Hyperfilm

HyperFilm is a prototype interactive film consisting of six scenes. Throughout the film, two points-of-view are always available - switching between them creates an edit which conforms to the usual principles of continuity editing.

The image below demonstrates one such edit - move your mouse over the image to perform the edit. Move it out again to switch to the original viewpoint.

Screenshot
A screenshot from the film

As a result of this functionality, viewers create their own edit of the film, as if HyperFilm were the video equivalent of a musical instrument. Inadvertently too, they also shape the narrative, since, in any single viewing, only half of the footage is ever seen.

Hyperfilm's Heritage

Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett

HyperFilm is based on a Samuel Beckett script, the generically named Film. It is a surrealist chase movie with a "comic and unreal" quality described by Gilles Deleuze as "the greatest Irish film." First produced in 1964, directed by Alan Schneider and starring Buster Keaton, Film won many awards at numerous international film festivals. It is one of a series of pieces which Beckett wrote in the Sixties comprising Play, Film, Eh Joe, Cascando, and Word and Music.

Although this production is an adaptation of Beckett's script, it has a contemporary context. In conversation with Nicholas Zurbrugg, Samuel Beckett himself expressed interest in extending the scope of his work; he had "experimented with television and regretted that it was too late for him to 'go the whole hog' with new multimedia creativity." We hope this production has gone some way to fulfilling Beckett's vision of the script.

The street sign which used to live on the Flowmotion homepage sits at the intersection of Gold Street and Fulton Street, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York; the location for Alan Schneider's version of Film.

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