Donebestdone: Long Distance v2

EXPLAINATION: Movies are arranged from short media clips in a pool stored on the internet. The media pool is selected by a participant, and a movie is composed strictly from the clips in the pool by a separate participant. After composition is complete, the movie is rendered, the pool is swapped out with new clips by yet another participant (The number of clips in the pool and their durations stay constant), and the arrangement is re-rendered, substituting the new clips for the old. Both movies are uploaded. The next participant (not the one that selected the pool) arranges a new video piece with the new pool, renders, a separate participant selects yet another pool, and the piece is re-rendered with the newer clips. The third arranger begins with that pool and so on...

The pool selector participates by choosing the video clips that will be incorporated into a new project, and also utilized to "remix" the last project that was completed. The arranger organizes, effects, and edits these clips into a composite whole. Their arrangement is subjected to new clips that they haven't yet seen, producing two movies, one with clips used for composition, and one with clips picked after the composition was completed.

Restrictions:

• All arrangements are one minute long.
• The pool selector can substitute as many or as few clips in the pool as they like.
• Any video software can be used, with the prerequisite that the video software can substitute new clips of the same name, type & length for old ones (usually by overwriting the old files that the project references with the new)
• There is a three-day deadline to compose and render.
• The pool selector has an alternate if needed.

With this project, the goal is to extend the influence we exert on one another across this virtual collaborative environment. Of course, when we are all in the studio together, it's very easy to discuss how we would like a piece to evolve, how we can come together to work towards that goal, and to debate and choose conflicting or alternate directions to explore, with all of us in for the ride. As we've moved apart geographically, and as our collaboration has moved from studio to the internet, it seems that the influence that we exert on one another has dwindled. We may share source material, and we may remix one another's work via Long Distance v1 (From here referred to as LDv1) techniques, but we are allowed (and, in a way, encouraged—if for the sake of speed and by way of deadline) to slip into habitual modes of producing media. The goal of Long Distance v2 is to re-establish these influential linkages into the virtual creation process by limiting individual choice, and extending the opportunities for others in the group to have choices which will shape the resultant videos. In this way the pieces are once again collectively shaped.

In order to do this, we're displacing some of the choices that the video arranger had reserved in LDv1—the ability to select what clips would become source material, the ability to transform these clips unprohibitively, and the ability to compose and render an audio-visual result that would be the finished state of their composition.

In LDv1, the sole limitation on the arranger's source material was that it sampled the previous collaborator's video. How long these clips were and what was done to process these clips was unregulated. With LDv2 we have another individual besides the arranger, the "pool selector", who will choose the clips to be used in the arrangement. The pool consists of files of a variety of lengths, all under three seconds.

Note that the pool selector has the ability to emulate the formal (rhythmic, melodic, coloration, &tc.) qualities of previous vido clips, which may lead to 'remix' type substitutions. You can also disregard or play against these formal qualities and make substitutions with novel expressive characteristics. In this way the pool selector influences both the content and form of the remixed piece. This too can only be done to the extent that the arranger allows for it. For example, if a clip is rhythmic and the arranger uses that clip as-is, the formal qualities that the rhythm, etc. of the clip can be substituted with another form by the pool selector. Likewise, if the clip was sliced up into such small sub-clips that the original form of the clip is obliterated, formal changes to new clips may not change the form of the arrangement.

One dilemma I've had with the scheduling of this piece is that there's not an opportunity for the pool-selector to see the piece that they're remixing before they select the new clips -- They are choosing clips arbitrarily or based on their best guess as to what the arranger might have done with them. Though we could extend the deadlines so that the pool selector chooses clips after they've seen the finished composition, it adds an additional delay into the video-production circuit. Of course, we are already generating twice the number of videos in the same amount of time compared to LDv1.

[mike] damn dude, we gotta apply for some fucking art grants because you can write a thesis like a mothafuckaaaa. that is some fucking USC grad school shit that would make the film profs jerk off while crying...

Good that you mention that. Did you take anything from this? Was it valuable? Have anything to share? Techniques? Thoughts?