Friday 19 October 2007

Computer generated fiction

An idea that is still many years away, but still within the realm of possibility is a movie generator set-top box. We have people working on computer generated stories and a mature computer animation industry, so mixing the two is not that unreasonable. Imagine a black box on the top of your television that can just generate fresh new 1.5 hour movies on demand.

Initially, I think such a technology would only be suitable for children's entertainment, since a coherent plot and well-developed characters are a little less important than bright colours and funny voices there.

I'd also expect movie studios to be outraged at the very existence of such devices (since they would probably cut into cinema and DVD revenues) but I also think they'd have no real recourse to argue against them. They'd have to change their business strategy again.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Maybe they could sell character files.
PPS - And there would still be a market for human-produced movies of high quality.

2 comments:

Pstonie said...

Pacify me, Seymour

John said...

Is that a Little Shop of Horrors reference, or am I missing the point?