Kubrick on the set of "2001"

Today would have been Stanley Kubrick’s 83rd birthday. There is a reason that launching a fundraiser today for “Outside In“  is very appropriate.

In 1985, I was at a library in Knoxville, TN watching movies on VHS, trying to catch up on the many films I had missed as a kid. I put in a tape of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and watched it on the tiny 13″ TV.

I was simply blown away. I had no idea movies could be like this — so rich, complex, mysterious and elegant about things that excited me – science, space, exploration, the unknown.

Later, as I studied film and became aware of the craft, “2001” became even more special. The amazing editing, sound design, cinematography, use of music (Kubrick was a pioneer in using existing music as score) was a huge influence on not only me, but generations of filmmakers.

“2001” probably inspired more filmmakers that any other film and is a landmark in cinematic history. Of course, on release it struggled with the critics. But today, it’s one of the most influential films ever made.

The entire concept and execution of “Outside In” is based on what I learned watching and dissecting “2001“. Most importatly, if you want to truly engage an audience on both a primal and intellectual level:  show, don’t say. Cinema is about visuals, sound and music. Not talking or reading. “2001” demonstrates the power of this. Hopefully, “Outside In” can live up to this standard.

That’s why, from the beginning, Outside In is “in memory of Stanley Kubrick”. May he rest in peace but live on the screen forever.

On the one hand it’s frustrating that Outside In has yet to land a single grant. Film grants in the US almost always go to “socially conscious” films and despite the fact that professional grantwriters have helped rework my applications, the few grants that will allow IMAX films to apply have rejected Outside In multiple times.

Of course, film grants are scarce in the US and most of them refuse to let IMAX films apply – believing that only well-heeled filmmakers make IMAX films despite much letter-writing in protest.

Outside In is, well, too outside-the-box for the usual indie film world, so fundraising will need to be outside-the-box too. Outside In already has impressed people with how much start-up seed money has been raised and the progress so far. Now it’s time to launch the film completely (see the cool rocket launch graphic added to the site).

It’s my mission to keep the film true to the pure vision: to inspire and spark interest in space exploration as way to understand the big questions. It’s also very important that the film reach as many people as possible and that the film sparks many new efforts in outreach, inspiration, dialogue and community building around the world.

You can help, even if you don’t have dime. Start a Team 11. Ask a generous friend to donate. Help find a corporate sponsor. And always continue to spread the word.

The images in the film belong to all humanity, so it’s only fitting that the film is of the people, by the people, for the people.

Sometimes it really is the simple, small gestures in life, from someone I will likely never know or meet, that matter.

click for larger image

And this essay makes the point that video games and virtual worlds have become a poor substitute drug for the restless exploratory nature of our species – which is a big point in Outside In. But we are not going to find any new answers to anything in Halo 4 or Gawker 3.0.

I think if you read this essay, the title of the film might be a little clearer. In other words, there is only one way for us to even ask the right questions – and that way is Outside In, not from the inside out.

In 1968, an astronaut, fairly informally, took the first photograph of the “The Whole Earth” as NASA still did not realize that a picture of earth might actually be more important than pictures of the moon. Using this photograph as the cover, Brand published the first “Whole Earth Catalog“, a highly influential publication that Steve Jobs and others called “the first Google”, in the fall of 1968.

In addition, this made this first Earth portrait famous and it quickly became iconic. Within 18 months of Stewart’s publication, we had the first Earth Day and it’s visual symbol was a photograph of Earth. This is part of the driving mission of Outside In – to bring not just this photograph, but every single major photograph of our universe to the giant screen. I think it’s important and history tends to agree.

us

#7: “Too Much Data”

If you recall from reason #5, “a 5.6k IMAX image at 32-bit color will contain 752,640,000 bits of data or nearly 1 Gb (gigabyte) for each frame.” In non-technobabble that means the finished film will require 65 terabytes of data – which is 65,000 Gigabytes of data. That does not count the many terabytes of data for all the source material in the film. 100 terabytes in all.

In 2006, the 750 gigabyte hard drive was just released, for over $500. To store 100 terabytes would have taken 133 hard drives costing $67,000 dollars. So that was near deal breaker when “Outside In” was first conceived.

Today, we have 2 terabyte hard drives for $135. That’s 50 drives costing $6,750.  So that’s getting near indie low/no budget territory right? Indeed it is, especially since you can buy storage as you go along. But there is more to just storing files, you have to make them first with gobs of data.

After a few initial tests that went very well, I started tying to do animation on “Outside In”. That 1 GB of data per frame? Well, your computer has to process that data. And film is 24 frames per second – 24 gigabytes of data per second. Things like this started to happen:

The first time you see this I thought – “okay, just another error message, no problem. Just find the fix or work around”. Several months later, after talking to the company, many expert users and lots of research I realized with a sickening feeling in my stomach that it’s not just another error message.

Turns out it’s a fundamental problem with computing.  In 2006/7, pretty  much every operating system and programs were “32-bit”. Which means basically the same computing technology based that had existing for well over a decade or two. Yes, some hardware like the processor was “64-bit” but it was basically sitting there doing very little 64-bit as all the code it ran was 32-bit.

Why is that such a problem? Well 32-bit code basically can only deal easily with about 2 gigabytes of data – and tweaks had allowed to deal with 3 or 4 GB of data but just barely. So that 1 GB of data per frame of IMAX data (that often had many gigabytes of data placed inside the frame) was simply too much. Code crashed, operating system crash – and film crashed.

But I was determined to press ahead. A few months later, Microsoft finally released a 64-bit version of Windows XP.

I installed it on a dedicated machine as it was very picky about what hardware and software I could run. I got Adobe Photoshop and Adobe AfterEffects running and despite that fact the both were still 32-bit code, running them on 64-bit XP made things better. I could do a lesser resolution that my original plan (4k instead of 5.6k) and less colors (16-bit not 32-bit) but it was good enough to create some serious test shots. My first few minutes of footage were output to IMAX film and screened in an IMAX theater. Despite the compromises, it looked much better than I could have hoped.

But, as 2008 drug on into 2009, I was faced with a fundamental crisis. The film, as scripted and storyboarded, required much more data than I could animate with the workarounds around the 32-bit memory limitations. I could either make major changes to the film – and make a much simpler, less dynamic, less visually interesting and rich film. Or I could try to raise a lot more money and move to Hollywood level animation system – and from what I could find out, none of them were true 64-bit either and had similar issues.

Neither of these seemed like good ideas. I took a hard look at the future and felt that I was only 12-18 months away from a real revolution in desktop computing – the move to true 64-bit computing. But I did not know for sure if that would save my vision for the film.

#6: “Space Cams are too small”

So, this one does not sound nearly as dramatic as “It’s impossible!”. But actually, it’s a bigger deal. It seems like a great idea on paper to use the images from space missions to animate in a film – if the film were a web-cam film. The Cassini spacecraft has a very nice camera for a spacecraft. But by earth camera standards it’s not great. Your cellphone camera is probably much higher resolution and takes color photos.

Cassini's camera sensor

Yep, the Cassini camera is less than a megapixel in an age of 18 Megapixel DSLRs for under $1000. And to make a color image since it’s black and white only, you have to take 3 pictures – one in the red color wavelength, one green and one blue (RGB) for a full color image. And since the camera is really more a science instrument than a creative tool, it’s not optimized for artful photos, dynamic range etc.  There are artifacts in the images caused by all sorts of problems created taking images hundreds of millions of miles from earth.

It’s a webcam in space on a modem-slow connection. Not exactly an IMAX camera. And the cameras on other spacecraft are mostly the same or worse. The only decent photos from space are the ones where astronauts have taken cameras themselves. Those pictures can be very good but astronauts have barely gone anywhere.

So if you want real pictures from space that even as good as a $150 digicam, well, they don’t exist. Or do they?

And the whole focus, budget and strategy over human vs. unmmaned, Moon, Mars, new vehicles is currently a very messy debate.

So, NASA decides to roll out some new PSA’s about why space exploration is important.  Prepared to be awed by the majesty and mystery of space… as brought to you by cartoons and a wrestler. My fav is “spinoffs”…

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/planet51_psa.html

Perhaps I’m not the audience (although I’m not sure who is considering the film’s box office for a dud of an opening weekend). Now if NASA had the twilight stars – “Vampires in Space!” – well at least that would have been widely viewed.

These images are building blocks for several sections of “Outside In”  – right now there are about 30,000 images in it. By the time the film is done, it will be several hundred thousand.

Over the next few days, I’m gonna post some crude test of stuff done early on with Zeitgeist images, before “Outside In” was headed for IMAX and when it was an experimental art film, many drafts of the script in the past.

A little history on the film. Way back in 2004, “Outside In” was a 5 page one act play. Yes, you read that right- a play. No sets, no props, just two actors having a dialogue.

Then in late 2004, I had a new vision – a 10 minute HD art film. It would be an expanded version of the dialogue with images on-screen. I actually shot two different versions of this but ran into problems with logistics, actor life problems etc. By early 2006 I finally had footage shot. But I was underwhelmed, it just didn’t quite work the way I wanted it to.

But then two things happened – one day in my car I was to while listening to Ferry Corsten’s remix of “Adagio for Strings” performed by William Orbit and a whole new vision of the film sprang into my head.

Then I ran into James Hyder of LF Examiner later in 2006 by chance – he put the IMAX bug in my ear and continued to help me think about the possibilities of the giant screen.

Over the next 18 months I wrote numerous drafts – first trying to keep the original dialogue scenes in the film but finally, those left, replaced by voice-over narration. Then finally those were dumped when I figured out how to drop dialogue and narration. In a cool way, this has led back to original spirit of the film in a much more powerful visual way that will rock on the giant screen.

So look for some weird, fun, cool video tests soon…

The reason it’s irrelevant is very easy to answer – the film is made using primarily Adobe Photoshop and After Effects – which are functionally identical on both Mac and Windows. What people are really asking, I suspect, is “What kind of person are you?” – “Are you like me?”.

Apple has done a great marketing job of creating a brand identity that their users feel really great about identifying with. There is some “special” about Macs and somehow you can create something “better” using the same program on a Mac than other computer systems.

And if we understand the placebo effect, there is probably some truth about that, thus reinforcing the belief that it matters what computer operating system you use. And if you tap into the human ego’s need to strongly identify with groups, peers and external identities, we now end up with the silly concept of “Am I a Mac or PC?”

But that still leaves me looking at the person who is usually eagerly awaiting me response. Whatever I say invariably disappoints. If I respond about Photoshop or After Effects, their interest level drops instantly. If I say I’m primarily using the Windows platform it can literally end the conversation.

And if they ask “Why?’, then things get difficult. Because the truth is that it would be much more difficult to make this film using Macs because it would cost a lot more. Those that dig around the website will discover the film is being created on home-built computers and servers, many built of scrap parts from other machines. This literally reduces the cost of the film by almost 2/3rds over using store-bought machines and storage systems.

If you want to build your own computers easily, you have to look primarily to Windows or Linux operating systems as Apple closed this market over a decade ago. A few enterprising users have semi-illegally created Hackintosh’s but they are difficult to tweak, overclock and easily maintain over a couple of years as your primary, heavily used machines.

And there’s more. The processes used to create motion using real photographs requires pushing Adobe Photoshop and After Effects beyond their limits. Which means a 64-bit operating system and software, when possible. Currently, Windows XP 64-bit is the fastest and most stable way to do this. This is all currently changing but for the last 3  years, this has been true.

Finally, I like building computers. It’s fun, cheap, creative and practical and I’ve been doing it for many years. But the real bottom line is the hardware and software are simply tools, not creative elements in themselves.

One of my pet peeves about the whole “Mac or PC?” is that the question is long out of date. Apples are now PCs in that they both use the same computer processors, motherboards. In fact all the same hardware that Windows, Linux and other Intel based machines use. The only difference is the operating system, so the question should be “Mac or Windows?” or better yet “What operating system do you use?”

But that’s not really what people  are asking. So my real answer to the question of “Am I a Mac or am I PC” is “Neither, I’m Stephen, nice to meet you”.