Making Real Worlds un
Entertainment Studio 2019-20 | UCLA AUD Natasha Sandmeier & Nathan Su 1
A fleeting gif, a 15 second story, an IG post, a news broadcast, a still-life, a trailer, a short, a virtual, augmented or mixed reality experience, a product launch, a live performance, an endless journey-based video game, a feature film, a tweet & a novel. The formats may differ, but all the content is shaped by an element of truth and an element of fiction.
STRANGER THAN FICTION
Course Objectives
Today's media & entertainment landscape spans a breadth of form and content never before seen, and surely set to expand into formats we can't even yet imagine. What it means to create 'entertainment' is a shifting concept that evolves as much as the media that delivers it. Until recent years, news didn't belong to the entertainment category and reality TV didn't even exist. All forms of media are now crossing over into the entertainment sector as creators capitalize on these burgeoning modes of storytelling. The one constant that connects the various media and our obsessions with them together is story. As far as we know, the capacity to tell stories is a purely human trait. Over the course of millennia, humans developed the need and desire to describe relationships, events and the world as a means of shaping and defining our cultural production. Following relative stability for centuries, the means by which we tell these stories today is in
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CTRL - P : This project was a story that told of the mistakes, malfunctions architects face every day in the design and production of architecture. Medium: Short film and 1:1 fictional image of a studio space. Ana Antoni & Andrea Velasco, Sandmeier Studio 2019
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massive flux as new technologies and forms of delivery transform how we consume and interact with stories as we fold them into our own narratives. A (possibly unexpected) result is that, today, we are often unable to distinguish fact from fiction. AI technologies are producing fake images of people that are unshakably real (thispersondoesnotexist. com) and children favour YouTube over television, where videos are often delivered as fact, so much so that young people are at risk of developing a skewed understanding of the ‘real’ world. The Broadcast news industry is scrambling to maintain legitimacy and relevance in a media environment flooded with VNR’s (fake TV news – usually corporate sponsored). The bizarre twist here is that these VNR’s are often knowingly aired on what we think of as legitimate news programs. Confirming that the line between fact and fantasy has well and truly been obliterated. The Entertainment Studio will embrace this as our context as we create and shape contemporary narratives exploring the full range of media and technologies that we use to deliver them. A question we will ask ourselves throughout the year, is what agency the architect specifically can have within this context. How can we capitalize on our expertise in understanding space and form, and use that to inform how we negotiate these real and/or fantastical environments? Our films and narratives will transgress the authentic with the subjective, the real with the fictional to create a series of uncanny stories for our uncanny times. Through Leviathon's Eyes : The film is an optimistic, speculative glimpse into a near-future augmented world where reality is constructed collaboratively; redefining the city as a palimsest of perceptions more than agglomeration of built form. Nathan Su, 2017
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THE YEAR AHEAD The program is a year-long program of study that is structured around 3 key concepts of design and production that align with the program’s 3 quarters. Concept & World The first quarter will be dedicated to the framing of a concept alongside the design of its environment. You will establish your story and the world within which it sits. Emphasis will be placed on developing and fleshing out storylines alongside determining the look and environment of crucial scenes to be elaborated throughout the academic year. Tech & Innovation In the second quarter you will be asked to research and develop a technical issue that your narrative addresses. Whether ultraanalog, or at the leading edge of high-tech, you will be asked to incorporate the tech of your world into the narrative of your 6
The Artifactory: Conceived as an infinate pan, the film this image is excerpted from moves us through countless rooms as it constructs narratives connecting utterly disparate worlds. Adam Wells & Gokay Sapan, Sandmeier Studio 2019
realfiction. You will demonstrate an expertise with the chosen tech in order to give credence to and legitimize your fiction. This tech might address XR developments, neural networks, game design, interfaces, mocap, or hand-held camera work, or an entirely realfiction technology, to name a few possibilities. Production & Audience The third quarter will see the narrative and film fleshed out and developed in its final form, alongside a plan for delivering it to its ultimate audience. We will push for hyper-real definition and seamless compositing of digital assets into filmed space. The film will have to go through an entertainment-version of the Turing test*, ie, how real is your fiction? Teams will be asked to identify and apply to at least 3 film festivals and/or competitions following completion of the program. 7
*The Turing Test assesses a machine’s ability to exhibit behaviour indistinguishable from human behaviour. Our test will examine if the digital realm tricks the eye into thinking it is real.
‘I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic. ‘ - Andy Warhol
LA STORY PROJECT 1 Sept 30 - Nov 4 Los Angeles is a city that perpetually walks a tightrope between the authentic and the artificial – it’s hard to know what, if anything, is ever real. Backdrops, pink walls, angel wings, sunsets, freeways and palm trees define the visuals of the city, but never reveal the narratives that sit beneath the surface of visual perfection. What is real and what is fake, in LA, is a difficult question to even ask, much less answer. We live in a world entirely dominated by the production, proliferation and consumption of images, whether still, moving or overlaid. Image literacy is, arguably, one of the most crucial skills we need to develop in order to go about our daily lives, distinguishing the real from the fake. Conversely, one could argue that if our future will be defined by the merging of the real and the fictional, the capacity to distinguish one from the other will soon be utterly irrelevant. This project asks that you take this moment and context as your point of departure and walk a tightrope between the real and the artificial in order to identify and design where you sit within the spectrum of realities. As residents of this city, we ask that you embed yourselves within the culture and urban context of the city in order to uncover a peculiar LA Story (an anecdote, a history, a character, a street corner, a moment, a technology, etc) and then appropriate 8
and transform it into your story. Students will be expected to research contemporary technologies and their effects on image production and consumption that include but are not limited to: hyperreal vfx, news media, neural networks, xr tech, mocumentaries, deepfake technology, film & TV, social media, to name a few. There is a long history of designers, architects and innovators who have worked through their agendas within the confines of a room before elaborating those concepts into larger scaled architectures, cities and worlds. We carry out our lives in arrangements of rooms, moving from room to room throughout our days, weeks and years as we negotiate objects, people, and space via the portals that connect us to the world beyond; the doors, windows, phone/internet/electricity/media cables, vents, and pipes. Your site is a room in Los Angeles. The room has a ratio of 16:9:10 (length to height to depth). It has physical constraints, but limitless creative opportunities. DELIVERABLES: A 2-minute film, an LA Story. A mixed reality interactive experience/app that exploits the technology’s capacity to overlay narrative on narrative, space on space. A large 80” wide x 45” high printed and mounted image of a crucial scene in your film. 250-word presentation text. A 50-page (minimum) book documenting the production of and final qualities of your film. Include research materials, site documentation, design of the room, realfiction technologies, and your audience. NOTABLE ROOMS IN FILM & TV Paper Street house kitchen (Fight Club), tank (Finding Nemo), interrogation room (12 Monkeys), living room (The Conversation), bathroom (Russian Doll), Jeff Jefferies’ room (Rear Window), Living Room (Le Mépris), cockpit of Millennium Falcon, (Star Wars), any room in any scene (Pulp Fiction), bedroom (2001: A Space Odyssey), living room (The Simpsons), house interiors (The Royal Tenenbaums), war room (Dr Strangelove), green hotel room (The Shining), Rose Window Attic (The OA), and many more. 9
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CALIFORNICATION: A scene from a short 1 minute film that uses props to deliver iconic scenes from LA narratives. Here, a fictional warehouse and archive of LA's stories. Blake Minster & Deepak Agrawal, Sandmeier Studio 2018
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PROJECT APOLLO: Scene from a 1-minute film from a 5-week workshop exploring LA narratives. Sunsets, a crucial LA feature, are here revealed to be the workings of a megalomaniacal architect who built a lab to engineer perpetually beautiful sunsets. Jui-Cheng Hung, Linzi Ai and Priyanka Ramjani, Sandmeier Studio 2018
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STRANGER THAN FICTION
FROM THE REAL TO THE IMAGINARY AND BACK AGAIN PROJECT 2 Nov 6 – June 7
The latter half of the 1st quarter will launch the introduction of the major project of the studio, Stranger Than Fiction, which will carry through to the end of academic year. Students will identify a space within the realfiction media context as discussed throughout this brief and identified in the LA Story project, and develop a world, visual language and storyline to interrogate, question and challenge the chosen topic. The year-long project will culminate with a 10-minute film, a book, a movie poster, a 50 second movie trailer, a tech prototype, an XR experience & app, and marketing plan. In this first phase (Nov-Dec), we will focus development of the thesis, the key concept(s) and the worldbuilding opportunities within the film. This will be undertaken with a film treatment, look development and storyboarding. DEC 9, 2019 DELIVERABLES | END OF TERM REVIEW 1. Film Treatment (300 words min) Title Logline Concept & Genre
Character Introduction (buildings, people, or objects) Opening Scene Plot outline and Structure | Acts 1,2,3, ? Closing Scene
2. Storyboard & Look Development What is a storyboard for? It allows you to plan for shots, plan scenography, plan character interactions, and plan out your narrative through a visual medium. No part of this storyboard will be hand-drawn. Use the storyboard to test render environments and lighting alongside setting up camera shots and scenography. 3. Scene Demo (5-15 seconds) Draft with environment, movement, camera and lighting of a single scene. 14
After Days: Inspired by the infamous smog event from 1943 in LA, we see the lab of a scientist desperate to reverse the side effects of the toxic air. Siyu Zheng and HouSheng Wang, Sandmeier Studio 2018
Storytelling is the greatest technology that humans have ever created. Jon Westenberg A QUICK LOOK AHEAD TO 2020 PART 2 – Jan - March Filming & Animation, Media Technology, Prototyping, Technical partners. PART 3 – April - June Production, Hyperrealism, Color Correction, Final Editing, Entertainment Turing Test. 15
‘Filmmaking is a miracle of collaboration.’ -James McAvoy
INSIGHT | ON SITE The Entertainment Studio is committed to exposing students to the diverse ways in which architects crossover into the worlds of media & entertainment. Our location in Culver City allows us to take advantage of the proximity to a slew of vfx and media studios within blocks of the IDEAS campus alongside the huge range of designers and filmmakers across Los Angeles. The Insight/OnSite program is a platform to develop enhanced engagement within the discipline and community through which we will host talks and workshops at IDEAS by experts in the field of filmmaking, vfx artists, production design and more. Entertainment is a field that demands conversation and engagement as a means to learn, craft and disseminate stories. The studio and your workspace are amazing creative environments to experiment within, and the realities of media production, dissemination and consumption require us all to stay at the front edge of that space with leading industry collaborators. Visits to film studios, VFX, media companies, architecture practices will be integral aspects of the program.
AFTER DAYS : a scene from an abandoned laboratory. Siyu Zheng and HouSheng Wang, Sandmeier Studio 2018
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DESIGNING AUDIENCES A fundamental goal of the Entertainment Studio is to build new, unexpected kinds of architectural worlds. The studio has a goal as well to build the audiences that will inhabit these worlds. In the hyper-mediated environment of the 21st century, architects need to look beyond their normal audience (of other architects) to embrace a larger world now living within the stories and images of our time. To be an architect today is to be an individual able to imagine as well as arrange connections – whether in the literal joints and materials of a physical object’s making, of the subtler and experiential moments of the people, spaces and events architecture has always been made from. That act of imagination, visualization, and communication lies at the center of this studio’s teaching, learning and research. Without an audience, the stories you tell will disappear inside a cultural vacuum. The Entertainment Studio requires that students consider their audiences alongside the techniques, outlets and pipelines needed to deliver their content to ensure the work has a lifespan beyond the academic calendar of the program. CONSIDER 1. What is your story? What are you trying to say with your images, film, experiences? 2. Who is your intended audience and how do you reach it? 3. Know your format and relevant forms of delivery / distribution. 4. Identify your media outlet(s). 5. How do you deliver your media and ensure visibility? 6. Identify 3 film festivals (minimum) or other kinds of competitions and exhibitions and submit your work upon graduation.
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WONDERWALL is a post sea-level rise narrative in a waterworld environment in which iconic architectures inhabit barges in the sea, detached from land. Emma Fraser, Sandmeier Studio 2016
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READING LIST & BIBLIOGRAPHY Apkin, Stephen, The Age of the Image: Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2013 Truby, John. The Aatomy of Story: 22 steps to becoming a master storyteller. New York, Faber and Faber, 2007 Mieville, China, The City & The City, London, Macmillon, 2009 Stephenson, Neil, Snow Crash. New York, Bantam Books, 1992 Ware, Chris, Building Stories, Pantheon, New York, 2012 Harari, Yuval N. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. [Toronto]: Signal, 2014. Allenby, B. and Sarewitz, D. The Techno-Human Condition. MIT Press, 2011 PARISER, E.. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You. London, Viking/Penguin Press, 2011. Mascelli, Joseph, The Five C’s of Cinematography, Silman-James Press, LA, 1965 Stump, David, Digital Cinematography, Focal Press, New York, 2014 Murch, Walter, In the Blink of an Eye, Silman-JHames Press, LA, 2001 Nvidia’s AI turns doodles into landscapes https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/19/18272602/ai-art-generation-gan-nvidiadoodle-landscapes Cheng, Ian, Emissaries Guide to Worlding, Serpentine Galleries, London, 2018. Vassallo, Jesus, Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture, Park Books, Zurich, 2016 (p167-189) McKee, Robert, Story, Methuen, London, 1999 Lupton, Ellen, Design Is Storytelling, Cooper Hewitt, New York, 2017 Kenworthy, Christopher, Master Shots (volumes 1,2,3), Michael Wise Productions, LA, 2011
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CALENDAR | FALL WEEK 0
Sep 23-27
Monday Quarter Begins
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
Sep 30-4
Monday Studio Kickoff & LA STORY project intro
Oct 7-11
Monday Studio
WEEK 3
Oct 14-18
Monday Studio
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Wednesday REALFICTIONS Intro Studio
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar
Thursday
Thursday
Thursday
Thursday
Friday LOTTERY DAY
Friday SEAMLESSNESS Intro Studio
Friday Seamlessness Seminar Studio
Friday Seamlessness Seminar
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 4
Oct 21-25
Monday Studio
Oct 28-1
Monday Studio
Nov 4-8
Monday
LA STORY | REVIEW
WARNER BROS STUDIO (TBC)
Nov 11-15
Monday Studio
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Thursday
Thursday
Thursday
Thursday
Friday Seamlessness Seminar WEEKEND WORKSHOP (TBC) with Jackson Lukas using Substance Painter
Friday Seamlessness Seminar Studio
Friday Seamlessness Seminar STRANGER THAN FICTION Part I Kickoff
Friday Seamlessness Seminar
WEEK 8
WEEK 9
WEEK 10
WEEK 11
Nov 18-22
Monday Studio
KILOGRAPH | Visit & Tour with Keely Colcleugh (TBC)
Nov 25-29
Monday Studio
Dec 2-6
Monday Studio
STRANGER THAN FICTION Saturday Symposium
Dec 9-13
Monday
END OF TERM REVIEW
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Wednesday Realfictions Seminar Studio
Wednesday
Thursday
Thursday
Thursday
Thursday
Friday Seamlessness Seminar
Friday Seamlessness Seminar Studio
Friday Seamlessness Seminar Studio
Friday
Events and dates are subject to change.
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COURSE REQUIREMENTS Students are required to complete all assignments. Assignments will be discussed in class on the day they are assigned, and they are also outlined in this brief under the heaading DELIVERABLES. University and/or Department attendance policies will be rigorously enforced. Students will be evaluated based on the level of engagement with topic of the course as well as the quality, thoughtfulness and depth of work and clarity of concept in relation to the set up throughout the year in lectures and discussions. It is a requirement of this course that all students submit course materials digitally by the end of quarter. Failure to do so will result in the loss of one letter grade. 1.) For Studio: All students are required to submit all final project materials. All images, model photographs, animations and videos should be provided. Film / video formats will be outlined by the teaching team. File naming convention is: entertainment201920_lastname_firstname_imagenumber.fileextension 2.) For Lectures and Seminars: All students must submit required materials in relevant file format. File naming convention is: entertainmenttechQ1_lastname_firstname_imagenumber.fileextension entertainmentresearchQ1_lastname_firstname_imagenumber.fileextension UCLA CAE (Center for Accessible Education) RECOMMENDATION: If you are already registered with the Center for Accessible Education (CAE), please request your Letter of Accommodation on the Student Portal. If you are seeking registration with the CAE, please submit your request for accommodations via the CAE website. Please note that the CAE does not send accommodations letters to instructors--you must request that I view the letter in the online Faculty Portal. Once you have requested your accommodations via the Student Portal, please notify me immediately so I can view your letter. Students with disabilities requiring academic accommodations should submit their request for accommodations as soon as possible, as it may take up to two weeks to review the request. For more information, please visit the CAE website (www.cae.ucla.edu), visit the CAE at A255 Murphy Hall, or contact us by phone at (310) 825-1501.
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REALFICTIONS A Guide to Unreality
Entertainment Studio Research Seminar 2019-20 | UCLA AUD Natasha Sandmeier
From Lil Miquela’s existential crisis to NVIDIA’s Deep Learning, the landscape of fiction as we knew it has already shifted into the basis for a new reality. REALFICTIONS: A GUIDE TO UNREALITY Sight is by far the most trusted of our sense, and the one that has the greatest impact on our conception of reality. Our eyes are the gateway to enormous volumes of data and information, and it is not accident that up to 85% of the brain is dedicated to processing and making sense out of the visual stimulation that flows in at an astonishing rate. – Stephen Apkon COURSE OBJECTIVES If you stare at your screen long enough, the scrolling images start to feel like they are inside your head instead of in front of your eyes. We learn to unpack the meaning of the world around us through visual input, far sooner that we decode it through spoken and written word. It’s through this visual landscape that we first begin to identify what we see, decode its meaning and ultimately determine its veracity or ‘truthiness’. But in a world being radically transformed by AI, and with our own students’ abilities to master the rendering of hyperreal images, what we used to understand as truth is undergoing massive upheaval. Our choices are these:
1. Invest time and technology to master the ability to determine what is real and what is not.
2. Acknowledge that being able to distinguish between what is real and what is not, misses the
point entirely.
The course objective is to define the contemporary landscape of realfiction and lay the groundwork for embracing that as our new reality. The Realfictions compendium and collective output of this studio will mark a new era of entirely mixed realities and will be the go-to book for all things, ideas, writings and references of the ambiguously real and fictional.
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Lil Miquela : with 1.6 Million followers on Instagram, Lil Miquela bares her soul and existential crises to her followers, fans and brands. She has 2 singles out, her boyfriend just found out she's a robot, and is a strong supporter of LGBTQ causes and Black Lives Matter. "The boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion." - Donna Haraway
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CALENDAR WEEK 1 | 10.02 INTRODUCTION Syllabus & Overview We are in a world inundated with images whether still, moving, overlaid or immersive. This session will introduce the various topics we will cover over the course of the seminar regarding the relationships we all have to the image and its various truths. Readings: Stephen Apkon, The Age of the Image; Redefining Literacy in a World of Screens, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York, 2013 WEEK 2 | 10.09 PHOTOGRAPHY Photography’s evolution from documentary tool to art. Bechers, Gürsky, Jeff Wall, Demand, Ruff, Crewdson, Philip Dujardin, Spencer Daly and more. Readings: Michael Fried, “Jean-Francois Chevrier on the ‘tableau form’” in Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, pg 143-190 Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic. WEEK 3 | 10.16 HYPERREALISM Richard Estes, Duane Hanson, CJ Hendry, the Lion King, IKEA and more. Readings: https://ascmag.com/articles/making-the-lion-king?fbclid=IwAR15XML9svCoJsIQKaPQN6ej0 vU9s2zlwu97ZGe7McmyyhW7B2iiN85Jszs https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/what-to-watch/invisible-special-effects-beauty-photoshop/ https://www.screenage.com.au/ikea-catalogue-3d-renderings/ Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic. WEEK 4 | 10.23 WORLDBUILDING Cntl-P, Artifactory, 6th street house, Bonobo and more. Readings: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/ https://hyperallergic.com/422841/the-entirely-fake-villages-erected-around-the-world/ https://www.wired.com/2013/08/fictional-koana-islands-maps/ https://futureofstorytelling.org/video/alex-mcdowell-world-building Watch: Westworld Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic. WEEK 5 | 10.30 MIDTERM LA Realfiction Submission: (2) 4 page chapters for the Realfictions seminar book on your chosen topic within the context of this seminar. A template will be provided. Presentation & Discussion WEEK 7 | 11.06 ARCHITECTURAL RENDERING | KILOGRAPH visit (TBC) The pencil, the render, the turntable. Readings: Marvin Heiferman, What Goes Up: Architectural Photography and Visual Culture in Image Building, Parrish Art Museum, New York, 2018, pg 14-40 Juhani Pallasmaa, Introduction: Lived Space in Architecture and Cinema in The Architecture of Image, 2008 pg 13-37 Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic.
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WEEK 6 | 11.13 BIG DATA & AI (and the glitch) LilMiquela, NVIDIA, The Matrix and more. Readings: https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/22/ai-weekly-nvidias-business-model-is-blurring-the-lines- of-reality/ https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/lil-miquela-digital-avatar-instagram-influencer.html https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/5/22/18635409/lil-miquela-brud-instagram-blawko- bermuda thispersondoesnotexist.com Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic. WEEK 9 | 11.20 SELFIE NATION Self-constructed realities: Cindy Sherman to Kim Kardashian, Kirby Jenner, Gilbert & George, Warhol, FB & IG culture and more. Readings: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/15/cindy-sherman-interview http://www.artnews.com/2012/02/14/the-cindy-sherman-effect/ Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic. WEEK 9 | 11.27 VR, AR, MR, XR The convergence of multiple realities. Readings: https://www.wired.com/story/mirrorworld-ar-next-big-tech-platform/ http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180112-why-selfies-can-be-a-force-for-social-good Submission: 150-200 word opinion text on the reading and topic. WEEK 10 | 12.04 YOUR REALFICTIONS Final Presentations & Discussion Submission: 2 new 4-page chapters for the Realfictions seminar book on your chosen topics within the context of this seminar and revised and reprinted Midterm chapters. Upload all work to GDrive / Dropbox. Link will be provided. COURSE REQUIREMENTS This course is required for the completion of the Entertainment Studio MS. Attendance at the lectures and seminars is compulsory. Students will be evaluated based on the level of engagement with topic of the course as well as the quality, thoughtfulness and depth of work and clarity of concept in relation to the set up throughout the year in lectures and discussions. It is a requirement of this course that all students submit course materials digitally by the end of quarter. Failure to do so will result in the loss of one letter grade. Students are expected to write weekly 150-200 word opinion pieces on the texts or on a subject directly related to that day’s seminar topic. The midterm and final submission requirements (student chapters of the Realfictions book) will be crucial components of the seminar. All students must submit the weekly texts and twice termly chapters as both printed booklets and pdf. File naming convention is: entertainmentresearchQ1_lastname_firstname_filenumber.pdf ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Students will be evaluated individually using the following percentages. Weekly readings and summaries 25% Class participation & discussion 25% Midterm submission 25% Final submission 25%
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VERISIMILITUDE REALITIES
S E AM LESS NE S S
ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
‘You are to draw not reality, but the appearance of reality!’ - William Morris Hunt
THE CONTEXT Verisimilitude refers to the ‘appearance of being real’. A verisimilitude is not defined by whether it is factual or ficticious, but simply by whether it seems realistic. Today, some realities are so absurd as to seem utterly impossible, and some fictions are so elaborately and skillfully concocted as to seem entirely plausible. In moving between romanticism and realism, painting and photography, images shifted their role in society from being aspirational and memorial to being documentary. For the french realists, authenticity was sought in images that accurately portrayed the unidealized ‘real’ lives of ordinary people in ordinary environments. In the same way, the advent of photography heralded the birth of documentary and the notion that media could be interpreted as evidence or fact. In this way, the photographic surreptitiously became synonymous with the ‘real’ and set a baseline in modernity for aesthetic truth.
The Tropical Island Resort in Berlin is a ‘Truman Show’ style water park in Krausnick Germany.
Since its inception, the authenticity of the photographic has been constantly questioned - from moon landing conspiracists to the almost undoubtedly staged early photos of the Crimean War by Roger Fenton. Today, technologies of image manipulation, GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) AI image generators and raytraced renderings mean that trust in photographic evidence is eroding even faster. However, the obsession with the photoreal continues to occupy artists and drive technological innovation - from the VFX houses remaking Disney’s cartoons in 4K hyperrealism to the architectural render firms on which starchitects rely to win their next competition. In an age of fake news, when digital media often wield more economic and cultural agency than the realities they represent, we must critically ask what the role of the photoreal is in a context of real-time rendering and mixed reality.
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
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ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
Roger Fenton’s early photograph of the Crimean War is famous for being one of the first staged documentary photos. It is likely he re-positioned the cannonballs for dramatic effect. (Valley of the Shadow of Death, Roger Fenton, 1855)
Graphics company NVIDIA used its new RTX GPU raytraced rendering to reproduce lunar landing photographs and debunk conspiracy theories by showing that the lighting is indeed physically accurate. Which is real? (Lunar Landing: NVIDIA RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing Demo, NVIDIA, 2018)
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
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ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
The above scene from composites 3D models into a filmed landscape using motion tracking, camera calibration and HDRI lighting. (Through Leviathan’s Eyes, Nathan Su, 2017)
COURSE OBJECTIVES To begin to question today’s photorealism, we will first learn all its tools and tricks, and deploy them shamelessly to interrogate its relationship to technology, to space, and to trust. Today, technologies for image production - photo editing softwares, PBR (physically based rendering) render engines, AI image generators, digital compositing suites and real-time game engines - are all engineered to create a condition of seamlessness. We worship photoshop gurus who can blend photographs without us being able to detect where one image ends and another starts. The ultimate praise for a VFX house is to be unable to differentiate the CGI from the live-action film. This desire to eliminate the seam stems from our increased mixing of media and overlaying of realities through the practice of compositing. In this course we will identify and then hide seams as we produce fictional spaces that are verisimilitudes. We will operate at the threshold of trust in digital images by learning to render and composite hyper-real images.
Working in small groups you will conceptualise, design and deploy a fictional space, territory or event; a place that doesn’t exist. Then each group will elaborate their verisimilitude by documenting their fiction through a diverse range of photoreal media: satellite imagery, professional photoshoots, amateur social media posts, and documentary video. Along the way we will tackle camera mapping, texture projection, photogrammetric materials, ray-traced rendering, HDRI lighting, digital camera movement, colour grading, digital encoding artefacts, atmospherics and metadata (spoofing). Photoreal images offer fragmented views into implied realities. In this course we will assemble scenarios that seem far larger, more complex and real than they actually are through the clever production of images that imply their existence. Our scenarios will be highly specific in location, time and spatial quality.
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
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ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
Carson City in Sweden is a ‘fake’ village made to test the vision of autonomous vehicles. What is a digital equivalent to this ‘billboard’ street? (The Potemkin Village, Gregor Sailer, 2018)
PRODUCTION TOOLS We will explore production methods in Photoshop (PS), After Effects (AE), Cinema4D (C4D), Quixel Megascans, Reality Capture, Octane Render and/or Redshift. In PS and AE we will explore masking, cloning, content aware filling, 2.5D layering, atmospheric billboards and colour grading as methods for producing seamlessness. In C4D we will learn camera calibration and projection mapping, and in Octane/Redshift we will become experts in PBR lighting and texturing.
D E P LOY M E N T TO O L S The media we create will inhabit the real world through blog posts, instagram accounts, Google Earth screenshots and youtube videos. While each group will also produce images and documents that can be exhibited in the context of an architectural pin-up, it is expected that your fictions will live in the real, fragmented and messy sites of the internet. Each group will produce at least one satellite image embedded in a blog or media article, an instagram account, a youtube video and a high resolution ‘photograph’ of their fiction.
In a tweet from writer/journalist Polina Marinova, the infamous Instagram photo location ‘The Gates of Heaven’ in Bali is revealed to be a sham. A local business man creates the iconic instagram image for tourists with a mirror and their phone. (Tweet, Polina Marinova, 2019)
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
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ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
COURSE REQUIREMENTS I Research and Site (week 2)
Each group will identify three case studies of fictional/manipulated realities. Of these, at least one must be entirely digitally produced, and one must involve physical fabrication. Based on these, each group will then produce one analytical drawing that documents how the fictions in the case studies have been constructed and deployed. This should be considered a complementary task to the research of the larger ‘Stranger than Fiction’ studio brief. These case studies are opportunities to find and dissect ‘realfictions’ - strange realities of today’s image saturated world. Then, each group will produce a satellite image and a piece of written prose that locates and describes a fictional place. This fictional place might be a territory (an economic zone, an island, a village), a space (a room, a building), or an event (a festival, a protest, a natural phenomenon). Deliverables: 3 x case studies of realfictions (identify, describe and analyse 3 image based examples of fabricated realities today). Each case study should contain an image of the real fiction, 250-500 words of analytical text and links to relevant articles presented on a single page (in pdf format). 1 x analytical drawing that breaks down the construction of one or more of your selected case studies. 1 x 4000 by 4000 px satellite image that shows the location, time and nature of your fiction. 1 x 250-500 word article that describes the nature and context of your fiction - in which your satellite image must be embedded. Techniques: Photoshop (Masking, Edge Blending, Clone-stamping, Content-Aware Analysis, Color Grading)
II Image (weeks 3 - 6)
With the scope and nature of your fiction set in phase 1, in phase 2 we will elaborate that fiction by producing snapshot images, modelled in 2.5D and 3D and posted to an instagram account managed by each group. The fragments that are created for each snapshot image will be used to produce a high resolution composition from which a ‘photoshoot’ image of the fiction will be made. Here we will examine the aesthetic differences between ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ photography and the different types of trust they engender. Deliverables: 1 x instagram account containing at least 20 images that imply your fiction 1 x high resolution rendered image that captures your fiction more explicitly - as if documented in a professional photoshoot. Techniques: C4D (Camera Calibration, Projection Mapping), Octane/Redshift (PBR Lighting, PBR Texturing, Render-setup, Render-output), Adobe Bridge (Metadata Editing)
III Moving-Image (weeks 7 - 9)
To give three dimensionality and a sense of time to your fiction, the final phase will see you render your fiction in a short 15 to 60s video clip. Depending on the nature of your fiction, this clip might aim to be a verisimilitude piece of recorded amateur footage, an advert, a documentary trailer or something else entirely. The video should be rendered at a standard frame-rate and embedded on youtube or vimeo, along with (fictional) information about the ‘date of it’s recording’, its subject matter, and the person(s) who recorded it. Deliverables: 1 x 15 to 60 second video (HD, .mp4 format) of your fiction uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo, with relevant descriptors and metadata attached. Techniques: C4D (Camera Tracking), Octane/Redshift (Render-setup, Render-output), AE (Compositing, Color Grading)
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
6
ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
FINAL SUBMISSION The final submission is to be made as a package of digital images, videos and text - as well as links to the sites on which these media are embedded. The last session of the quarter (week 10) will be a presentation and crit of the work. The submission should include - copies of all the three assignments and a ‘handbook’ for producing digital verisimilitudes that diagrams and describes the processes deployed in your image and video making (20 pages minimum).
Asssessment Criteria
20% - Research and Site 30% - Image 30% - Moving Image 10% - Verisimillitude ‘Handbook’ (Process Document) 10% - Attendance/Engagement It is a requirement of this course that all students submit course materials digitally by the end of quarter. Failure to do so will result in the loss of one letter grade. Please follow this procedure in digitally submitting your work: All students must submit required assignments as compressed PDF files. All animations and videos that represent your realtime world should be provided as MP4 files. If you are already registered with the Center for Accessible Education (CAE), please request your Letter of Accommodation on the Student Portal. If you are seeking registration with the CAE, please submit your request for accommodations via the CAE website. Please note that the CAE does not send accommodations letters to instructors--you must request that I view the letter in the online Faculty Portal. Once you have requested your accommodations via the Student Portal, please notify me immediately so I can view your letter. Students with disabilities requiring academic accommodations should submit their request for accommodations as soon as possible, as it may take up to two weeks to review the request. For more information, please visit the CAE website (www.cae. ucla.edu), visit the CAE at A255 Murphy Hall, or contact us by phone at (310) 825-1501.
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
7
ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO 2019/20 | UCLA AUD
Q2 - SEAMLESSNESS
REFERENCES + RESOURCES Follow
Every Frame a Painting (youtube) Channel Criswell (youtube) Nerdwriter (youtube) Captain Disillusion (youtube) Motherboard - VICE Wired Next Nature
Learn
Greyscale Gorilla Eyedesyn Lynda
Find
archive3D - 3D models (free) Kitbash3D - Themed Urban 3D models (paid) Quixel Megascans - High resolution photogrammetric textures and models (free + paid) Poliigon - High resolution textures (free + paid) HRDI Haven - High resolution HDRI skydome maps (free) freesound - Free field recordings and foley freemusicarchive - royalty free, CC music
Realfictions
Lil Miquela Proptown thispersondoesnotexist.com Agloe NY The Blackbird - the Mill Berlin Tropical Islands Resort Aditnalta - Thesis project by Mond Qu
TECHNICAL SEMINAR - NATHAN SU
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