design research | design fiction | vision building | experience design | filmmaking

NO MORE BOATS? HOW ABOUT FLOATS?

NO MORE BOATS? HOW ABOUT FLOATS? is a site based communal entertainment experience exploring how people may physically convene around media in a post theater world.

The experience is inspired by Crane Cove in San Francisco, and pays homage to its past as a historic industrial site and its present as a gathering place, using a mix of street art and interactive media. It takes place in a post climate disaster world, where floating is a necessary means of transportation. Thus, Crane Cove is converted from a Boat Manufacturing Facility to a Float Manufacturing Facility.

Framed as a type of scavenger hunt, the audience searches for a series of five images that once found and scanned, reveal a version of Crane Cove that exists not here and not now.

PROCESS

STEP 1: TOPICAL RESEARCH

While theaters felt a recent bump after the Barbeneheimer phenomena, independent theatres and giants like AMC still face serious headwinds.

The sign of a mature and stable cinema industry is not a couple of summer smashes that make a billion dollars. I promise it’s not. The sign of a mature and stable industry is a culture where Americans (and Brits and Indians and Chinese etc) go to the movies every month. There doesn’t need to be a slam-dunk, word of mouth hit playing; the habit has been formed and the itch needs to be scratched. - Nick Hilton | Event Movies Will Kill Cinema

Shifting attitudes and habits around media compound issues. The screen experience has shifted to the phone. Attention spans are shorter. Yet, there will always be a thirst for entertainment. So what might new entertainment experiences look like?

EDGLRD has arisen out of a suspicion Korine and his collaborators have: that movies as we know them are on their way out, victims of increasingly corporatized studio systems reliant on broken financial models so fragile and strained that, within a month of our conversation, Hollywood’s writing and acting guilds would both be on strike in protest of them... The question is, says Korine, “How do you take the whole idea of entertainment, of live-action gaming, and create something new? The obsession here is that there’s something else after where we’ve been—that one thing is dying, and something new is being born right now.” - Zach Baron | Harmony Korine’s Hi-Tech Vision for the Future of Movies

I don’t think theatres will ever die, but new tools and new audiences suggest interesting possibilities in how the world of cinema could evolve, or become something entirely different. What might happen when one brings filmic sensibilities to short form content and immersive experience?

STEP 2: CRANE COVE RESEARCH

To better understand Crane Cove I visited multiple times taking many photos. What stood out to me was how the area juxtaposed industry, leisure, and subculture. Those elements would be the driving forces of the story.

STEP 3: EXPERIMENT WITH MATERIALS

Through experimentation using a mix of my own photography, Photoshop, and Midjourney I created four different storyboards to better understand the world I wanted to create.

Each storyboard began with an original photograph.

Using Midjourney I started developing characters.

/imagine A large group of people wearing neon inflatable suits run quickly, eye level, 24 mm lens, cloudy day, cinematic, infrared

~19 images generated

I then very crudely comped the images onto my background and used the /describe function to understand how to better prompt Midjourney.

1. an orange inflatable man walking in the ocean, in the style of chen zhen, industrial landscapes, simon stalenhag, polixeni papapetrou, repetitive rephotography, military and naval scenes, close up --ar 32:21

2. orange clad humanoid figures swim about a body of water, in the style of militaristic realism, large scale installations, adorable toy sculptures, bulbous, fujifilm pro 400h, dark gray and crimson, dutch marine scenes --ar 32:21

3. a large group of orange orange inflated people, in the style of simon stalenhag, hyperrealistic marine life, infrared filters, military and naval scenes, even mehl amundsen, wimmelbilder, gloomy --ar 32:21

4. the people are in big orange floats, in the style of conceptual sculptures, 8k 3d, war photography, gloomy, environmentalism, maritime scenes, bulbous --ar 32:21

After choosing my favorite version, number 3, I continued to iterate, landing here.

After going through this initial process I decided I wanted my world to contain an even more reimagined version of industry, one that was light, green, and joyous, rather than dark and gloomy like the one I had created.

STEP 4: CREATE FINAL IMAGES

I revisited Crane Cove searching for places that were simultaneously photogenic and wheat pastable. Each photo would serve as a background for a poster.

I then created a moodboard of images and pushed them through the /describe function of Midjourney to better understand how to prompt the language model.

Based on my learnings, I began prompting Midjourney and creating my characters.

CHARACTER 1

First Prompt /Imagine a few dozen yellow inflatable vehicles float above lake water as industrial workers commute to work, in the style of experimental soundscapes, playful structures, conceptual simplicity, joy

~ 45 images generated

/Imagine A yellow inflatable spherical transportation device flies in the air, an industrial worker commutes to work, in the style of experimental soundscapes, eye level, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy

CHARACTER 2

First Prompt /Imagine yellow inflatable spherical transportation devices fly through the air, industrial workers commute to work, in the style of experimental soundscapes, eye level, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy

~ 28 images generated

/Imagine a few dozen yellow personal inflatable spherical transportation devices fly through the air over a grass field, passengers travel inside, wide shot, eye level, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy

CHARACTER 3 and 4

First Prompt /Imagine a yellow personal inflatable sperical transportation device flying through the air, from below, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy --ar 9:16

~ 64 images generated

/Imagine a yellow personal inflatable spherical transportation device flying through the air, from beneath, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy --ar 9:16

/ Imagine A yellow personal inflatable spherical transportation device flying through the air, a human inside, from beneath, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy

CHARACTER 5 (multiple characters created)

First Prompt /Imagine a few dozen inflatable yellow hovercraft transportation devices with humans wearing green riding on them, eye level, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy --ar 9:16

~ 64 images generated

/Imagine an inflatable yellow hovercraft transportation device floating above the ground with a human in a yellow uniform riding on it, eye level, ricoh gr2, 24 mm lens, playful structure, conceptual simplicity, joy, white background, natural light

With characters created, I transformed my backgrounds by adding grain and using the Landscape Mixer Neural Filter in Photoshop.