Ridiculous Opinions #304
So, lots of things have happened over the last couple of weeks. Maurice the Beaver ended as a comic strip. Four Frontiers was (technically) released. A trip to NYC Comicon. And a whole lot of jet lag and an open schedule, creatively.
I’ve been waking up at 1AM like clockwork ever since we got back (today being another version of that) and there is nothing more depressing than getting up early. Usually, I will lay there for an hour or so, pretending that I can go back to sleep, but that doesn’t work, so I just get up and endlessly surf the internet until the sun rises. That gives me lots of time to think.
I’ve been thinking about my next creative project. I want to make a movie and I will, more than likely, make that happen. I’ve had an idea for several years about what I want to make. As one might imagine, I am limited in terms of what I can do. Despite my grand visions and the epic screenplays that I’ve written over the years, it’s very hard to make a film with a crew of one and a budget of zero. But times change and I am now interested in making the attempt.
The movie that I’m going to (try to) make is called Booth and the entirety of the film takes place in a booth in a restaurant. That’s it. It’s a challenge for me to try to figure out how to do it. Of course, it’s not one story at the booth. I think I have eight or nine different stories interspersed throughout the movie, all within different genres. We will not leave the booth through the movie, though. It will all take place right there.
My plan right now is to simply build a booth and film the movie. That’s it. I will make the booth and film the whole thing with green screen. Because the story takes place over different time periods and locations, the things around the booth will change throughout the movie. How do I do that? As I wake up in the mornings and have several hours to kill before other human beings emerge from their bedrooms, I am doing research.
Right now, I am exploring the daunting task of using a program called Unreal Engine to make the surrounding environment. Unreal Engine (if I understand this correctly) was made for video games, but has been incorporated into movies since then. It provides a real-time way of looking at a set and arranging things in the background. So the wall or window behind the booth will change as the movie progresses.
There are other options as well. I could simply use artificial intelligence to create the background. This is also not a bad choice as a whole. I gave this one pass on Google Gemini to see what it would come up with and this was its first iteration:
Not bad. Google generates 7 second clips, so I could easily create a looping video that would serve as the background for my booth, while shooting actors on green screen. In the creation of that video, I single-handedly accelerated climate change by seven years.
Unreal Engine and Google Gemini are choices that enable me to expand my film-making palette to an infinite degree. It’s unrealistic for me to film this in an actual booth in a restaurant. I don’t have a location. I can’t get the permits. I don’t want to move the equipment (and have no crew with which to do it). It’s unrealistic. Plus, if I have eight different stories being told with eight different backgrounds, then that’s eight different locations. It’s untenable. So, I need an alternative.
Generating a looping video background with AI would enable me to set the lighting before I film the scenes, so I could light my actors during the scene in a way that allows me to make it look more realistic. Simultaneously, using Unreal Engine to add the background also enables me to light the actors and change things the way I want when I film the movie. Making the AI video is easy (though generating the exact AI video that I want might prove a bit challenging). Learning Unreal Engine might be a bit harder, but it can be done and would give me quite a bit of granular control over the whole thing.
So, if you’re wondering what I am thinking about at 4AM when no one is around and I have surfed the whole of the internet, it is this. I have no real reason to make a film, other than the fact that I want to and I can. I’m not sure I will actually do it, but this newsletter is a way of making myself do this movie. I am talking to myself more than anyone else as I try to convince myself that I will do it.
All that is technical. What’s the film about, Randall? I’ll give you a quick example of one of the stories, because I’m putting myself in it. Twice.
Basically, there is a story in Booth where a man comes to a restaurant for a mysterious meeting. He’s waiting on this person who has requested to meet him there. And when this person finally shows up…
…the person is him.
Or at least, a version of him. From a different time and place. And this alternate universe version of him is trying to convince him to do something that could change the future.
I have stopped shaving. I am allowing my beard to grow long and ragged and whatever wispy hair that I have on my head is going to be long and wispy. It’s for the role. I will film one version of myself to play the future version of the character. Once I’ve filmed all of those scenes, I will go and get all of my hair cut off and trim up my beard to play the other version of the character and film the rest of the scenes the next day. Then, with modern technology, I will put the scene together into one coherent whole.
That’s the kind of film Booth will be. This is the way my brain works.
Will I do it?
Maybe? But as I said, I’m kind of backing myself into a corner to make it happen. I’m learning new technology and I’m refining the script and I’m looking into building a friggin’ booth that I can use in the movie. This is what jet lag does to me.
Let’s see what happens, shall we?