A personal view on life in various media by Bouke Mekel. It serves as an open online research laboratory for concepts for autonomous and commissioned projects by WHIRL Productions.
CatRobau who makes “videos about AI upscaling, machine learning, and graphics mods” has made stop motion animations from the past look smoother by producing in-between frames (video frame interpolation) using artificial intelligence: this increases the amount of frames per second (FPS). He uses Flowframes with RIFE to “interpolate the original frame rate from 23.98 FPS to 191.74 FPS and then used FFMPEG to reduce that back to 60 FPS”. The higher frame rates work well with certain animations, of animals that are supposed to look alive, like ‘King Kong’ (1933).
But when magic is involved (like with the re-animation of skeletons in ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ (1963)) a more jerky artificial-looking animation style – the intended effect in the original film – is good as it is, was masterfully done and I think needs no further smoothening.
Trevor Noah: When did you get to the place where you were like: oh, I gotta break out a little bit out of what everyone thinks I am and then flex a little more of who I am?
Jim Carrey: I think the moment of shifting was somewhere around when I was playing Andy Kaufman, and I got so deeply into that character I kinda lost myself as Andy and Tony and afterwards I found myself really struggling to remember again who Jim Carrey was, what his political beliefs are, what his choices are and his esthetics. And it was really awakening to me, it gave me a point of view into the frailty of persona. If I can play someone else’s persona and get lost in it, and assume it, then who’s Jim Carrey, who is that guy?
Life becomes a kind of a two-step thing at that point where you start to go: Okay, this is a character I play with, I want it to represent itself right, I want it to be a good avatar. As you can see I have my tree where my avatar lives in, a picture of it right here and what’s that avatar going to do in this world, how is he gonna represent, what’s he gonna represent? Is he gonna represent love? Is he gonna represent desperation and greed? Is he gonna represent compromise? So those are the choices I’m making for that avatar every day, in everything I do.
And then there’s the absolute truth, which is: there’s nothing that I’m not, there’s nothing I can lose, there’s no family I don’t belong to, there’s no one suffering that isn’t a part of me, there’s no one excelling that isn’t a part of me. It goes beyond that even, it goes beyond this planet in my mind. Those moments of freedom are moments when you connect with the everything, which is what we really truly are.
We’re never satisfied, no matter how we build our characters, no matter how tough and Teflon this thing we create is. We’re never satisfied, because it’s too small. No matter how big this Elvis in us gets, it’s too small to represent who you are. It can’t possibly represent who you are. So I laugh when people say: why don’t you just be funny? And I go, funny? Let me find, hold on. It’s under this fingernail here. It’s a part of this wonderful wholeness. It’s there for anybody, any time. Heaven is as close as your own hands and feet.
Reimagining the reality-TV series Big Brother (1999) in times of self-isolation during the Coronavirus pandemic (2019-2020). One of the prominent housemates in the Dutch Big Brother house was Ruud Bénard, who also wrote a book about his guiding philosophy during his camera-monitored stay without privacy: “Laat je niet gek maken” (Don’t get carried away). As a sport masseur he knew about the importance of human contact while staying in home isolation (“Blijf thuis” – Stay home), being locked down, 24-7, with the same group of people, which came down to his other catchphrase “Effe knuffelen” (Let’s cuddle) (its opposite being “Effe niet knuffelen” (Let’s no cuddle)).
References Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote, Crunchy Frog and Conrad Poohs and his Dancing Teeth, who here – in my imagination – performs as a snake oil salesman.
(Cut out of finder Windows)
