Yesterday, this clip from BBC News popped up on Twitter, in which a small child appears to materialize in the background of a woman-on-the-street interview.
If you watch the woman’s face at the same time the boy appears, you can see her expression morph into a smile.
This technique is known as a Morph Cut, a feature added to Adobe Premiere Pro in 2015, intended to smooth transitions in interview footage, removing unwanted pauses, stutters, and filler words (“like,” “um,” and “uh”) without hard splices and cuts.
The results, when used appropriately in interview footage without a changing background, can be nearly seamless.
It’s likely that BBC News used a morph cut in the clip above to tighten up the interview without changing its meaning. But it’s also ripe for abuse and fully capable of altering the meaning of an interview, and in many cases, undetectable.
I’ve known radio interviews were edited like this for years, but the BBC News clip is the first time I’ve seen the technique used in a video interview… or is it?
How many times have you watched footage that was subtly modified using off-the-shelf software, and never knew? Would you ever notice? Would you care?
As a connoisseur of crappy movies about technology, I’m a fan of Arcade, the 1993 B-movie where a bunch of kids get trapped inside a Lawnmower Man-esque virtual reality game by a rogue AI.
It’s very ’90s, with a cast including Seth Green, A.J. Langer from My So-Called Life, John de Lancie (aka “Q” from Star Trek: The Next Generation), and the kid who played “Ralphie” in A Christmas Story. It was written by the same screenwriter as Dark City and The Dark Knight trilogy, but you’d never know it.
This far-too-long trailer tells you everything you need to know.
Arcade’s vision of tomorrow is all black bodysuits and skateboards, spinning gyroscopes and gleaming silver skulls, as though it sprung to life from the bored margin doodles of some eight-grader’s math book. That aesthetic, combined with its tinny synth score and panicky PSAs about the corrupting influence of video games, lends Arcade a hint of techno-culture commentary, and thus it arguably holds the same appeal as that whole vaporwave craze that briefly fascinated the internet.
I’ve seen Arcade before, but what I haven’t seen is this bizarre copy I just stumbled across on YouTube, uploaded by an Italian movie distributor. (Their channel is a goldmine of obscure film.)
It was clearly unauthorized for distribution, with “Not for Commercial Use” and a large blurred watermark throughout.
But most notably, it’s missing all music and sound effects, with only the dialogue. This must be some sort of workprint or pre-release screener, never intended to be seen before, but I’m so glad it exists.
Without a score or sound effects, every scene becomes pure cringe, bordering on the surreal, like those Silent Music Video remixes. Dubbed-in dialogue becomes incredibly obvious without other ambient audio in the mix, and awkward silences are everywhere.
The best/worst scenes in this version are with the evil AI, a character creatively named “Arcade,” in the game also named “Arcade.” Here are three example scenes.
It’s strange seeing a version of a movie that was never meant to be seen, and I can safely say I’ve never seen anything like it. The entire workprint is here — enjoy it if you can. (Content Warning: The film has subplots involving child abuse and a parent’s suicide.)
In October, Boss Fight Books published the latest in their eponymous series of books dedicated to video games, this one covering the creation and impact of Katamari Damacy.
The author, L. E. Hall, is a friend and local game designer, the creator of Portland’s first escape room and recently opened The Wandmaker’s House, an immersive photo and game pop-up that I loved. I was lucky enough to follow the development of the book from its announcement in 2016, to its printing and publishing in October.
I first heard about Katamari in February 2004 before its release in Japan, and was mega-hyped to seek it out at E3 in 2004, four months before its U.S. release. When I saw that lone cabinet tucked into the back of Namco’s booth, I fell in love instantly and named it Best of Show.
But having finished the book, it’s remarkable that Katamari got made at all.
Namco was creator Keita Takahashi’s first job in the game industry, and he very nearly wasn’t hired. In Hall’s book, Takahashi talked about how he was openly critical of Namco’s existing games, and said so during the interview process. The artists loved him, but the executives weren’t convinced.
“Actually, I found out the funny truth after I joined Namco, from an HR guy who I got along with,” Takahashi said. “I failed the last job interview for sure. Sounds like some executives didn’t like me. But one of the interviewers from the artist interview persuaded an executive who was his boss to hire me. So I asked him, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You looked very unique, and I felt there was potential to make something fun with you.’”
When he came up with the concept for Katamari, his boss was on board, but there was no clear path for the art departmenrt to pitch games.
“I talked with [Mitsutoshi] Ozaki-san, my boss, about how we should move this idea forward to an actual internal production,” Takahashi said. “Usually game ideas were proposed from the game design department at Namco, but we both worked in the art department. Also, technically Ozaki-san was not my actual boss at that time. He had moved to another department, so I had to talk to my current boss about my idea first—but he was not a manager of game designers, he was a manager of artists. He seemed to not have a bad impression of my idea, but he couldn’t make a decision about the game itself.”
The game ended up getting made through Namco Digital Hollywood Game Lab, a “six-month course designed to help developers learn skills necessary for creating games for the PlayStation 2.”
Each successive prototype built excitement internally, but Takahashi had to continually fight for his singular vision, finally securing a budget to make the game.
Even after its Japanese release, Namco wasn’t planning an English translation or American release until Takahashi was asked to appear at the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at GDC 2003.
Hall writes:
Darius Kazemi was in that audience that day. He wrote that “the feeling in that room when Keita showed Katamari was just electric. It was amazing to see all these game developers, literally the best of the best in the world, in complete awe of this weird little game. At the end of the presentation, when he said there were no plans to port it to the US market, everyone was just devastated.” As Takahashi and the fans would soon learn, the excitement generated by that presentation was enough to move mountains.
The buzz from that appearance led to Namco bringing Katamari and its creator to E3 in 2004, where I played it for the first time. I bought it on its U.S. release day on September 22, 2004, and like so many other people, was delighted by a game that’s truly unique.
Through interviews and original research, Hall’s book explores the creation of the game and how its concept, visual design, gameplay, characters, and cult soundtrack all evolved. I particularly loved the sections on how Portland-based software developer Panic came to be the exclusive producer of Katamari merchandise, and the cultural context behind the King of All Cosmos’ transgression of traditionally masculine gender roles.
If you’re a fan of the original Katamari Damacy, this is a very good month for you. In addition to Hall’s book — which I wholeheartedly recommend buying direct or through Powell’s or Amazon — the original game was just re-released as Katamari Damacy REROLL for the Switch and PC, remastered in HD for the first time.
And while Panic’s no longer selling shirts, there’s a bunch of new Katamari merchandise newly available through Fangamer, including this double LP of the soundtrack on vinyl.
Winnipeg-based artist and designer Rocky Bergen makes detailed papercraft of vintage computers, game systems, and electronics that you can print out, cut, and fold for yourself.
The most elaborate are his Commodore 64 models — complete with 1701 monitor, 1541 disk drive, VicModem, MPS 801 Printer. Upgrade it with some flashy cracktro screens and a couple bootleg floppies.
On my last day at Fuzzco, in the first week of January, I played a little prank that I completely forgot about, and it took an entire year to pay off.
Before walking out the door, I set the office Sonos on repeat, playing one song endlessly overnight, Smash Mouth’s “All Star.” And because I’d already disconnected my Spotify account, I used someone else’s, the Spotify account of my friend, Eric R. Mortensen, the talented designer behind 10×18.
Cut to 11 months later.
Today, Spotify released Wrapped 2018, their annual look back at your top songs and artists over the past year. I completely forgot about the prank, but my Fuzzco friend Kate reminded me, so I checked in with Eric.
Then he emailed me this screenshot. “I thought Shrek hacked my Spotify.”
