American Cinematographer - April 1995 - 41

continued from page

Top: The Agent

37

ConArtist. "The tool is

Stories

attempt¬

structural

ing to capture what the writer

environment.

knows/' said Brooks. "The writer

Bottom: Kevin

is

Brooks, of the

web of clips.

Interactive

slowly building a very complex
It's like the L. A. free¬
way system; it's a complex web

Cinema Group,
designed Agent

of streets and interconnections
and the connections are of differ¬
ent

Stories.

types."

Brooks sees Agent Sto¬
following the natural cre¬
ative process of the way films are
conceived. "The process of writ¬
ing is naturally non-linear," he
ries

as

said. "What I want to do is make
characters through linkages of
various kinds. The system navi¬

gates through the database of
these linkages
and creates a
linear story."
Once the

and I'd like it to be

story.' Bob

goes

a

12-minute

through the

ma¬

terial, assembles the movie and
then shows it."

story creation

is
complete,
Agent Stories
process

Thinkies
Another

new

kind of

into its

story is the "Thinkie," a form that

presentation
stage. It's here

drops the viewer into a non-lin¬
ear, thought-provoking environ¬
ment. The idea here, says Thinkie
creator Lee Morgenroth, is to lure
audiences into story experiences
that force new ways of thinking.
The key to making the Thinkie
work is interactivity.

moves

that filmmak¬

ing "styles"
come into play
and the soft¬

"agents"
charge.

ware

take

"The software

agents

supporting points of view. He

have

styles of behavior for what
they do in every situation," said

will then add that in the sequence
and choose everything accord-

Brooks. "That's how the agent
chooses a clip and how it navi¬

ingly.

gates through the database."
So far, in his prototype
system, Brooks has created five
agents. Their names are Bob,
Carol, Ted, Alice and Isadora.
They each have a different story¬

hand, is

"Carol, on the other
a one-sided story agent.

She will choose

and then try to

point, counterpoint agent. He

told.

is

agents

chooses a main point of view,"
said Brooks. "Bob is the kind of

invalidate oppos¬

like that used in political com¬
mercials or propaganda. Ted is a
will be very

"Each of the

point of view

ing points of view. Her style is

telling style and each will deter¬
mine
in real time, on the fly -
how the same story might be
-

a

fair."

Yes, Brooks admits, there
a
strong temptation to create
agents modeled after great film
directors. Like a Hitchcock agent
or a Welles agent. But, he said,

agent who can't decide what to
put in the story except to support

"it's not there

opinions with other opinions.
Bob will try to make a very sup¬
portive story. He will pick a main
point of view and then look for

Agent Stories, the viewer chooses
an
agent to tell the story. "You

yet."

In the final

come

say,

stage of

in, sit in front of the TV, and

'I'd like Bob to tell me a story

April 1995

"Conventional linear cin¬
is terrific at

relaying an emo¬
tional response to the audience,"
said Morgenroth, a masters stu¬
dent. "But one of the things that

ema

is really difficult to do in a linear
medium is to get your viewer to

actively think while experiencing
the story. With interactivity I can
let the viewer do some very inter¬
esting things.
"Currently cinema is
separated into two main expres¬
sive elements: image and sound,"
he continued. "If you go back in
history to when they first added
the sound track to the film, the
a new name for a
brief period. They were called
movies had

Talkies. Now we've added

interactivity,

an

entirely

new

medium for cinematic expres¬
sion. That's why they're called

Thinkies."

American

Cinematographer

39
American Cinematographer - April 1995

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