[Capital Magazine is Germany’s main business magazine]
- Dances
- Fights
- Runs away with Wolves
The former Wall Street Analyst, Alexis Kirke, wants to save Hollywood. With films the plot of which changes according to the mood of the spectators.
Mr Kirke, despite the global crisis, billions are still earned in Hollywood. Why should the film industry wait for your revolution?
ALEXIS KIRKE: All big studios live from their so called tent-pole films only. These films are blockbusters which support all less successful films from these studios – like a tent pole. One out of five films flops.
What is the problem?
Well, the problem is: there is only one try. Enormous sums of money are invested into one film and when it is made, then it is made, and it must become successful all over the world. In reality, it is rather unusual for one identical product to become successful in all culture communities. There are test film presentations of course…however, after it is launched, it is not possible to change anything. So far, it has not been possible to adapt the product to the market anymore, as it is usual with other products. If it was possible to reduce this flop rate from 1:5 to 1:3, it would be a great success.
What is your solution?
I am not an expert in film economy. I am an artist and I work with the concept of the so called emotional optimization: It means that you offer that version of a product during the product consumption which is the most suitable for the emotional condition of the audience. I have tried implementing this in my film called „Many Worlds“.
How did it work?
There are four possible plots, a central decision is taken twice during the film presentation. Some people from the audience are connected to wires, and biosensors collect data like their pulse or brain impulses during the cinema presentation. Based on the measurement results, relatively exact conclusions can be made regarding the emotional condition of the audience. If the conclusion is – the people are bored, the more dramatic story is selected. If the people are too excited, the more relaxing version is automatically chosen to be continued.
A female student makes a bizarre experiment in the film in which she can die. Why this plot?
Well, my intention was to present one of the main ideas of the quantum physics. To put it in a very simple way: If an experiment takes place where quantum mechanical phenomena are concerned – like the decay of atoms – then the fact that the experiment is watched influences its outcome.
The same happens with your film…
Yes, exactly. I wanted to reflect this quantum mechanical idea in an artistic way. Both in the story as well as in the fact that the audience watches the film and influences it by watching it.
An emotionally optimized product can be produced in this way…
Yes, a product which is tailor made for the consumers. All this happens unconsciously, without noticing it by the audience. What they watch is a continuous and coherent film – however, it is the film which appeals to them most.
What impact could this concept have?
Recently, I have read a book about Industrial Light & Magic, the George Lucas production company. It is about the relation of new technologies, aesthetics and the film industry. I recognized that what I have started as a personal artistic experiment will inevitably be used in the film industry at some point in the future.
It´s not a very humble ambition. So far, your film has been presented at one small-scale art happening only.
Well, it is not so much about the fact that I have invented something new, you see. It is more important that the technical development goes this direction. The technologies have had an enormous impact on films during the past 20 years. The stars who we hail during Oscar awards spend most of their shooting time in blue rooms, they are connected to plastic wires and they run in treadmills. The rest of the pictures is added per computers. The film industry is now in a technical transition – and I find it unavoidable for the films to adapt to the audience at some point in the future.
However, isn´t it incredibly expensive? It would be necessary to write more film scripts and shoot much more film sequences for one film, wouldn´t it?
Very often, I have a feeling that those alternative scenes that you can find on DVDs and Blu-Rays are not simply just film rejects or waste – but that the film directors made them deliberately. If there were technical solutions for making own good films from this material which are tailored for special target groups, why shouldn´t this happen? However, there are more moderate possibilities as well.
Like?
One possibility would be not to make the „emotional optimized“ version sooner than a range of test presentations had been organized – and than diverse alternatives had been shot. At the beginning, it would be possible to adapt the music, the colours, the saturation and the editing rate – either individually, for a specific audience in the movie theatre, or for bigger target groups or even to adapt it for diverse cultures or countries.
You mean a version for India where the actors dance a lot, one German version with techno-music, one version full of emotions for Italy?
Clearly, this would cost a lot of money. But to shoot alternative sequences and to put them to Blue-Ray costs money too. And the flops are the most expensive! One could also make a research project
and develop reactive models – first of all to find out how the specific film can raise excitement and emotional engagement. Of course, it would be necessary to collect vast amount of data first. And we are talking about cultural products first. But the concept – to have products which interact with the user – could be obviously used in many other areas.
In which areas?
Imagine a page on which texts are offered: journalistic features, scientific articles or economic dossiers. It would be possible to create an „emotional profile“ of the respective user who logged in based on the click rate and reading time. Now, it would be possible to offer an article in different versions – always optimized for the user. A simple version for more casual readers who are easily distractible, a deeper version for the professionals.
Here, it is more about intellectual competences.
Another example: Modern mobile phones can theoretically make conclusions about how their user is stressed. How much I nervously touch the keypad, how wildly I shake the phone, what is my body temperature, what is my pulse… A software could then adjust my phone directly to my emotional condition and offer perhaps a simplified operation mode, if it notices that I am overstrained.
However, regarding your own area, the art, there is a question whether an emotionally optimized film is also necessarily the best one. There are many films that we enjoy during watching less, because they are too boring or too complicated, but afterwards we find them fantastic.
Of course. For example I am a great fan of the series called “Game of Thrones” which is often so brutal that it is not pleasant to watch it. So the viewer feels bad during watching it, but afterwards he or she may say: how wonderful it was! The computer science experts call this the delayed reward function. But also this could be processed – one could look at how the user exchanges his experience in social networks after seeing the film.
The mood management is a big topic right now. A lot of money is earned with antidepressants and performance-enhancing products. Isn´t the emotional optimization one of such means? Must the art be really “in”?
I am not a fan of the wide-spread use of antidepressants at all. However, one should not go too far: The art is the art. And the art must be successful art. A work of art which people don´t like has no impact. The concept of the emotional optimization just offers the possibility to better calculate the reactions of the audience. It has nothing to do with cheating. Our ancestors did not cheat either when constructing the first drums and having not just played with stones anymore. The Renaissance artists did not cheat either when experimenting with the perspective or when mixing more pigments to their colours.
So you just want to give the artists a new instrument to their hands, don´t you?
Absolutely. It is up to them afterwards whether they make something good out of it.
ALEXIS KIRKE
The mathematician and artificial intelligence expert, Alexis Kirke, worked as a programmer and analyst in the Wall Street. Today, he works as a musician, artist and a research fellow at the Plymouth University. Besides other things, he wrote an opera in which the brokers sing the stock exchange quotations to each other. His last art work: a film the plot of which is influenced by the brain impulses of the audience.
“The Renaissance artists did not cheat either when experimenting with the perspective.“