Memory Editing
Correspondent:: "Rev. Ivan Stang"
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 18:02:38 -0500
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I had the most marvelous time watching this movie last night, "The
Final Cut." I had read about it and, because of the subject matter,
wanted to watch it despite the fact that Robin Williams plays the lead.
I about creamed.
It's about a Cutter of the near future, a fellow who edits footage from
the Zoe Implants of rich people who have died, for showing at funerals
or "Rememories."
The Zoe implant concept is pretty interesting to begin with. The idea
is that before you're born, your parents have the Eye Tech company
implant this "organic device" in your skull while you're still in the
womb. By the time you're born, the device begins recording everything
you see and hear until you die. It doesn't record memories exactly,
just what your eyes saw and your ears heard -- but it does it
continuously. Audio and video. It cannot be played back until you've
died, at least not without great danger to the living implantee. After
death, however, your family hires a Cutter to make a wonderful fond
remembrance of your life. He generally skips over the stealing,
peeping, child molesting etc. and concentrates on the sweet stuff.
The Cutter takes this Zoe Implant playback holocube and sticks it in a
computer, which can do the sorting required to make a lifetime of
nonstop recording editable. It is a bit more high tech than what we
have today. It automatically sorts out various categories of "footage":
birth, infancy, onset of puberty, traumatic events, masturbation,
eating, etc. This makes it a lot easier for the Cutter to assemble,
say, a ten minute montage of nothing but best-of shots of the deceased
brushing his teeth in front of a bathroom mirror, from age 5 to his
heart attack one morning.
The ethical problems of this technology drive the plot of the movie.
The Cutter can see everything a person did, as well as things which
that person saw OTHER people do. A person with the Zoe implant goes
through life knowing everything he or she says or sees is being
recorded and may be seen some day by Cutter or family, or cops. (Some
people behave like saints because of this, and others plunge headfirst
off buildings to destroy the implant so their shame will never be
revealed.) There is an anti-implant movement in society and therein
lies the suspense side of the plot.
Like "Gattaca" it's a pretty smart sf film concerned with future
technology that is not completely implausible. Or, if it's fairly
implausible, it nonetheless highlights privacy issues that we deal with
every day. (Especially we who process YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBERS, for
instance.)
What was so creamy for me about the movie, above and beyond the plot,
characters and ideas, was the sumbitch's COOL AS HELL MEMORY EDITING
CONSOLE. And his JOB in general.
I was a film and video editor for years as a day job. For DECADES in
fact. The late 80s and early 90s were almost solid documentary jobs for
me. So I have done a LOT of editing of hours and even weeks of what one
guy sees and hears. Documentaries often involve vastly more
footage-handling than do fictional, scripted movies; you film like
crazy and then fish out the good parts. It takes massive organizational
planning. (I am still doing this, but strictly with SubGenius media.)
You're trying to change this chaotic mess of mostly meaningless footage
into something intense and moving and "true." and less than 90 minutes
long. Or less than 20 minutes long or whatever.
I am currently trying to knock my 6XDay documentary footage down to a
final 20 minutes before I dump the master transfers from my drives,
incidentally. That started with 9 hours of footage.
The computer which edits the Zoe implant footage is called a Guillotine
(also the name of the most common tape splicer used by old school film
editors). God DAMN do I want this machine. I also wouldn't mind having
it set in the wooden console that Robin Williams was provided by the
movie's art department. This movie has GORGEOUS art design in general,
albeit a bit stilted due to an adherence to an all-movie color scheme
(in this case chocolate brown, bone white and TV blue), and the way the
dude's editing room and machines are set up make me want to hump my DVD
player in pure covetousness.
This image-editing systems used by the detective in "Minority Report"
was pretty cool, but was too futuristic to get me off the way "Final
Cut's" more realistic approach did.
It so happens that I spent as much of my time as possible during the
last two weeks installing and starting to learn new plug-ins and
effects and titling filters for a video editing program called Final
Cut Pro, trying them out and practicing using the 6X-Day footage, and
that's what I'll be doing as soon as I can dive back in again. The
editing of video, when performed for several hours in a row, brings on
a type of altered consciousness that may be unique to wranglers of
audio-visual media. It produces a truly PHASE-SHIFTED way of
experiencing time that takes awhile to come down from afterwards. Never
let a video editor drive you home after a 20-hour editing session.
It was evident that the character, and the director of the movie, and
the editor of the movie, are all too familiar with this Cutter's
Trance, and this is the first film I ever saw that expressly dealt with
the syndrome as a plot element.
The montages of the guy cutting montages kick major editing ass. First
intelligent use of split-screen EVER.
I am not familiar with the director's other work, but I noticed that
one of the two editors was Dede Allen, just about the only even
slightly famous film editor that I can think of. She has been winning
Oscars since I was a young teen so she must be at least 120 years old
by now, but GOD DAMN. Those scenes of editing were so well edited that
I almost had to clean up after myself.
KRAZY KOINKYDINK DEPT.: this morning we got the order for Membership
from a new SubGenius Member whose real name is ZOE. Zoe [something],
last name none of your bizwax.
Also yesterday we got two Membership orders from Nebraska, apparently
unrelated -- that's weird in itself.
--
The SubGenius Foundation, Inc.
(4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected, Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
P.O. Box 181417, Cleveland, OH 44118 (fax 216-320-9528)
Dobbs-Approved Authorized Commercial Outreach of The Church of the SubGenius
SubSITE: http://www.subgenius.com PRABOB
Correspondent:: Eddie Vroom
Date: Sun, 13 Feb 2005 04:25:54 GMT
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Rev. Ivan Stang wrote:
> audio-visual media. It produces a truly PHASE-SHIFTED way of
> experiencing time that takes awhile to come down from afterwards.
I've experienced similar phenomena as a musician (bass player). I've had
extended periods (following times of particularly heightened perception
and cognition of The Art) where I absolutely could not STAND anything
even remotely musical, not even the sound of clocks.
Also, hardcore low frequency sounds do wacky things to the human nervous
system. Which is why I refuse to work at 100 Watts or higher without a
dose of Ganga or an empty stomach.
And I find an empty stomach Anti-Slack.
--
Here's the punchline: I wasn't joking, motherfucker!
the Mystical RevvedErrand Doktor Eddie Vroom
Certified God by the holy authority of
the White Lotus Fortune Cookie Company
June 23, 2004