PageS FILMNEWS June 1994 THE FUTURE David Cox on ... Morphing the Oz indie film scene paradigm, or, vvhy vve need the Digital Media Commission

The extraordinary increase in the milestones are reverently enshrined in the same device. Many of the earliest development and availability of publications like Cinema Papers and software houses began publishing books, Filmnews, and in institutions like the National games in print. Those who remember the CO-Rom drive systems worldwide Still from Typhoid Mary by Linda Dement provide new avenues for the work Film and Sound Archive and the Australian early eighties home computer game era will Film Institute. But a close examination of the remember having to type in line by line the of Australia's independent film industry trade publication Encore shows that code which would eventually result in the next time you are at a department store) at one and video community. Real work. multimedia is big, and getting bigger. Encore final game, when, if you made a mistake, you end, or, at the other extreme, beautifully There is much hype about dedicates more and more advertising and had to go through the whole program and find rendered graphics, but relatively low direct "interactivity" and "multimedia" editorial to digital production every month. the anomaly. You almost had to be a feedback in terms of game play or feedback but, if carefully examined, digital Courses at tertiary level in multimedia fill up programmer to play computer games on your speed, such as a game like Myst. Filmmakers can benefit directly from image and sounq manipulation immediately. Swinburne's Centre for New own machine, unless it was an Atari console, becoming familiar with computer-based actually represents the. bulk of Metlia had an application backlog of seven using cartridges. I used to convince myself hundred for the 1994 intake, with only eight that a games machine was too limited: after systems, if only to develop an understanding current media production in Graduate Diploma positions every year! all, you could ''only play games'' on an Atari. of using existing idea material in new ways. Australia. As a filmmaker also Graduates this year have had offers for work A simple 64K computer allowed you write No one thinks twice about using engaged as a producer in the before the course has even begun. This is a and run simple programs in Basic. The code word-processing instead of typing for writing world of videogames, I am real industry. With real growth and promise. was listed in the pages of magazines catering screenplays and funding applications. Why? conscious of the fact that, to date, One which can benefit directly from the for the users of the various machines: the Because cutting and pasting text on your the worlds of software publication contribution of Australia's existing film and Commodore 64, the Acorn Electron, the computer makes what you write and motion picture/video video community. Microbee ( the Australian PC). To save the semi-interactive. You see new combinations production are still largely, Yet no multimedia courses are offered code, one used a cassette player. To load a in the ideas on the screen and you can act on the combinations. Drag. Click. Drag. Click. culturally, mutually exclusive in within the mainstream channels of Australia's game already stored as data on a cassette you major film and television Schools, the VCA would load it in the tape player, set the volume Imagery and sound can be treated in the same the eyes of most of those who way. Pick it up. Put it there. Combine it with work in either domain in or the AFfRS. Ponderous, isn't it? dial to just the right setting, tell your computer to "load" and hit "play". With luck, the this. Let's hear it with that. If you assume the Australia. But this is changing, Ne'er the twain shall game would load. More often than not, you final work is not to be a beginning-to-end and fast. would get three quarters through, the signal linear film, you can make the same digital Kodak's Cineon Effects system, developed m~et, until now. .. would brea)c up, ~nd you would have to start information available as a game, a non-linear largely in Australia, demonstrates Australia's , Film is a linear mediurrl. Film organ'ises · again. book, or a file for transmission to someone role in the convergence of technologies. sequential pjctures as gelatin layers strips of ·. As.a game or computer enthusiast you had els.e Y.Qu waJlt ~o work with it. . Cineon is a commercially available mean's to plastic photochemicaily.' The ro · "know something about ·the basic Using 3D modelling programs like transfer film to data for manipulation, then photochemical-optical approach which relationship between the hardware and' ttie Autodesk's JD StudiiJ it-is possible to build back to film again. Remove or add elements :cinema uses has remained unchanged for "idea", or "soft" ware, which was either otherwise incredibly expensive and elaborate to a scene, touch up the eo lours, remove the -around one hundred years. This is pot an printed for direct transcriptiofi, or stored on sets and objects for use in films, render them distant jumbo from your period film. Add the inherently bad thing; new technologies are not magnetic media. But the results were moving with realistic surfaces, then light them using T-Rex. Beam Software in South Mel!;>oume inherently better or worse than older refallves. · pictures, with SOJ.1Q.d and interactivity . . ln · tools which delibUMely employ filrri!theatre are commercial producers of Sega and Digital meclia treat all information in the same practical terms, as ari analogy, this was the · metaphors. - · Insertin~ 11ctons into these Nintendo games for . the US and European binary way. The universalising effect of equivalent of having to know how to print, environments can be achieved by videotaping market. Many of the games are film tie-ins. di-gitisation homogenises every conceivable process and prepare motion picture film for them acting agajnst a blue screen In post These include Star Wars, The Hunt for Red message under the umbrella of the · viewing, and how then to thread a projector production~ 'Electronic colour separation can October and Back to the Future. Beam capture/storage medium. But to take the and set up the screening rpom.every time you enable the placing of the actors in th'e- "sets". employs over sixty people fulltime. Most of implications of this for what they are; one i~ wanted to watch a movie at home. · · ·The composite is dubb.ed to tape. The the software tools for game development are struck by how all this is affecting our way of Today,' computer storage media are more · ' .res.olution i,s relative,ly ,low by Hollywood engineered inhouse. The ooml?an')' is fifteen > knowiag things in general; knowing about efficient: aisk:, eproni chip (for game console standards, but the results are great for the cost. years old, and has been of(ered financ,e .by ourselves, what we want, what we enjoy about · cartridges) and CD-Rom. The computers are The PC CD-Rom game Return to Zork was Film Victoria to develop 'its first CD-Rom the ideas we have and those of·others faster, cheaper, and employ increasfngly done in this way. In Au'stralia we nave yet to scratch the surface of this new territory. titles. thrqug)lm~t . history. These new media have standardised operating systems. CD-Roms , Pa_ssi-¥~ ~udience: Not! or, my home This fact is v~ry, ·very significant. ·tus a entered our Jives almost without warning. are very cheap to illa!l}lf~f:.tUr~ (jUiO_ll.fld_ recognition by government bodies, normally • In ' term~ of how the US film and software US$2/3 ), and with the righ't compression e'!ltertainment system ate my phone!! Communications systems enable the phone in the business ofproviding money to film and wdrlds are C'oiweFging, Jim Cameron ~nd Stan algorithms, (;an• stOre up to the duration of a videomakers, that multimedia is significant, is Winstonl s company Digital IDomain feature film of full-motion video, games or tine's tn become a'way'-to receive or transmit hete, and requires active financial J>l\pport. , , represenls the attempt by Holly\>(ood to any other digital data. T6.dayt, rld, "'P

MIMA event, Women and New Imaging realise you can convey your ideas to Technologies, this interactive attracted much technicians and computer programmers and attention. The cut and bruised digitised that they also get things from you. For me art When the phone melds images of Typhoid Mary's body is intercut is not just about product, it's about process." with witty, ironic, and utterly devastating text. Kim Bounds' Autarky (Swinburne Centre into the computer, you The work engages the participant in a vivid for New Media 1993) employs a Molotov and confronting exploration of a mass of cut cocktail of digital design and image/sound don't need to be up and stitched together bits of person. The processing techniques to describe a libertarian anywhere specific for the use of interactivity drives home, without cyberfeminist state of mind and body. compromise, the body as a site for discourse Autarky is a manifesto. It advocates a digital work to be made about technology, gender, and politics. The streetwise attitude to technology and culture audience, through pointing and clicking, is which empowers the female holder. It is also usable, as long as you're implicated in the political process of a something of a rallying call for women to corporeal uncovering of abuse. seize the means of communication. Bounds' near the phone. The Unforgettable. background is commercial design, The Sydney's Cyberfeminist collective, filmmaking and instore presentation displays. global network allows VNS Matrix, in All New Gen, demonstrates a Autarky itself is linear; you sit and watch it run delicious inversion and subversion of the from start to finish. But it employs the use of film scriptwriters to share standard video game premise of the player as a range of 3D and 2D computer graphics tools a first person empowered lone avenger. Here for the imagery itself, much scanned in and text over distances of the hero helps a cyberfeminist heroine, Gen, reworked Hi-8 and 16mm with typeset fonts, who can mutate into different forms. Gen and has been edited with non linear tools. The thousands of miles. It must hack the system of patriarchal power in frame accuracy of non-linear editing enables society, then confront Big Daddy Mainframe a flashing, patterned treatment of imagery also allows editors and - a perfect metaphor for the nexus of male unique to the medium, and exploited to the technocracy and international commerce. maximum in Autarky. As data, the work can sound engineers to work This work embeds a critique of technology be uploaded to someone overseas over collaboratively ... No within technology itself; an inversion and Internet or to a Bulletin board system. As renegotiation of startling cultural political data, digital films, videos, games and wonder Kerry Packer just insight. The potential for vivid hybridisation programs can be sent anywhere, over high and fusion of the political with the speed modem or the Internet almost bought 40% of Optus! Those who want something, not yet broken, technological has few parallels in linear instantaneously. Unsurprisingly, Kim to be quickly fixed will probably not have to media. With computers, the message is often Bounds has expressed interest in developing wait long. very much the medium, and the social an online realtime juxtaposition of materials conditions which serve to isolate computers on the net with live performance. This fuses The Death of Geography. from creative people are automatically challenged when accepted boundaries are When the phone melds into the computer, crossed and the work is released. Liberated you don't need to be anywhere specific for the from the unspoken but familiar cultural digital work to be made usable, as long as constraints that define the commercial, you're near the phone. The global network of orthodox, sexist and daggy computer government and academic network servers mainstream, works like All New Gen seek to known as Internet allows film scriptwriters to problematise the gendered male culture of the share text over distances of thousands of video game. And succeed. miles. It also allows editors and sound Ruth Luxford's The Fridge (Swinburne engineers to share files and work Centre for New Media 1993) uses Macro collaboratively when separated by distance. Mind Director multimedia authoring to No wonder Kerry Packer just present the user with a refrigerator. By bought forty percent of Optus! clicking onto the magnets on the door and then Telecommunications and media are more or onto the contents of the fridge, unexpected less the same entity now. sequences unfold, with accompanying Games and multimedia are art forms, like sounds. The sheer pleasure of inhabiting a film and video. They grow and change with fridge with its familiar products all there to be the technology around them. When interacted with cannot easily be described. filmmakers learn of the potential of digital The joy comes from the engagement afforded media, it is most often to seek ways of by the medium. Discovery and play, very consolidating these advantages into the basic human needs, are entertained in this existing paradigm of filmmaking, as it has deceptively simple scene. Luxford is, been proven and understood until now. This significantly, a trained industrial engineer. attitude is understandable, but in many ways She both writes code and also devises quite limited. The notion of exploring the compelling interactive scenarios. Like Jane possibilities of computer media for its own Campion's Passionless Moments, the sake is seldom seen as an appropriate path by transcendent humour of the banal is many working in linear media forms. But celebrated for its own sake in this interactive these are cultural barriers, borne out of the setting made significant by familiarity. sheer newness of the tools, the technologies, 3D graphics artists Moira Corby and Faye and the skills which accompany them. Maxwell create high end images using high The computer world, too, has its end workstations at places like RMIT' s very prejudices: how can the filmmaking model fit high end Centre for Advanced Computer into the often highly mythologised and Graphics. Networld by Fay Maxwell is a specialised territory ofthe software engineer? virtual space where organic matter pulses The meeting point lies along the path of what convincingly amid other forms. The notion of constitutes innovative and original work, no interior and exterior is explored for its own matter what the technological apparatus used, sake, with sensational soundtrack music and the preconceptions of those who work making the whole ensemble live in ways both Still from Jawpan by Troy Innocent within them. Both make use of moving very digital, and very female. Moira Corby's pictures, sound, and storytelling, but games background in theatre and sculpture is evident nineties multimedia with the seventies idea of is currently in South East Asia, helping to and interactives often involve the notion of in the Gothic archways of My Memory, Your multimedia, which then described the "wire" major cities with modems. difficulty and achievement. Often such works Past animation. Here the full extent of the combination of performance art with other Troy Innocent's IdeaOn! is an interactive will explore the textual complexities of digital medium of 3D on Silicon Graphics machines elements, such as music, tape, film, and light virtual point and click universe, where the production itself, and place these issues is presented with a monumental celebration of shows: a la Laurie Anderson. icons used to navigate through a surreal literally in the hands of the audience. The the means of production. Gaining access to The great thing here is that the technologies · landscape of tin toy and plastic creatures form success of a multimedia title can sometimes the machines and securing AFC finance for of communications are finding expression in part of the terrain itself. The user interface, be measured by the level of engagement it production were as much a part of the story of film, theatre and performance. Time-based therefore, is as much the hub of the work as offers the player/user/audience. Innovation the film as the technical process. Corby is a arts, when employing modems "on stage", the domains one enters by employing it. This and newness are the bywords of a classic significant force in new media production and extend the performance space to include the blurring of the distinction between the signs multimedia production. Great interactives are her work owes much to a long term dedication global communication matrix, where on the road and the road, buildings and usually inherently exploratory, inviting the to an academic concern with what it means to timezones and distance normally separate populations signified, makes ldeaOn! a user to solve puzzles, overcome obstacles, and use hi tech to make high art. This automatic whole populations. By channelling pictures milestone work in the history of the medium. actively engage in the process of experiencing association of' 'high end'' with legitimate art and sound over the net during live At the recent AFfRS and AFC Multimedia the world on the screen. I find somewhat problematic, but in this case performances, the geographic location of the and Filmmaker Conference, Innocent gave a the tools reflect the modus operandi of the performance, such as Andrew Garton's live tour of the worlds of ldeaOn!, discussing Women: at the forefront artist's background where megabuck systems pivotal landmark Brisbane multimedia opera the importance of game elements, and notions are explored for their own sake. The act of The Black Harlequin, is ushered into being. of participation and play. Worlds have names of multimedia in doing forms the philosophy of the artwork. In The Black Harlequin, due for Melbourne in like Cybaroque, where all is for sale (data Australia. an interview with Lisa Logan for Mesh 1995, uses onstage machines, modem-linked highway) and everyone looks beautiful. magazine, Corby explains: "it's such an to others elsewhere in the world in different Perhaps unsurprisingly, women currently There is a kind of Arcadia world where trees accelerated learning curve when you first tap time zones. Text and simple imagery is make up the majority of Australian innovators bloom, and you can take a swim in virtual into that space and you're totally immersed in in the field. Linda Dement's Typhoid Mary pumped onstage to the Harlequin audience, water. Occasionally little movies play, it. It is like a new world and you come into offers an onscreen journey into the tortured who in response can channel pictures and showing loops of dancers to Ollie Olson's contact with a lot of people from different body and soul of a digitised female terrain. sound back into cyberspace. Andrew Garton disciplines and with different expertise. You • continued next page Made available for playing at the recent Page 10 FILMNEWS June 1994 Cox continued

storage means they are great tools for actively geographic site, and the infrastructure to system. In the US, you can cut your own Digital Film forgetting. This can be a very empowering process that finite work to a number of finite audio CD at kiosks; the result is a thing, to not have countless examples by other destinations, suddenly vanishes. custom-made object, maybe a compilation of Commission filmmakers, other writers, other musicians, favourite tracks from different albums. How occupying valuable shelfspace, with their Our media are now far down the track can the CD-based film and product next to yours! Everybody gets to be video kiosk be? Bits of your favourite films • continued from previous page a pioneer. nebulous clouds of - all the dream sequences of all the David Living outside the laws of aesthetic omniprescent thought Lynch movies on one disk perhaps, royalties utterly chilling and mesmerising soundtrack. "taste" is what makes a memorable work paid for with the plastic, please (I wish!). This paradigm shift is difficult to make, conspicuous, and hence true to its time. The ability to choose, or filter, informatiop even for those familiar with the technology; Elena Popa's Sintu is a simple and Honest work is self-confident and from Iiitemet, using software tools like Turbo it's potentially a cultural change as significant beautiful piece of digital self-assured and has "attitude" written all Gopher, Mosaic (which uses the hypertext as the invention of the printing press or the over it. It takes little time, however, for an driven World Wide Web) presents us with an moviemaking, using a kind of formal, telephone. Filmmaking enjoys a multiplicity original idea to become tired and dull, and this existing model for sharing moving picture almost ritualistic symmetrical graphic setting of approaches, as the means of film happens when the work is made unoriginal by information. In pieces. With many other for an Asian folk dance. The movement of the production can vary with the circumstances of relentless conceptual duplication. Witness people scattered across the globe in a dance is carefully framed and allowed to the filmmakers, but there are constants in the the endless proliferation of examples of neverending ongoing cinema of idea unfold. The alchemy of a rich yet simple film world which have to do with how the morphing in television commercials. proliferation. This relentless, unstoppable setting which remains static, with the work is funded, made, sold and received. Experimentation, uncertainty, strangeness currency of data over the Internet stands in movement occurring in a single figure, gives How moving imagery relates to the society Sintu the feel of an essay on movement and are the hallmarks of lasting contributions to stark contrast to the perceived extent of the new media. The new media will benefit from around it is, in the most literal sense, culture, potential of networks by those who currently the interplay of kinetics, digital imagery, and the expression of a culture's view of itself. the contributions of those most able to grasp govern traditional media. Video on demand sound. The piece i"s short, but highly The audience range for mainstream film the full sociological, economic and is the digital replacement for cable TV, or in memorable. festivals is usually from young to psychological implications of the technology, Australia's case satellite pay-per-view TV. As can be seen, digital media can be middle-aged, from liberal to conservative, handled by computers in an almost infinite and of what it does best: copy, transmit and How boring ... make available. Without necessarily although not always. Games, on the other numbers of ways. Perhaps the most hand, occupy largely the terrain of the young; Video on demand presupposes significant is the remarkable ability to copy meaning to, the new media promotes decentralisation. In a world of networks and the preschool-through-to-teen audience, and several things: 1) the desirability of and transmit and receive information quickly onward. However, many players from the simple linear applications of potentially non and with little cost. This communications file exchange, what does the notion of "broadcast" mean? It means a central place earliest generation of computer games are linear forms (why just sit and watch passively dimension of digital media makes it truly now thirty-to-fortysomething, and are looking when you could also pick and choose, unique. No digital original is any different from whence pictures and/or sound emerge, controlled usually by a bureaucracy. to consolidate the universalising power of the personally editing a film from your own from its copy. In this way the circumstances Nintendo/Sega joypad into a means of favourite criteria, in any number of of the production of any digital media are Multimedia, on the other hand, revolves around being digital and transmittable, accessing information, booking travel, combinations?); 2) the passive role of the always expressed by the work itself, as much consulting encyclopaedias, and all the things consumer; who is to say that the digital as by the "message" conveyed by the work. without a centre. Where is the centre of the net? The same place as the centre of the global people of that age group like to do, offered a consumer only wants to receive? Do we use Being so freely distributable makes digital choice of moving vision and sound which they the phone in silence, only to receive calls from media self-promoting machines for the phone system. Nowhere. In film there is still an established can interact with and control. our friends and relatives? No, we use the production of ideas. A filmmaker using Different media cross-pollinate and phone to transmit our voice, too. We share the computers can be his/her own distributor, distribution system of festivals, influence each other. Big budget movies now phone network with others who have a phone. marketer and salesperson, if required. A marketing, distributors, very firmly accommodate the games market, with Broadcast media paradigms persist, with production can sit on a bulletin board, waiting rooted in physical, geographic and multi-modal publishing seeing the notions of the audience as a captive recipient. for people to "log on" and download it. A simultaneous release of titles as film, games, Commercial TV, delivering "eyeballs to multiple .choice "gate" can prevent cultural space, while radio and television signals emanate from an music, and other merchandising spinoffs. advertisers", is attempting to find new ways unauthorised copying, and the method of Music shops in the UK have recently been to do the same old thing. There is a good supply can also be the means of collecting earth- or sea- or spacebound made aware that CD software titles can be chance, however, that "advertising" as we revenue: you cannot gain access to the work central transmitter to relayers and distributed along with music CDs; some game without agreeing to pay. to receivers. The relationship of signal to developers have even put out music albums, Unlike regular text and book publication, user is one-way. Existing catalogues of stored with the music CD and the software CD • continued page 14 whose circumstances of production have motion picture and sound material are sharing the same artwork and distribution remained relatively unchanged for centuries, suddenly even more extremely valuable the conditions of software publication change resources. ''Repurposing'' (I hate that term) with the introduction of new hardware. The promises to "liberate" older work for digital ideas change with them. Storage and repackaging as new products. transmission are less interesting to me than the ''Repurposing'' alone is a linear approach to potential of digital media to not only tell School of IUITISI non-linear media; it's costly, and its advocates UNIVERSITY existing messages better, but come up with sometimes fail to grasp the full range of the OF TECHNOLOGY entirely new messages, with examples found capabilities of digital media. The issue is not SYDNEY nowhere else, along with entirely new ways only "content", (where are we going to get of presenting them. The work of the artists I all the material for the productions?) but Humanities have already described is chiselling this new context. Context between forms, and context ground out of the institutions that will support within the infrastructures which make these them, despite the massive barriers that exist. forms genuinely digital and are as much a part In film, literature and dance, a sea of of the landscape of the phone and satellite Graduate Certificate contributors throughout history spans time's companies as anyth8ing else. Governments horizon, with the classics as landmarks. What feel comfortable with central metaphors. in Writing the classics have in common is the thread of Vast libraries. Museums. Archives. We originality: the unexpected, the rule breakers, need the National Film and Sound Archive, to Fee-paying course for offer in 2nd semester. the weird, the ideas which stood out because be sure. But the media I discuss here resists they were unique. In software, "classics" such polite and passive centralisation. With a This course is designed for graduates who wish to seem often to reside somewhere in the future. laptop and a modem, a single person will soon develop skills in the field of writing. The teaching of How do you study the work of your be able to transmit and receive moving images writing at UTS has become recognised as producing predecessors in the games business, for and sound over the phoneline to and from example, when the emphasis is constantly on anyone likewise connected. The linear innovative, critically informed writing which explores bigger, better ways of doing the task? The fact assumptions of the finite copy, the central and extends the boundaries of familiar genres. that the new media are ostensibly about Graduate Certificate in y...c..:r•~ The AFC Writing for the Screen ~ a~~!!! Fee-paying course for offer in 2nd semester. ANew Comedy This course is designed for graduates who wish to Initiative develop skills in the field of screenwriting in the The search is on for a series of 10 short programs that context of developing a critical approach to that field takes a fresh approach to Australian comedy, to be screened in a new prime time comedy slot on SBS 1V. and an understandng of the production processes and We're looking for: theoretical concerns which influence it • a PRODUCER to produce the series, who has a strong track record, a good eye for talent, experience with comedy and is able to take control of a challenging and eclectic range of programs. • DIRECTORS who have made at least one film or For more information or an application form, please video program and are interested in exploring and challenging existing approaches to comedy. contact the School of Humanities on 330 2307 or the • WJUTERS who have an idea that's 7 mins long and sure to amuse. UTS Information Centre on 330 1222. (directors & writers can apply individually or as a team) To apply, please corrtact Nicki Martin, AFC Sydney Applications close Friday 22 July. 008 ZZ 6615 (OZ) 951 6444 BrendR Nasb, AFC Melbourne 008 33 8430 (03) 279 3400 Page 14 FILMNEWS June 1994 SPILLS [Cox}

provide countless variations of image, text, an office desk. Image and sound production How can tilmmakers make a· and sound: all customised to each person's is everywhere. living in the nineties? Go to the Digital Film needs. A stately pleasuredome, for sure. Filmmakers are already at the very centre Where copyright rules, Okay? of these developments. John Hughes, Sue video game arcades. Look at this • Games producers can rely upon encryption Macaulay, Michael Buckley, Steve French, environment, from the point of view of Commission to protect software to some extent. When the Jeremy Parker, David Atkinson, Diana Leach, someone who shapes movement, light, and game is carried on a chip, encased in a Kim Sansovini, Kim Bounds, Sam Thomson, sound, into meaning. Look at the arcade as a • continued from page 11 cartridge, or published on a CD-Rom, the Troy Innocent, Elena Popa, and me. The list filmmaker should. Here is your new domain. material is protected from being copied by the grows. Filmmakers are in demand again. These are moving pictures you're looking at. know it, will probably not survive the method of storage. Data stored in these ways Hear those amazing sounds! Check out the transition. cannot really be copied. It's "burned in". Why Filmmakers in colours! Look at the level of engagement of The telephone company has no interest These elements are significant, because those the people playing. If you are an animator, you (nor should it have) in the content of the in the independent film community value their multimedia? have been here before. These are the prototypes for ''an Esperanto of the messages it conveys. It just supplies the dial intellectual property and need to safeguard Few other art forms have, as central to their Imagination" (to quote · Brenda Laurel, tone and bills you for frequency and duration, their livelihoods as information producers. modus operandi, the basic understanding of Mondo 2000, issue 9). As for concerns about depending on the distance and time of day of When the community gets more "wired", it the complex interplay between movement, "all the violence", the Office of Film and the call. Why should broadcasters see the data will need mechanisms which enable fair kinematics, juxtaposition, sound, and all the Literature Classification has now installed a networks as new ways to broadcast' 'video on exchange of material, but protect against fine delicate elements you learn, and you demand" over the phonelines (how else will unfair practices. classification system for games, just like the create when making a film become real. one for films. they get to your living room as data except by These motion picture arts are entirely Look at these videogames, and remember satellite?) when the model of the central compatible, and directly relevant, to the Film and games, film and those film school classes about where cinema singul ar hroadcaster in a networked world is evolution of software and digital culture first began. Think of how Me lies started, how all but replaced by the " matrix"? games today. The links, however, are not yet fully Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov made the then William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, What are the similarities, anyway? Like understood because we, like the rest of the separate worlds of the circus, illusionist speaking on Radio National recently, film, games and multimedia can utilise world, are in the centre of the storm of global theatre, and photography, come together to described the difference between Internet and narrative, in that the context of a player's role technological change. Postmodern become a new art form. Entertainment for the the data highway as that between a communal in a game is often that of a story protagonist. dislocation is felt here, all the more by virtue masses. Behind the big top, next to the freak town square and a shopping mall, with a The game design operates like a script, but of our cultural and geographic distance from show. Our precious arthouse cinema was shopping mall as a machine for sucking up also encapsulates the details of the character where the action happens faster and on a larger once dismissed as mere sideshow attraction, money, and a town square as a neutral meeting and the way that the character interacts with scale. But what was a "cringe" for film in the one hundred years ago. Cinema was entered place and a site for shared community the settings, with the other characters. early seventies can be the fuel to ignite an with a tinge of guilt, a touch of voyeurism, and activities. Meeting strangers online is a Chapters to stories take the form of levels of industry which is unaffected by geographic a thrill. profoundly moving and exciting thing to do. the game. Usually the degree of difficulty for isolation from commercial hot zones. It's time for filmmakers and artists to Filmmakers wanting to try this should call the player increases with each level achieved. Modems blast the coastlines into cultivate a process of active participation in Pegasus networks in Bri sbane for details on Within levels, there may be several worlds. insignificance. Borders don't matter. Vast the development of the new media. But we membership for an e-mail address, and access Mapping and cartography play a huge role. oceans don't matter. The bits and bytes flow need support. We need an Australian Digital to new groups (film-related ones abound).* Like film, the elements which make a game like pollen in the wind, almost at the speed of Media Commission. We need new funding The Internet Relay Chat or IRC is the thing to exciting have to do with its appeal to its target light. structures in place to finance games and try , or perhaps a MUD ' 'multi user dungeon' '. audience. The "big 3" of the late Brian Our uniqueness as a cultural multimedia. Not as an R&D marginalised Robinson's script class at Swinburne - token gesture from existing federal film Sitting at home with a remote control, compelling action, interactive locations, and site is itself a source of value in finance organisations. But stand-alone ordering products by hitting the "buy" startling characters- apply to games as much the digital era. Digital funding structures, flexible enough to button, is not a particularly imaginative use of as film s, and is as true of documentary, of technology does not mean the accommodate the changes which will define the new technology, although it is one often narrative, or of experimental multimedia. death of film. It does not mean the end the new media as they evolve. ADMC cited for the satellite future, but sending Hi-8 Games are exploratory media, facilitating of video. Or of standard magnetic or funding policy would need to reflect changes footage to grandma, or combining it with concentration, engaging the imagination, and photo-chemical media. This is not a zero-sum not only in the technology, but in the effect of transferred Super 8 from the eighties, sent to challenging the player/member of the· equation. It is not some futurist, modernist the new media on the culture around it. Like you half an hour earlier from Iceland, is. The audience, who feels, by means of a proxy self war of semiotic attrition. When I made the Australian Film Commission, The ADMC issue of copyri ght is a potential problem on the screen, literally a part of the action. The Puppenhead, I went out of my way to make would foster and cultivate a growing digital which is foreshadowed again and again. The appeal and growth of multimedia games is the film a celebration of the circumstances of arts, entertainment and commercial culture. ouestion is. will copyright laws (designed to linked directly to engagement. its own production. The "film"ness of the The emergent life~tyle we experience would protect the phys ical manifestation of ideas) be Barriers to the widespread acceptance of surface of Kodak Tri-X was as much a part of able to su rvive in a world where digital games as part of the media stem from cultural, benefit from such pro-active policy. the text as the ''storv' '. or of anything else. products cannot, in any physical sense, be said technological, and generational Film animation, in literal terms, cannot really to exist? Ted Nelson, computer guru and Multilateral finance misunderstandings. Yet our day-to-day exist in any other medium. You can teach inventor of the idea of ''hypertext' ', on his experiences are connected everywhere: the animation technique without using film. But strategy recent visit to Australia outlined his Xanadu supermarket bar code pricing system, the film is uniquely film. Photochemical. Real. networking and copyright retrieval system. I propose that such a funding body be set touch-screen kiosks in the department store Bright, glowing, projected light (thanks Bits of medi a are interlinked across a network up with input from the Film Finance and in other public spaces, the Corinne!). made up of special Xanadu servers. Those computer-provided phone number at the other Corporation, The Australian Film I work in software now, but teaching film Commission, The Australia Council, The who make material available on Xanadu are end of a directory assistance enquiry, the animation at Open Channel reminds me of the Departments of Industry, Technology, and able to reclaim revenue on material used, in automatic teller machine, the pager, the fax importance film holds for me and others who Regional Development, the Department of exchange for relinquishing the context of the machine, the security system at work and at come to learn about puppets and models and Communications, the Ministry of the Arts, work once it is bought by another Xanadu home. All online buttons, all flashing 24 frames a second. Film lives and breathes The Ministry for Education, the ABC, SBS. user. Here, the benefits of networked data imagery, all processed sound. Our cities are within the hearts of those who have had their Corporate support could come from the exchange are made compatible with the need becoming giant video games, and we are all lives changed by it. It just don't go away ... AEDC, Telecom, Optus, Apple, Microsoft, of artists to be paid for the work they produce players. Desktop computer manufacturers This is not about what will replace film. It is and a range of other corporate entities. digitally. But, on a deeper level, Xanadu now offer teleconferencing videophone about how filmmakers, frustrated at the Changes made possible with Government offers a "linked" software and clip-art culture features, built into the computers which sell stagnation of the media they love and the finance could be far-reaching and where the endlessly connected cloud of data from $7000 and up. They include cameras institutions which support it, can find ways to controversial. on the net is available and just' 'there' '. There built onto the monitor to transmit the speaking I engage their talents, and contribute to the *Phone Pegasus: (07) 257 1111 is no centre, no start point, no end. Just a great, face, microphones to transmit the voice and evolution of a whole new sector of making art ongoing kaleidoscope of linked information. utilities to compress and send realtime and meaning. The significance of linked data cannot be David Cox Is a filmmaker who Is currently pictures and sound files across the globe from employed as a producer at Beam Software, underestimated. Data interconnected could and teaches film porduction and animation at Open Channel [03] 419 5111 STOP PRESS David Cox was slightly in error whendescribing Swinburne's new media course; there are FACILITIES twelve annual places and this year there were over 200 applications!

& EQUIPMENT HIRE Sydney Film Festival Forum • Full broadcast production facilities • Studio • Betacam SP recording Getting on the • VHS & BVU off-line with Shotlister • Steenbeck editing suite Superhighway • Betacam SP to I " on·line with ADO David Cox will be part of the panel looking at what the information superhighway is and what kind of mass media culture it will lead to. He'll be joined by Jeffrey Cook [who fears there will be bur-eaucratic roadblocks to filmmakers Awnrd wi1111illg productio11 house Advice and assistance in trying to get onto it] and Michael Hill [an AFC project coodinator in Film production planning, Development who will be discussing public funding of digital developments]. OPEN CHANNEL budgeting and a// facets of 13 Victoria Street, Fitzroy, 3065 operation is provided as 5.30pm Thurs 23 June Ph: 03/419 5111 Fax: 03/4191404 part of our service. University Hall, UTS, Harris Street Ultimo (down from Broadway on western side)