I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often.
DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.
Two days ago I watched Nanook of the North, a documentary about an Inuit man and his family. This isn’t a documentary in the conventional sense. This documentary dates back to 1922 when the Documentary film was a brand new genre. This is one of the first documentaries, if not the first. I read about it for years, until, when I was watching Northern Exposure I did a search and came across the documentary on Filmin.
Recently Netflix added a Browse by Language option which means that you can browse for content by original language. Yesterday I saw that I can browse for content in French, Italian, Polish,, Korean, German and many more languages. I could list more but that’s dull. Instead I want to focus on the opportunities it opens up. With YouTube, Apple Films and other platforms you can search for films but they are either in French, German or Italian in Switzerland and it’s hard to find content that is in its original language.
Today I went on a video walk with the DJI OSMO pocket three or whichever number it has and I took a series of frames. Before going for my daily walk I searched through the Vision Du Réel virtual Film Festival list of films and I found “The Bridge”. It’s available for all to watch during the festival. I didn’t watch it in full but from what I saw it’s a series of shots in the style of Dziga Vertov’s Man With the Movie Camera.
Last night I went to see Interdependence, an environmental film in eleven parts. It is a collection of short films that explore environmental themes around the topics of air, water, and earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSKBBztInug
When I watched one part it reminded me of Les Vacances de Mr Hulot, a french film from 1953. It looks at a dystopian vision of the future where people go to the zoo to see animals on screens and inflatable balloons serve as sea mammals.
Yesterday I went to see Arrest - screened at the Black Movie film festival. It’s an independent film festival taking place in Geneva at the moment. I’m a volunteer at the event and in exchange for standing at the door and checking tickets, I get to see any film that still has space.
The provisional title of this film was 1983 and because I walked in a few minutes into the film I missed the beginning.
Yesterday I went to Magnetic’s Geneva Premiere and I really enjoyed some segments of the film and found that others were less interesting. Keep in mind though, that this film is two hours long and that this increase and decrease in interest is normal. What made this screening special is that many of the people that we saw in the film were present at the event. Before the film started they were presented to us individually, said a few words and then one person won some skis and another won for tickets to a ski resort.
I like that I can watch days of television series and that I can’t spend 90 minutes watching films. Television series are about people, places and situations and the characters are realistic. In contrast films are superficial, shallow and too full of special effects for a story to be told. The cinema loses out because it is too superficial, too pretentious without offering something contrast at the end of the donated time.
There are some films we may not intentionaly go to see. Der Baader Meinhof-Komplex is one of them. The English title is The Baader Meinhof Complex. The film takes a look at the beginning of theRed Army Faction, in Germany. It is based on the book The “Baader-Meinhof Group” by Stefan Aust. For more information
Last night I was feeling good about how my dissertation was going so I got my shoes on and walked to the cinema, feeling good about what I had achieved in the day. I went from my dissertation being a collection of words on the computer to it being printed out for visual inspection. What I found as I looked through the thousands of words I have written is that I am quite happy with the way it’s going and thought that I’m going to meet the target date for the handing in earl, if everything goes well from here on.