1/ What is the origin of fhe project ? How did you had the idea ? Did other projects inspired you ?

The origin of the project is a quotation from new media theorist Lev Manovich. In his book “The Language of New Media” 2001, he says; “the problem today is no longer how to create the right image, but how to find an already existing one”. This sentence addresses the massive web databases and the people’s insufficient abilities to find proper data in them. So I started to think about “If I can find the right images, can I build a virtual camera?” and the Movie Assembly project started.

To construct a movie you need proper still frames sorted on a time line running on defined frames per second (fps). For example cinema runs with 24fps. The difference is cinema captures what is in front of the camera to build frames, in Movie Assembly there is no camera I am just collecting and sorting the images to create frames which will construct the film. The process is like making an animated movie, here I am not drawing the frames but downloading them from the internet. From this perspective everything on the web could be a source. And I define my source as a single database: Flickr.com. There are massive databases on the web available to us. We are just starting to understand and use the web. As internet technologies continue to develop, we will see more and more databases created.

2/ When did you start the project. In your head ? Then concretely with doing theh first studies ? Then with opening the website ?

I started to think about the project in June of 2006. Then I searched through the photography databases to see if this idea is feasible. In October 2006 I started to collect images and experiment with them. I launched the web site in January 2007 and shared the visual studies on the site. My first visual study was made out of 23 images of the Eiffel Tower after than I added more visual studies. In April 2007 I have more than ten visual studies. All of them are available on movieassembly.com so that you can view them.

2/ Are you alone in this project ? Have you yet been contacted by contributors or by flash coders ?

Right now I am alone. But in essence this project is running by collaborations. Some how I am collaborating with photography owners, image taggers and Flickr.com employees. I am also looking for collaborators for the film making process like, image collectors-sorters. This is more suitable for the nature of databases; we are building and adding values to databases so we can build a database film together. So far 5 people wanted to join the project as image collector-sorter but they haven’t put any input yet. In addition to image collector-sorters I am looking for flash coders to build an online editing tool that can connect and run on Flickr.com. But nobody haven’t contact me for that yet.

After we finish the film, I would like to submit it to film festival as many as possible. At that point we need financial support for submission and delivery fees, any donation is gladly welcome.

Movie Assembly is an open project to everyone. I welcome any collaborator, supporter, critique and comment. I hope we can find more people with your help. Thanks a lot.


3/ It is said part of your thesis. What is his precise subject ? How does Movie Assembly is part of it ? What do you want do demonstrate with it ?

Movie Assembly is my thesis project at Sabancı University in İstanbul-Turkey. The main topics are; Database cinema and database theories. Also I cover some other topics within my thesis like; experimental-collaborative-internet film making, copyright issues on the web, social aspects of databases, non-linear non-narrative culture, cyber culture, new media-moving image… Movieassembly.com is the showcase of my thesis. I am sharing the visual studies and my analyses about these studies on the web site.

The project also has a document to fiction aspect. Most of the photographs that I use in the Movie Assembly project are tourist photos. They are documentation of some other people. Memories of tourists who are saying that “I have been to Paris”. So the images are documents rather than artistic photos. And I am collecting those documents to create my own fiction which is creating a virtual camera with sequence of reframed images, with a particular duration and speed. I am delivering a moving image experience.

First of all this project is a challenge in using the internet. Within this project the internet itself becomes a material to create something from it. Other than just downloading, uploading or browsing.

4/ About using the Flickr database for you project and, in the future for the ebtool.

> Many images are not pertinently tagged, so what is your method to find suitable images (without wasting too much time) ? Do you search them «traditionnaly« or do you use specific filters ?

Right now I am working on images of Eiffel Tower. For that subject I did not have unrelated tag problems. %80 of the Eiffel tagged images are actually related to the Eiffel Tower. There are more than 100.000 images tagged Eiffel on Flickr by April 2007 and this number is increasing each day. So the hard part is not the tags but finding the images that will fit the particular sequence I am creating. You have to try the selected images one by one to see if it is ok to put into the time line.

I tried many image searching softwares like imgSeek to find suitable images for the following frame but image matching algorithms are not developed enough for such a problem yet. Many researches are going on in this field but we still need a lot of time to see appropriate software.

>No many images are in Creative Commons Licenses. Do you use only CC license images or other images ?

I am trying to use CC licensed images but If an other licensed image is suitable for project then I use it also. Since this is a non-profit academic research project I believe it is possible to use copyrighted images. Copyright on the web is also a big issue, old images do not have CC licenses but as the time goes more and more CC licensed items appear on the web.

Major web sites like Flickr, Deviant Art etc. are supporting CC license. Web becomes more about sharing.

5/ The subject of the film. Do you have a idea of the scenario of the film ? Do you think this type of film have particular limits ? For example, could it be possible to tell a story ? or to « use » people as actors of a story ?

Yes I have a simple script but it is hard to call it a scenario. It is more like a series of motion studies. The main idea is to give a view of/from the Eiffel Tower, a scene from the city. For example my latest visual study is about a metro train coming to the station. At this point it is like the first films of Lumiere’s.

The final product will hopefully be somewhat like a short film. I would like to combine each study and construct an experience.

The limit is the content of the images in Flickr.com. You can find thousands of images of famous places, birthday parties, babies, weddings etc. but if you want to create footage about a sci-fi facility on a desert you can hardly find a few images. So you are limited to popular topics on Flickr.com.

The situation gets complicated if I want to present an actor. For example it is very hard to find suitable images of a person which will construct a walking scene. Think about acting and dialogs than it is virtually impossible to find that many images of a person. But this is not something that I will pursue at this point.

6/ What excite you most in the project ?

The databases are not new to us such as yellow pages, phone directories, train schedules etc…, but the integration and interactivity with them is getting more and more exciting with internet databases. Until the advent of digital technologies, we have been used to linear-narrative entertainment and art forms, like cinema, theater, music, literature, fine arts etc… But now we are experiencing non-linear non-narrative art and entertainment forms. For example Last.fm is only a database holding information about our music choices however we are spending hours by looking at other user’s choices, we build social networks, discover new music and discuss about music. Not the music itself but the size and interaction of the database makes it enjoyable. Same point applies to most of the major databases like Flickr.com, Deviantart.com, Youtube.com, MySpace.com…

Also access to information is easier and faster than ever. From YouTube you can watch 1920’s avant garde films which were rare to view with analog technologies, from Wikipedia you may access any kind of useful information with out leaving your home. Accessing info makes people more aware of what is going on in the world. We can view independent news sources, personal blogs other than mainstream media giants. This list goes on and on. Web delivers massive amount of information to people. Also with the mobile technologies these databases are ready to go with us to anywhere. We can experience them on trains, on outdoors etc… this makes them more addictive and powerful somehow.

Now we enjoy surfing through databases. I am feeling like we are living in an important era, and my project is a tiny step in this new era. I believe my studies are valuable for new media theories and academic studies can study on them, which excite me the most.

7/ And finally  have you fixed a lenght ? And have you fixed a dead-line for the film ?

I don’t have a fixed length for the film. The deadline for the thesis is the day I will meet with my master’s thesis jury. But after that day I will continue to develop this project.

Thanks a lot

Gokhan Okur
Movieassembly.com

Istanbul - April 2007