Looper-ish Philosophy

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same character: one is the past and one future

After watching Looper the other day I started going on a deep philosophical rant. I was thinking about the choose your own stories we were talking about in class and compared them to real life. Basically those stories are a media version of real life where we have to make decisions and what happens next is based on that decision.

Kind of scary if you think about it.

What if because you entered the right door of the class room instead of the left door you missed the chance to talk to someone who could change your life forever? What if you two made a movie idea that made millions? Seriously anything can affect what happens in your life.

I believe that every single person in your life affects your future somehow. Not just people who a friends but even people you never talked to one and you just walked by them in a store without even acknowledging each other. Maybe what your eyes see affect psychologically what your next thought would be, like the color red on some guys shirt changes your next thought to some kind of angry. Or maybe you saw there shoes and for a second you thought about how nice those shoes looked and if you ignored that and kept walking you could of been on your way to thinking of something important.

I imagine this is really confusing to read, it’s really confusing to think about. But this is the stuff that keeps me up at night.

Anyway why Looper made me think about this is because it is about time travel and changing the future so here’s a link to the trailer to help make this sensible:

Looper Trailer

ControlTV

Web Series

Talking about interactive storytelling in our last class where you decide what happens made me think about the web series ControlTV. It was started by Seth Green as an experiment to try a new form of interactive media, controlling a human being.

How it works is one contestant gives up their life for six weeks and lose control in anything he wants to do. Every week the views of the show can go on their website and vote what happens to him each week. You can decide things like where he works, who he dates, who his friends are and even go into such detail as when does he wake up and what does he eat!

The results I won’t spoil if you want to watch the series but you may be surprised by what people decide to vote for.

Unfortunately the series only lasted one season, although they did get renewed for a second in 2010 but are still yet to make it. I thought it was a really amazing idea and I hope to see it again because I love stories you can control, and when it is someone’s life it gets really interesting. 

Since it is so topical right now for what we are doing in class right now I highly recommend checking it out! Although you obviously can’t vote anymore here is the link to the short episodes on youtube:

ControlTV Episodes

HitRECord

hitrecord.org

Recently I joined an interactive filmmaking community called hitRECord, a professional online production company started by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. 

When I first heard about it I thought it was a really interesting and revolutionary way to do filmmaking. The way it works is that anyone can edit or remix anything that is on the website. You or others upload your own work which can be anything from pictures to music to video clips. Other people can see what you uploaded and if they want to use it they can download it and make it into something their own. These projects can get up to hundreds of people working on the same thing adding their own creative tastes.

Another cool thing about it is that you can make money this way! If Gordon-Levitt or someone else that is a major part of the company likes what they see, they can submit to film festivals and try to get it distributed. Whatever money it makes is given to every single person involved based on how much work they put into it. So not only can you make money but also get your name out there potentially.

Being in Media Fundamentals I thought this was a really neat thing I should try out since I’ll be doing all sorts of media that could contribute to this website. Hopefully I could add something that people would like! Check out the website I really recommend it!

hitrecord.org