't just
grab it?
No, because by that point you'd reach
your maximum velocity.
Because all the way down,
you've got more mass to always.
So you're accelerating all the point that
when there's a
vectored energy going against,
well not energy, but when there's a force
going against you
would be after the center
and I would slow you down more and more
and more until you got to the other end.
And I've calculated, I think I remember
being about half an
hour is all it would take.
Interesting. Roughly 22 minutes, half an hour.
Would the gravity not crush?
No, because it's pulling at you from all
different directions.
And this is general
relativity, or is it special relativity?
I always get confused.
But the only reason you ever feel gravity
is because something's
accelerating up against
you.
Well, not accelerating up against you,
but it's reacting on you.
If you're in a lift and it drops.
Relatively speaking, its acceleration is
different than yours.
Yeah, I don't want to speak too much on
physics because I'm very rusty.
And we lose the audience really good.
Yeah.
So now if you take out your scratch card,
you'll see this physics equation.
It's all related to 4DX.
Yeah.
How do we use technology to get our
podcast guests to be more
entertained while they listen
to Rambling?
I think the answer is to give them some
kind of a game,
gamification, like you just suggested,
take out the scratch card.
So those of you listening, please create
your own bingo cards
for the next episode.
What about the student that you had that
had the thing attached to your computer?
So while they're listening to it, we can
press certain things to like...
Immersive podcasts.
So instead of having that done by some
designer who's watched a
video clip and said, "These
are the effects I need to add."
There are...
We're picking the moments.
I'm going to say the context for how and
why people use this,
but I know of a technology
that people can pay money to make
something that people are
watching someone else use
that vibrates more and more.
And the more people that pay money, the
more intense it goes.
You can use your imagination for where
and why that would happen.
That happened instantly when you started
talking about it and I
regret my imagination
for the first time.
I can describe that very well.
I actually can't imagine multiple
situations where that works.
Yeah.
And apparently...
So these are off the shelf now.
People can just buy them and you can hook
it up to API and everything.
You can hook it up to
vibrate at various different times.
And apparently people are accusing other
people of cheating in
chess now because of using
these.
I think that's the best way to have a
championship match last
year or earlier this year.
I thought they proved that wrong though,
that he didn't have anything.
Probably.
I think what they proved was that I was
purely for entertainment.
Sorry Jim.
How do we make chess more interesting?
He was getting bored during the games.
Can they maintain focus more and more?
Glad you said something about it.
I ripped my pocket.
Yeah?
You all good?
Do you need to take a sec?
You're good.
I'm good, yeah.
How are you guys finding the UK?
There's a culture shock.
I find that it's
difficult to communicate.
Do you understand?
Well thanks.
I'm sorry this podcast
wasn't going great for you.
Sitting there quiet the whole time.
Yeah, I really find
it hard to communicate.
I don't know what you
guys are talking about.
So is that difficulty in
transmitting or receiving?
I don't know.
I feel like I articulate what
I'm asking for pretty clearly.
But obviously I have assumptions that are
baked into my American mind.
Those aren't received.
Just one example was I ordered an English
muffin and our waiter didn't know what an
English muffin was.
I just want my English muffin extra
toasted for my eggs Benedict.
So he asked me a few questions.
He's like, "Well we do a crumble."
I'm like, "Okay, however you
guys do it, just order it."
He brought back this crumble with the
Benedict and then he
brought me a side of toast.
I'm like, "Oh, so he got
extra toasted as extra toast."
Anyway, it was just
little things like that.
But that's just one example of –
That also is just – that's not a good
example of the role of the UK.
That sounds like a silly waiter.
Somebody dealing with international
customers on a regular
basis should know that there
is this mythological thing in North
America called an English muffin.
It doesn't exist anywhere else in the
world and it's not of
English origin at all.
So that is an American thing.
It is an American thing.
Because Nicky didn't know what
an English muffin was either.
Yeah.
It's very much like saying French fries.
I hear them say chips because French
fries is a misnomer that
came to the US in the 1920s,
right, after the first world war.
They'd been in Belgium.
They'd had frites.
They knew everyone was speaking French.
They thought this must be French fries.
That's one origin.
The other origin is that it was developed
by a Creole chef and
that people thought that
this was French because
the Creole guy was French.
So there's two possible
origins of the term French fries.
Neither of them has
anything to do with France.
If you ask for French fries in France,
they will know for a
fact that you are mocking
them and hate you
forever in the means of it.
And do they have French fries in France?
They have frites, which is what mills
everyone in the world go.
It's the same –
It's skinny.
Why are they chips here?
Because chips are obviously –
Because here they're not skinny.
Potato crisps.
Here they're chips of the potato.
So you've got the raw potato and you cut
chips off of it like
wood chips, not potato
chips which are what?
Julian sliced potatoes
that have been deep fried.
Here they call them
crisp because they're crispy.
You could say crispy fried potatoes or
crisp fried potatoes.
And corn crisps are
the same like corn chips?
I don't know.
Corn chips, I haven't really seen –
Like Doritos?
Yeah, I guess tortilla
chips is what they call them.
Tortilla chips, sure.
Yeah, because they're tortillas.
Or I think we just call anything that's
close to being a Dorito a Dorito.
It's that kind of Hoover effect.
Yeah, Hoover, by the
way, is a vacuum cleaner.
Thank you for clarifying.
No worries.
Like the Kleenex effect, you could call
it the aspirin effect or
why aluminium is called
aluminum.
Well, print off a cheap, cheap, cheap.
Yeah, I'm sorry you're having trouble
with that though, but
that's kind of a cool trouble.
Have you tried to order cold beer?
That used to be a thing coming
to the UK from North America.
I'd like a beer but I want
it cold, not room temperature.
But these days everybody
refrigerates their beer.
I think more in the coffee realm.
Like iced coffee.
I noticed that you guys
are very conservative.
You conserve your ice.
We like to put a lot of ice in our cups.
Where we get like three things of ice.
Depends where you're going.
And it also depends where you're going
and how stingy they want to be.
Because you go to some bars and they'll
be stingy with their
syrup and they'll give you
a lot.
What kind of syrup are you going to have?
You mean a lot of ice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They'll give you a lot of ice.
And less, less, less valuable.
Yeah, so we'll pop.
I'm from Minnesota.
We'll pop. I'm Minnesota.
Pop.
Pop syrup.
So, so pop.
Interesting.
My wife grew up in Germany.
When she came over she
would use all the Americanisms.
And that'd have to be like, oh, that's
not what you say here.
Because she watched American TV.
Alright.
So it's half of where
she learned English.
Is he Jackie Nutting?
Yeah, I would say.
Yeah.
So, yeah, a lot of.
So when I say pop, do you know?
Do you know?
Yeah.
Because you grew up
with the American schools.
So I came here and it was.
And everyone was looking at me weird.
What did I say wrong?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you didn't say it wrong.
They just speak to you.
They were here.
I had a great experience the
first time I moved to London.
I'd been living in China.
I came back to Canada
briefly and then moved to London.
I had a, one of my younger sisters and I
had a tradition for a long time.
If you found a cool place in the world,
you'd invite the other one there.
And she was working in London.
I had invited her to China.
She invited me to London.
She had set up a job interview for me.
I ended up with a job.
They needed to fit me for a uniform.
I was working for British Rail in a bar,
in a pub, in Liverpool Street station.
And immediately I had the interview.
They started fitting me for clothing and
they asked me, do you
have any black trousers?
Or do we have to provide you some?
And I said, well, I didn't really think I
had to bring any fancy pants with me.
Pants here means underwear.
And the three old women who were doing
the tailoring got
such a kick out of that.
They kept asking me again, so you don't
have any pants with you?
No pants that are suitable.
And I was trying to
be earnest and polite.
I was 20 years old and
they had such a laugh.
That's a pretty funny moment.
Like those kinds of
miscommunications are hilarious.
I actually loved when, like in the
university, when foreign
students would come there and
they would explain, I
studied architecture.
And so they would explain their designs
and their project, the
class, and they used really
creative words that we
would never use in English.
But that's their kind of
interpretation and their language.
And then coming back to English, trying
to express it to us,
it was actually really
beautiful. It was poetic, you know, the
way that they explained it.
Yeah.
Yes.
There's a lovely asymmetry between France
and England
culturally and historically and
now linguistically.
So in English, including American
English, if you add the
word French as an adjective to
most things, it makes them better.
So if you like pastry, well, of course
you like French pastry.
Right.
And if if you have seen a nice door with
window frames in it,
well, that's a French
door, right?
Or if you're kissing.
Sure.
Add French.
Let me see tongue.
In the opposite direction, if you in
French say an English
holiday, that means a holiday
doing work.
Interesting.
Yeah, I won't tell you how
they use the word American.
Here's here's four for our departed
friend, Nikki, who can make it today.
Which which Dumbledore is the best?
Gambon or let's see the guy.
So they switched
Dumbledore's after the first one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The first actor whose name I can't recall
right now, which is
horrible, brilliant actor.
And we don't have a laptop to look it up.
We need like a fact checker.
We usually does fact check and she didn't
set up her own laptop this time.
She did ask and I've taken the
possibility out of her hands this time.
We've been talking for a while about how
we shouldn't have a fact checker anymore
because we can get lost in that.
Yeah, we sit and wait and then have that
air as we're like looking at the screen.
So yes, there was one actor who played
Dumbledore for the first two movies.
Right.
Yeah.
And then he died and was replaced by by
Gambon who was also a great actor.
So either of those jump
out at you as your favorite.
I the second one really I think was just
because I grew on me
because he was in more
the episodes and then we lose.
What were Richard Harris?
Yes, Richard Harris.
Great.
We lose.
We lose.
We forgot who the original one was.
Like we just did now, which is a shame
because he's my favorite.
Well, there we go.
That was a much less
heated debate that we had.
So I actually like the first one better.
Mainly because I haven't seen almost all
of the Harry Potter series.
I think I've seen the first two and maybe
I've seen parts of a
lot of the other ones.
I just haven't seen the rest of them.
If you can really
claim it as your favorite.
Yeah, no, but I'm
familiar with with both.
Have you listened to the audio books?
No.
I strongly recommend
the British audio books.
The American ones are very well narrated,
but the British ones
are narrated by Stephen
Fry.
And I think if you listen to those, he
will be your favorite
Dumbledore, possibly your
favorite Harry, all the other characters.
And Hermione.
And he's pretty spectacular.
The star name of a plant.
Voldemort.
Oh, we do not name him.
Whoa.
Sorry.
I apologize.
This is pretty fast.
What's your favorite film?
I don't have one.
Cute.
Why?
Why don't you have a, you
know, I hate this question.
I literally hate this question because
every time someone asks
me it, I go, it depends
what mood.
Yeah.
About years, decades, ever since I
started studying film.
What's your favorite movies?
That's what I've heard, you know.
And I feel like I've always
been forced to just choose one.
Like, I mean, I should have one.
I shouldn't have one, but
I've chosen not to have one.
I think I find it
fascinating about every film I watch.
Except in the case of X4D.
Yes.
Yes. Um, was that.
Except in the case of X4D.
Yes.
Well, yeah.
Um, I tend to like specific directors
styles, maybe like,
um, I mean, the first one
comes to mind, I like Guy
Ritchie and we just watched, um,
Unbelievable.
Ungentle me.
The Bureau of Ungentlemanly Conduct.
Ungentle me.
Warfare.
Warfare.
All right.
Yes.
That's really good.
Yeah.
I don't have, I don't
have a favorite film.
Yeah.
My, um, because we did a Crow House
projects session last night.
Crow House film accelerator is
something that we're running.
Um, and Polina, my wife said, Oh, when
you got everyone to
introduce themselves, we
got everyone to introduce themselves.
And it was like, Oh, you could have asked
them what their favorite film is.
Um, and then I thought, Oh, that might've
been a good idea, but then I thought,
Oh, wouldn't it?
Well, maybe, maybe not.
People have favorite movies.
I know people have favorite movies, but
if they're anything like me, they'd be
like overthinking it.
Well, that's what I'd be.
It feels like a lot of pressure.
And then you feel like
people are judging you.
Yeah.
You know, what's what
makes a favorite movie?
What makes a favorite movie?
I don't.
Yeah.
Do you define it as the one you want to
watch over and over again?
Cause if the one I would want to watch
over and over again would be different
from what I would say is most
artistically impressive to me.
So I'm going to jump in here as the
social scientist and the group and say
that means you have to be
more specific in your question.
Absolutely.
And you've just defined exactly how,
which movie would you like to watch
over and over again?
Which movies do you
think told the best story?
I tend to watch every
film over and over again.
And I tend to never
watch films over again.
Um, given that difference,
what's your favorite film?
It's kind of the same answer.
I don't really have a favorite film, but,
um, I have watched a lot of movies over
just because they
either are on or, you know,
Well, best film you've watched this year.
Best film I've watched this year.
Should I widen it?
Cause I know you
don't watch movies a lot.
Best film in the last, what industry?
Most entertaining or most thought
provoking or the one
you think of most often.
I'm trying to think what
I've watched this year.
Yeah.
But just frame it with
any of those instead of.
I mean, you know, so growing up, you
know, I grew up in the eighties and so,
you know, there's a lot of movies like,
it's like when Top Gun came out, like
that was, you know, and Rocky and those
are iconic to my growing up and kind of
becoming an adolescent and a man and, you
know, what it is to be that.
So this is why I have a lot of affection
for those, um, for those kind of movies.
But, um, and like the
green mile was a big one.
Uh, uh, Shawshank Redemption is, you
know, kind of as always
the one that I go back
to and it's just, I think it's just a
brilliantly, the emotions that I feel
in that movie, uh, even though I can't
relate to anything in that period and
what was going on in that way, uh, I
related to everything that they were
going through, it's just beautiful.
So movies that make me cry, you know, I
don't often cry, but, um, you know,
I get emotional.
It's powerful.
So the new Roadhouse.
I was going to say that's, that's a,
that's a brilliant other, other way to
ask that question, which
movie makes you cry the most.
It's a deeply personal one almost.
Yeah.
I think that one might be one that people
are reluctant to answer.
Yeah.
Room full of strangers.
Yeah.
I think so.
But I mean, it depends on how you want,
how you want the question to affect them.
Right.
Mm.
Um, yeah.
I have a favorite movie.
Um, since I was four years old at my
fourth birthday party, my soon to be
brother-in-law, um, rented a reel to reel
projector and a film from the library or
a couple of films from the library.
First movie I ever saw.
The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938
with Errol Flynn, John Hale,
senior, et cetera, et cetera.
Fell in love with film right then.
It was just the greatest
film that was ever made.
And it still is in my heart.
And if you were playing it back to back
in a room, I would be in that room
regardless of what was
going on in any other room.
Yeah.
There are a few films that if it's on,
uh, yeah, I'm watching until the end.
Shining's one for me, but
if it's on, I'm just locked.
Yeah, it is locked.
Cause it's.
Have you ever seen the North
by Northwest Hitchcock film?
That's another one for me.
I don't care if it's halfway through, if
it's only got 10 minutes to go.
If that's on, I I'm trapped.
It's like that, uh, gravity well at the
center of the earth.
It's just going to pull me down.
If I'm lucky, there will be a door open
on the other side of
the room and I'll skip
right past the screen and go out the
other side and somebody can close the
door behind me and I'm safe, but
otherwise I'm stuck in the middle.
Yeah.
I'm that way with, uh,
well back to the future.
Oh yeah.
One of those films from me.
I always watch it when it's, when it's
on, cause it's one of the first films
I can ever remember watching.
Um, and then born identity for some
reason, I just, I love, I don't know.
I just love that from,
I watch every film that's on.
Yeah.
And honestly I can flip through the TV.
It's something on right now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like, like I turned this, you start
scrolling through Amazon or Netflix.
I got seen it, seen it, seen it, seen it.
Cause I like, I like to watch films with
people who haven't seen it.
So we can both have
that experience together.
And so it annoys me.
Like I wanted to go watch Deadpool the
other day and man, it's like,
I've already watched it like three times.
It's not, it's just fun.
I turn on the TV today and ultra violet.
Oh God.
Yeah.
With, um, what's her name?
Mila was vlog.
Yes.
Yeah.
Me as me, whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, we can do better.
Yeah.
Come on.
She has a multipass.
Tim.
I feel it.
Yeah.
Can we get the researcher?
Oh, no.
I'm just kidding.
You know,
Joe.
Well,
Joe.
Vich.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was like cheesy,
cheesy, but more cycle scene.
I saw that in the cinema.
That was, I remember seeing
that it was probably like 20.
Yeah.
2000 and he is having six 2006 special
effects are really bad in that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'll watch it and
I'll watch it until the end.
I've never seen it.
And I mean, I tend to scroll through
movies and, and I feel
like I want to watch it
again because I've seen so many movies
more multiple, multiple times.
That range of time between the first
digital films, there's a
lot of films that are just,
you can't, they're locked in a specific
style of technology that they can't be
remastered or anything.
Cause so like, um, Lawrence of Arabia was
shot on 70 millimeter
film on 70 millimeter
film they're saying is
like equivalent to eight K.
If you re scan it, like there's that much
picture quality in it.
But then when digital came around, it was
like 720 P initially.
People were shooting, shooting films on
it and they're, they're all along.
AI probably know it's
going to get better.
Yeah.
I'd say it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have a lot of hope for AI
for doing that kind of thing.
That kind of thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Video conversion, film conversion, even
restoration from the old TV days when
there's only partial episodes left of
classic shows, I'd love to see AI.
Yeah.
There's, there's people doing that on
YouTube, um, with
really old footage, like
some of the early footage of when people
would just wouldn't know what to do with
cameras.
So they just stand
them up and film a street.
Um, and it's like late 1800s and they'll
people have re remastered them, put them
at the right speed, interpreted the
frames, cleaned them up.
And then it's like literally a window
into the late 1800s.
And it's wow.
I've seen something with somebody
claiming that they had color footage.
Is that what that is?
Has it been restored?
Some of them, some of them don't have
color, but they, they
AI can put color in.
Which is what it just cause it's being
trained on enough images.
It can, it can interpret it.
Well, it's not, it might not be
completely accurate, but
it's enough to just feel
like it's real.
That's the thing that would bother me
would be if they color it without knowing
what the color is when they leave it as
great on or CPR or whatever, I'd love to
see restored footage.
Yeah.
There's, there's ones with that as well.
There's, you get recolored ones.
Like the world war two
footage, world war two in color.
Yeah.
What's it on now?
Netflix, maybe.
And then you not tell world, from this,
no, from the specific color of gray, if
that's going to be a yellow or a blue or.
I don't think so.
Maybe again, if you have references and
probably, but not really because it's
luminosity and that just changes.
I mean, there's only, I mean, it also
depends on which color your bit depth as
well, and you've only got 250 ranges that
could be expanded out into way more
colors.
So no, but with references, yes.
Cause you know, if you, if you're
especially if you're doing like a world
war two thing and they know what color
the uniforms were and sure what color
ribbons and patches are, and the sky's
always usually blue.
I would say no grass is green.
I think that's one of those fundamental
mistakes that people make when they do
color restoration, sometimes the sky is
yellow and sometimes the sky is green.
And there's a whole lot of different
shades of gray, it might be, but in the
early days of restoring color black and
damaged black and white photos and
people using Photoshop and it's early
cousins to try and restore those.
That was a common mistake read.
You'd try to find the one thing you could
match and then you'd end up with
photos of black people
who are being made white.
You'd end up with photos of people in
their, their best clothing and they've
made the dress white, but the dress still
is in the family and it was blue.
Yeah.
It's, it's, it's easy to make false
assumptions like that and to use the
internal palette of
the picture incorrectly.
Yeah.
So in theory, we can never truly know.
Cause if you're just showing a shot of a
random street and
there's a dude who walks
past with some color of shirt, they will
probably never know what color of shirt
he was wearing.
Unless you go to the fashion magazines of
the time and you can make an assumption
that could make a probability.
But in the world where people, you will
know that the color of their uniforms
and the tanks and until they're at least
started or damaged or things.
And then they at least can start with
accuracy and move to assumptions.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Right.
Grass is third trees.
I have a green tone.
Do they?
But I'm sure it's not
the accurate green tone.
I'm sure, but they, they might.
Yeah.
But if you're in Normandy in the fall,
then the leaves are red or orange.
Sure.
So I would also pause it then.
Even in films these days, you don't know
if that was actually the real colors
anyway, cause there's a lot of artistic
color grading that goes into this.
So it's not going to be
completely accurate anyway.
Very true.
And not as exaggerated necessarily as Sin
City and it's equal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they, that was the
point of it was artistic.
Uh, the first color graded film was.
Oh, no, I just got it in my head.
Richard Harris.
No, it's the one with George Clooney
being, uh, he's got three brothers
and he's running away
from their escaping prison.
Oh, brother where?
Yeah.
Our brother where that was the first
digitally, digitally colored brothers.
Really?
Yeah.
Cohen brothers.
Yep.
Did you know the Cohen brothers when I
was doing the undergrad as a, actually
in the community college during night
school and while I was taking a cinema
studies course, didn't know
what I wanted to do with life.
I was doing construction.
Uh, the Cohen brothers came into my
community college and completely
read the library and turned it into
offices for a movie called the series,
a serious man.
Wow.
And I watched it all unfold and I watched
the Cohen brothers sitting in their
director's chairs playing the guitar.
And, um, luckily we were fortunate enough
to get to have a Q and a with Robert
Graff, their executive producer.
And he, they talked about their award
winning, their newly, their new Oscar
for the film, no country for all men.
So I got the Q and a and
talked about making the film.
And, uh, that's what got me into cinema.
That's what got me into film making.
Right.
What, what?
Like I knew them and I loved watching.
I loved watching films.
Like what got me into
wanting to do studies courses.
Um, I would watch the movie, but I would,
I would rewatch it again with commentary
and that would rewatch it again with
another commentary or behind the scenes
footage.
And so that's what, that's, that's what I
started seeking out in movies.
So every time I watched the film, even
though it was Ace Ventura, but
I think it would, uh, if it had
commentary, I would buy it for sure.
And I'd watch it over and over and over
and I'd listen to it over
but how they made it there.
It was, um, yeah, it was only DVDs.
It's sorry.
Yeah.
Then that became a whole new, and then
Lord of the rings came out.
Right.
And then I started watching behind the
scenes about, um, and you know,
the feature at set to your bed on set and
how they make things and the
technology of all the orc
battles and stuff like that.
And I'm like, Oh my
God, I want to be CGI.
Yeah.
I wanted to go.
I want to do that.
I want to be computer animation.
So I started, I was married at the time,
but, and I was looking around
for places in Minnesota and there was a
tech school, but I didn't really know.
I did tours.
I toured the schools and I'm like, this
is what I want to do.
This is what I want to do.
My wife was like, no, you're not going to
do this because there's
nothing you can't do anything with it
around here, you know, but I didn't,
I don't know,
eventually I just divorced her.
And that was all the brothers fault.
Yeah.
So, and I said, well,
you know, yeah, right.
I can't do it here.
So, um, I ended up graduating or I get me
getting my two year.
I liberal arts degree, getting divorce.
And then I got fired from my job as a kid
in the construction.
So then I moved to a place called St.
Cloud State University, where I got my
undergrad and my bachelor's in creative
study, film studies and creative writing.
And then from there I moved on to, uh,
New York Film Academy in Los Angeles.
For you and I learned to practice.
Um, if you don't mind my saying, that's a
fantastic example of cutting the gordion.
Not like you're faced with a
situation that's untenable.
So you get divorced, leave your school
and get fired from your job.
It's a good way to move forward.
It's really cool.
Yeah.
I'm sure it didn't feel cool at the time.
Oh, it was, it was
quite a difficult time.
I'm sure it was.
And I'm sorry for your difficulties.
But yeah, I got married
when I was 21, divorce was 24.
So, so don't get married young.
All right.
Uh, find, find your way in life.
What was the name of the college you were
at when the Cohen brothers?
So that was, it was, um, Normandy
community college
community college in Bloomington.
I think Bloomington,
Minneapolis and area.
Um, and I don't know, I
forgot what year that was.
They won, but, uh, I love Cohen brothers.
I love their movies.
And so it was super surreal.
For them coming in.
Yeah.
At first, it was just,
what's, what are they doing?
Like they're making a, or this, this team
came in certain moving furniture
and set building and, and all of a sudden
when I found out I'm just strolling
through the set, like I'm supposed to be
there, you know, and I look into this
room and there's Joel and Ethan bike in
their director's chairs, one of them
was jamming on acoustic guitar.
I thought it was just
the coolest thing ever.
Right.
They changed it.
And then across the street, they changed
this entire neighborhood.
They painted all the houses for them into
that fits the, the air up, you know?
Yeah.
So I can't wait till we
get budgets like that.
We will.
But yeah, cool.
So everyone's really cool.
Um, and then I, I mean, I experienced way
much, well, way more when I moved
LA, you know, so you just, one of my
favorite films is, um, is a hunger
by Steve McQueen.
And, um, so, uh, that's me and me, Nicki
met in film school and we shared
that favorite film hunger and it's
Michael Fassbender
about the eye and, and,
um, during the Margaret Thatcher era.
And he was a, he was, uh, in
the, called the maze prison.
So they did, he did a hunger strike.
Right.
So Steve McQueen directed this film.
And then, uh, as I'm going through film
school, um, I reach out to my mom who
works for, who worked for a Bill Polat,
which is, uh, it's kind of a
wealthy family in Minnesota.
They own the Minnesota twins.
He, Bill Polat owned the, what was called
River Road Productions.
So then I met him and he says to me,
we're doing this film with,
called 12 Years a Slave
with, with, uh, Steve McQueen.
I said, well, Steve McQueen.
Amazing.
Um, it's kind of weird, weird timing.
Um, so they shot the film and I got, uh,
advanced screening tickets
year before it came out to go see it.
And I'm walking down with my
friend, not an invite, Nick.
I don't know why, but,
uh, we're walking down and.
And I, uh, well, okay.
So I saw the film point is next day I
went to Q and a, I saw 12 monkeys with
a Q and a with Terry Gilliam, right.
And me and my buddy Lou who just came
with me to watch 12 years, we're
sitting there in Hollywood and I look
over and I see this, this guy walking
down and I said, I stay
been that's Steve McQueen.
I didn't really know if it
was it, but it looked like him.
So I said, Steve.
And I pointed and he kind of did this
kind of looked and he
walked down the aisle.
He sat right next to me and I said, Hey,
what's going on, man?
I said, Hey, I'm Matt.
And he goes, Oh, I'm Steve.
I can't because out of the British
accent, I can't do it.
But, uh, and I was like, it is.
I, it was him.
Right.
So he said, I said, I saw Steve.
I said, Hey, and, uh,
what are you doing here?
He said, we're editing 12 years of slit.
And I said, no way.
I just watched it yesterday.
I said, I know Bill.
He said, Oh, he know Bill.
So we're con, we're, you know, my first,
uh, I was pretty starstruck, you know,
thought as my starstruck, right.
Um, just fair respect, respected.
Was his work in and they sent their,
having a conversation with me.
You know what I mean?
Uh, but then he went, I was going to ask
him for his number or email or whatever.
So this is, so if I can never have a question or anything.
Ever had a question or anything.
And cause he was that nice.
And when the film started, he got up and,
or then the film started and I'm like,
fuck, I missed the opportunity.
If I can believe that out.
Uh, and then I was going to do it right
before the, when the film ended, I was
going to ask him and he got up at during
the credits and he never came back.
So Steve, if you're listening, uh, my
numbers six, five, one, five, five, five.
But yeah, that's a.
One of my great, it was, it was a great
experience in Los Angeles.
And I, my directing teacher was Adam
Nimoy, the son of Leonard.
And I get, and I got to see Leonard.
Uh, we went to Star Trek screening and
with a Q and a button learning.
So I got to see him right before he died.
I could keep going.
See the man's name drops.
Yeah.
Name dropping.
So what you're saying is that, uh, people
who like to see and meet stars
should go to Los Angeles.
You'll find them anywhere.
Yes.
Yes.
But anyways, that's what got me in the
mood back in the column brothers.
Yeah.
You know, yeah.
Those, um, and you also mentioned the,
like watching DVDs and with
all the scenes and behind the scenes.
And, uh, I miss those man.
I tried to, I, where do
you even get those anymore?
You trip.
Besides YouTube.
Jim.
Besides you.
There's loving.
Are there really any
too, I think there is.
I think there's, I just don't think they
do them anymore, but
like, I want to watch
it with a movie with comedy.
I feel like they do them less because
when DVDs came along,
they were like, we need
to justify this new technology more.
So they're like, Oh, you
can play other video files.
So they felt like they had to
put in the effort and energy.
I feel like Blu-ray is neither a bit
lazier and just, yeah, here's your film.
I still do Blu-rays.
They still do Blu-rays.
They still do them.
Yeah.
Maybe that's where, cause I haven't had a
DVD or there's no where to watch a movie
with, with commentary as
it was you're watching.
Yeah.
The one that I always had was, uh, the
original Star Wars trilogy box set that
came out in the nineties and it had like
an hour before the
film of Lucas justifying
why he had to put in a bunch of CG stuff
for this, this, uh, this version of them.
Uh, but it was, it was actually
interesting and pretty cool.
Although I fast forward it through a lot
of times because it was a star of the
film, you know, you had to, you had to
fast forward your, uh, your chest to
get through it all.
At the same time or around the same time,
if you got a, uh, Hayao Miyazaki, uh,
anime film on digital media, they were
re-released by Disney and all of a
sudden you could get them everywhere.
Or if you hadn't been able to before.
And that was one of the conditions set by
the founder of Pixar when Pixar
merged with Disney, she said, okay, I
will, we'll do this deal for however many
gajillion dollars, but you have to
re-release all of Miyazaki's films with
proper actors with proper sound.
And I get to do an intro to each one
because he so loved Lassiter, so loved
Miyazaki.
And if you watch those films, you get a
little introduction at the beginning.
It's not somebody justifying their
masturbatory behavior
towards a well-loved
public property or private property.
Um, but, uh, it is a really cool
introduction to each film by somebody who
deeply loves the work.
Yeah.
I studied Miyazaki.
Yeah.
And I think cloud, uh, when I got my
bachelor's, I took a directing
director's course, right.
When, and we watched most of his films,
but it was like a four hour class,
maybe more.
So we first half would watch a movie and
the second we'd go from like opening
frame and we just talk about, like
specific details and how the choices of
the director and why, you know, this, and
very deep into his history about his
father's love of airplanes.
And that's why so many
things in this movie fly, right.
And I would love to take that.
So I have a whole notebook of just notes
from tutorial, uh, the cast on the sky.
Lovely.
Yeah.
And they really, they
really went out on those dubs.
Um, yeah, they, they might
Christian Bale and how's, yeah.
I hear seven.
Um, I'm all about the original, but in
Pongo, they have
Irish dude brains broken.
But yeah, they're great.
Well, that's been over.
That's been over an hour.
So what you're saying is that we have to
pay extra for more time.
No, no, there's, there's, I just, I just
realized I might be running out of steam
when I asked it, what's
your favorite movie question?
That is one of those tells, isn't it?
Yeah.
I started on a really, uh, contemporary
technologies and how that might improve,
uh, filmmaking.
So before we close, can
we go back to that topic?
Sure.
Yeah, of course.
All right.
Gentlemen, as our guests, I'd like it.
If you would both tell us or each tell us
what do you look forward to seeing
change in film technology, either in the
way that it's made or the way that it's
presented, is there something that just
stands out where, man, I hope we get to
this someday.
Hmm. So I think that, um, AI holds a lot of
promise to, to do things that most of us
don't have the access and or financial
capabilities to, right?
And so I think that, um, that a lot of
people have stories to tell and they
don't have the ability to do it in a, in
a, in a way that, you know, people would
be interested in seeing. So I think that, uh, as we progress and
AI progress is
progressing so fast, faster
than we can keep up with, um, it's going
to give that access to that, right?
So it's going to
diminish some of the value.
I think that, uh, that a lot of people
bring really in any sector, but in, in
film, it's already happened with writers.
It's happened with, you know, in a lot of
ways, the animation part of it is, is
close, it's not there yet, but, cause I think it's very hard to get the
subtleties of emotion and the nuances
and, um, that feeling, but I think it
will get there at pretty soon.
So I think that, um, I'm, I'm excited
and, and I want to say I'm scared.
I'm more, I'm more, I'm, I'm excited to
see how we can use that as a tool to
enhance our
capabilities of telling story.
So, um, AI and filmmaking, that would
have been a great topic
for us to start off with.
Next time, next time.
Next time.
Next time.
Go back and tell you.
Um, mine's a little
different than Paul's.
Uh, I just want to see drive, drive it
movie theaters come back.
I grew up with him and I think, um, with
theaters dying, um, cause I don't mind
watching films at home, but man, you get
a whole different experience.
And I think it's that
experience that we're missing.
Right.
Uh, people, I mean, I yell at my
girlfriend all the time when she pauses
the movie to go to the bathroom, like,
you know, the theater, you don't, you
get up and you get a piss or something,
you're missing the movie.
So you hold it, you know, and I hate, I
can't, I can't stand
pausing a movie like that.
Uh, but, uh, you know, for, if we're, if
we're trying to do
these gimmicks and then
bring life back into and going to watch a
movie, why not bring back the experience?
Like fun experience like that.
You know, so which, which part of the
drive-in is the part that you, you
would want to have recreated, like, is
the whole thing going there and being
in a car with other cars nearby or the
interaction, like, well, sneaky
people in the trunk, yeah.
Making out in the back, you know, I don't
know how graphically can go.
We don't know, but we don't have them
throw, you know, I remember throwing
frisbees in the front while the, while we
were waiting for the sun to go down.
You know, you get there early.
Um, like I remember smoking weed in the
back of the, of the building, you know,
then just having, I don't
know, then they get the countdown.
And I remember driving down the highway
and you can see a movie playing and how
cool it's like, Oh
man, it's Jurassic park.
You know, and you just get a glimpse.
You haven't seen it yet,
you know, and you want to go.
Yeah.
Um, that's cool.
Cause I've never had that experience
never cause they're not
really a thing in the,
you've never been to a drive-in.
No.
Well, that's something that should start.
My only, my only, the only reason I knew
they existed was from Greece.
Huh?
Watching over and over again when I was a
kid, like what's that?
I did.
Um, in LA I did, I
worked on a few drive-ins.
It was, it was a pop-up drive-in.
So maybe you start with that, but it was
an inflatable screen.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we did back to the future and we had
the Delorean come in.
We, we had the, I don't know if you
remember the, uh, the guy who, when
Marty comes back to the feet, back in,
back to the present and he jumps over.
The, the fence is locked and he has to
hop over the fence and, uh, opening,
he opened his window and he jumps into
his bed and the light turns on.
It's a little black girl who screams and
this black guy comes, the dad comes in
and holding bad and he
goes, got you sucker.
Right.
And so we got that guy to come in and do,
uh, and do autographs and stuff.
We did Pee-Wee Herman, we got the bike
and we got the, the villain to come in.
I forgot that he came in.
Francis.
Yeah.
And he came in and then introduced the
film and, uh, do signatures and stuff.
Yes.
That's great.
Yeah.
So they think of pop-up driving as a
great idea for action.
Yeah.
They have, okay.
So there, I know there has been pop-up
things that would
come along and drive-ins.
I've never gone to one.
They have pop-ups.
They were never, they were never as big.
Well, the experience you get food,
probably because, I mean,
yeah, it was a lot of things.
And you, or you keep your
car running or turn it off?
Both, man.
You can start cars on the, it also back
in the day, it was, it
was, um, you would reach
there's poles with speakers on both sides
and you'd reach for
one and you would hook
it onto your window.
Yeah.
And then that's where
the sound will come from.
Then technology, obviously they would do
to the radio, right?
But I mean, with the advancements of
touch down knowledge,
you know, like the sound
would be way better.
I mean, the difference between the
difference of driving
theaters was the sound wasn't
that great.
Yeah.
Right.
The big screen.
I mean, sometimes you barely see it
because when until the guy
were really dark, but you
three, three movies you'd watch.
Yeah.
It was really, yeah.
If you stayed, you can stay for as many
as you want, but it
would, you know, you'd
watch first one, some
cars would leave, you know,
go back and get popcorn at the stand
under the projector.
So then there's this, they have the
whole, like the whole
building reserved for all the
popcorn snacks and bathrooms and, um,
they have playgrounds for kids.
Usually right underneath the screen.
Yeah.
There was the headlights of a hundred.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shine on it.
So you don't have to
worry about your kids.
Man, those, I mean, they,
then they tore them down.
They tore them all down.
I had one right by my house.
They, uh, I had three
in my surrounding area.
And so if you miss this one, we'd race
down the street to the other one.
But, uh,
from why they, what happened?
Was it just people stop?
I don't really know.
Cause I, I think it's, I think it's the
THX sound that you get
in the movie theater.
It's the big cinema.
They could, the quality in a cinema is
much better than it.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, of course, a hundred percent, but
now, I mean, who knows
what we can experience,
but I think it was just, they took over
the land and they built houses and stuff.
I think it was just,
Urban expansion.
All of a sudden the
land was worth a lot more.
And $7, you know, it was like $7 or
something to get into it.
Right.
Each person, I think it
wasn't per car or was it?
I don't remember, but yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know why.
I mean, it was, they
just, they just died.
The way I remember it was, it was per
car, which included a
maximum number of people.
Sure.
And then you hide your friends.
Trunk and oh no, just two of us with four
people crowded into the trunk.
Yeah.
As many as you can.
Bottles of whiskey.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Other illegal things.
But they attempted.
So what was the question?
So I'd love to see, I
mean, I'd love to see it.
I don't know.
Let's get out of the house.
I mean, I want obviously theaters, be
nice of you go to
opening night and you can,
you can get a seat anytime you want now,
but back in the, you know,
that's, that's, I guess that's what's
missing is sharing films with people.
Uh, yes, I guess everyone shares them
with their immediate family at home.
Maybe if they're all riding one TV, but
I'm going to the cinema.
Yeah.
Cause we didn't have drive-ins, but you
every, we would get bus tickets, go into
town and go to the sale.
That was our thing.
When was the last time you saw a film in
the theater and didn't have to ask
somebody to please stop talking on their
phone or videoing what was going on on
the screen or shouting
loudly amongst their friends?
Cause that happens to me every time I go
to the, almost every time I go to the
cinema now, there's some teenager on
their phone, the phone
open in front of them,
talking loudly about
what's happening in the movie.
I shout, I tell them off.
I definitely shouted last night.
And Paul and Nick were like, turned to me
like, what the hell's going on?
Every time I would share moved, I was
like, God damn it loud.
Like what the hell?
Uh, but yeah, I mean the respect for
theaters, the movies of
we've gone to that.
I think so.
I think when it comes to that kind of
entertainment experience, everyone
thinks of theirs as the only one.
Yeah.
All right.
They're not used to sharing it anymore,
even though they could be sharing it in
their family, I think that's one of the
things the, the smartphone has taken
away from us as a culture.
Yeah.
I think cinema is arriving in an advert.
That's a big long advert with a bunch of
directories that put
an input of explaining
why you should be in a cinema, not on a
phone, but then you're talking to the
wrong audience.
We're already in the cinema.
Yeah.
We're already.
Yeah.
What you need to do is do some three
second videos on TikTok.
We should answer the question too, John.
What, what, what,
what do you want to see?
Um, well, I'd like to see the
grabbies, but have them know.
Um, yeah, it's, it's hard to say.
I really liked the idea of the
democratization of film and the fact that
AI makes it possible for
anybody to tell a good story.
But right now I worry that AI has made it
possible for anybody to make really
shitty stories.
And so they are, um, as a lecturer, I see
really shitty essays all the time that
are just horribly, horribly written using
really bad language, really badly.
And, um, The problem is that AI makes it
really easy for people to
complete an assignment poorly.
And I think that's going to be the case
for a long time with anything else.
When I used to teach 3d animation back in
Canada, um, I spent a huge amount of my
time convincing new students to design
everything on paper before they turned
on the software, because otherwise the
software decides what you're going
to have in your story.
And I think that's what AI is doing.
So what I think may be my hope for the
future is that there will be guidelines
like what you were talking about for
virtual reality, Jamie, some kind of a
Scott McCloud style book that says, this
is how you tell a story well in this
and this, but a huge part of it would
have to be, and don't use AI except in
the following ways.
That's what I'd like to see.
Yeah.
I have, if I would answer, I would just
go full blown holodeck.
Let's get there.
With all these with the solid fade away
furniture and everything.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just, it's, it's boom.
It's as real as anything.
Um, I'll get there.
We'll get there.
Including Moriarty who comes out of the
holodeck to hunt you and kill you.
Yep.
Um, yeah, why not?
And yeah, I'll do the standard sitting
down and having meal with Einstein.
But they're Paul.
They're talking about, uh,
Star Trek next generation.
I buy Star Trek.
Okay.
That was the other
argument we had with Nikki.
We started talking.
He was saying that the films were good.
The new films.
Yeah.
Which is unfortunate.
Actually the holodeck comes from the Star
Trek, the animated series.
Animated series.
It was first presented there.
Yeah.
Then 10 years later, they put it on the
next generation as something that already
existed.
And the first paper was Ivan Sutherland.
Um, we basically described it.
There you go.
So you're saying this Star
Trek new films aren't good or not.
They're horrible.
They're not good.
I don't have an opinion.
I just, I'm just curious.
I mean, I, I do.
I enjoyed the first one.
Yeah.
I really enjoyed the second one.
The second one and third one.
There's three, right?
I think so.
I didn't see the third.
Okay.
So there's two.
I think there's two.
No, there is three.
Is it the last one was,
um, directed by Simon Beck.
When did I come out?
I can't remember.
So there was Star Trek and
Star Trek into the darkness.
And then there was another one.
I'm sure there was.
You said you do have
an opinion about this.
I do.
I thought that they were great.
I really enjoyed them.
Just that I felt like I
was in the Star Trek world.
So I'm not, I'm not as embedded, but I
watched a lot of Star Trek growing up.
You know, that was one of the popular
shows on TV in the nineties.
Um, and, uh, and
yeah, I liked the actors.
I thought, you know, the kind of
innovative things they
added with the, you know,
our ability with special effects and
everything brought me into that whole,
I don't know, I just enjoyed the ride.
It was fun.
My dad had them all on VHS.
I remember like 10 rows
of, uh, every episode.
Yeah. I started watching Star Trek in the
sixties and, uh, was a big fan.
I went to the first Canadian Star Trek
convention back in the seventies.
Uh, lied about my age to get in.
Um, do not lie about your
age to get into things, kids.
Um, my problem with the new films is that
to me, they inverted
what made Star Trek great.
And I'll, I'll agree with you.
The cinematography,
some of it was really good.
The special effects were excellent.
Some of the casting was incredible, but
in the original Star Trek, they used
really simple stories to discuss
extremely complex problems and everything
was solved because experts work together
to use the best of their knowledge and
empathy to help each other complete
something none of them could have done
alone in the new Star Trek films.
They're dealing with really simplistic
problems and they solve them the most
elaborately complex way through blind
land, blind luck and charisma.
So in, in my favorite example of that is
in one of the first two,
cause I didn't see the third where, um, I
think it's Kirk and Spock, but maybe
it's two other people launched themselves
out of photon torpedo tubes through the
wreckage of one ship into the photon
torpedo tubes of another ship.
And from the moment they're launched,
they don't have any ability to steer.
And all the wreckage
is moving around them.
And somehow by chance they get through
all of the wreckage.
Realistically that's suicide.
That's not an attempt to do something.
Only childish logic makes that possible.
And to me, that's a violation of what
Star Trek originally was where again,
the inverse, right?
Clever people working together to come up
with a clever solution to a complex
problem, but told in
a really simple story.
Yeah.
I get that.
Okay.
Complex problem, like a whale's
consciousness that like an alien
consciousness saying, I need to find
intelligent life and no, you're not it.
Yeah.
Right.
Like it's a complex
problem, but a really simple story.
Yeah.
I wonder how that says, I had a thought
there where you're saying the differences
of the original Star Trek of people
coming together, having empathy
professionals, but then nowadays they're
the blind luck and charisma.
I wonder if that says
anything about society at large.
I believe it does.
Asimov wrote a great essay in 1977 or 78,
where he talked about how the idea that
everyone has an equal right to be heard
had somehow become everyone's opinion is
as good as anyone's knowledge.
And I think this is true.
We've backed away from expertise in the
sixties and early seventies.
The heroes in North
America were astronauts.
Those were the greatest heroes.
They were brilliant engineers, brilliant
scientists, brilliant athletes.
They were all of those things.
And now everybody's heroes are YouTube
influencers, gamers, streamers.
Yeah.
Like it's podcasters.
We are no one's heroes.
But you know, you know what I mean?
Like there's a respect for intellect that
used to exist in public discourse.
That doesn't anymore.
Now you make fun of intellectuals.
There's a respect for the competent just
for being competent at
anything that no longer exists.
Well, I guess to for a counterpoint when
I was growing up, nerds were nerds.
Right.
So we made fun of
intellectuals at that point too.
I don't know if that's part changed.
Well, and those nerds actually became
kind of these super geeky, you know,
they took over the world and now they're
not, they're kind of superstars.
Yes.
I think the problem is the confluence of
different meanings of nerds.
Neil Armstrong was nobody's nerd.
Right.
Right.
But certainly people who
need to, that's we're not nerds.
No, they weren't.
And yet they did all of the smarts.
Sure.
Right.
And all of the cool of the coolest and
all of the physical
abilities of the best jocks
and they had to do all of that.
And I think the problem is that easier
labeling fell through
or came to the surface.
So if you have to call someone by
something, you can call
them in a single word.
Why are you going to
call them a nerd or a jock?
Because it's got to be one of the other.
Is he a brain or is he a dweeb?
Sure.
Right.
And people are just more complex than
that and life is more complex than that.
I always wanted to write a teen movie of
the typical teen movie
sort, except the nerd
who's getting picked on has very quietly
in the background, been working out every
day because as a science nerd, he's
realized that working out every day is an
investment that will pay off.
And I just think that would be a nice.
I've definitely met
those people in real life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Where they're absolutely a dweeb and then
they take off their shirt at the end of a
basketball game or
something and it's, Oh, Oh, okay.
Be careful.
And she will break you in half.
You know, like, this is my biography.
Sorry, my life.
Yeah.
That's funny.
Cool.
All right.
There we go.
This is a good, good ending.
Sometimes we like to wrap it up on, uh,
and tie it back together.
Um, I'm struggling to do this one.
Uh, don't look at me brother.
You're the one who
said tie it back together.
So the experience, the, the augmented
reality in a shared cinema.
You've been listening to this.
If you have been listening to this as
long, thank you very much.
We always like to thank our audience for
bearing with us, but you've been
listening to it, us maybe walking or
doing something else.
Maybe you've got air pods in, maybe
you've got headphones at home.
Maybe you got listening to it, but that's
fun, interesting technology.
Um, maybe we could put more effort into
it and you would have more of a joyful
experience because maybe we should think
about how to vibrate people while they
listen to us.
I don't know.
I'm really struggling here
to wrap it up in a nice bow.
Um, but I think, I think the suggestion
to make Jamie, if you'll pardon me,
jumping in when you said a couple of
times now that you're struggling and
looked at me with
pleading puppy dog eyes.
I think maybe the way to wrap it up and
bring it all back to that is ladies and
gentlemen and others in the audience.
If you're listening to this and wondering
where you can get this multi-sensory
experience for yourself while listening
to our podcast or enjoying other forms
of entertainment, I recommend that you
ask a friend to help
you and keep it private.
Thank you guys.
Very good.
All right.
Thank you.
Uh, well thank you to
our guests, Matt and Paul.
And, um, maybe, maybe we'll have you
remotely as guests in the future sometime
or maybe not.
If you don't mind,
maybe love to have you back.
I love to.
Can be great as well.
Now, maybe not at the same time.
You kind of took over at any time.
We just need to buy those vibrators.
Keep talking about it.
Okay.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Bye guys.
Salk Talk is a production from the Robert
Gordon University School of Computing.
Today's episode was brought to you by the
letter PI and the number PI.