VARIOUS: COMPANY CALLED "THINKING PICTURES" CREATE TALKING POSTER ADVERTISMENTS

Record ID: 393193

  • Title: VARIOUS: COMPANY CALLED "THINKING PICTURES" CREATE TALKING POSTER ADVERTISMENTS
  • Date: 23rd January 2003
  • Summary: SCU "THINKING POSTER"
  • Embargoed: 7th February 2003 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Entertainment,General,Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVAAYHEH6RCDDY9ZK5Q4TH5T0HV7
  • Story Text: Imagine looking at a still movie poster, while waiting for the movie doors to open. Suddenly actor Daniel Day Lewis beckons you, and with the help of sensors, launches into a full motion pictures experience. It's all thanks to cutting edge technology from a company called "Thinking Pictures"
    And you thought special effects were limited to the big screen. Hollywood has gone high tech with their movies and now, with their advertisements. Stephan Fitch, the brain behind "Thinking Pictures", has been working to make this technology a reality. Using the basic elements of interactive video, movie-goers who want to watch a comedy or action-thriller, stand in front of a screen, inserts a "smart card" about their preference and almost like magic, a movie poster comes to life.
    Says Fitch, "While I was at MIT there was all kinds of conversations about flexible displays, newspapers of the future, displays being material, that paper disappear. Being a movie buff, I felt that if that is true, then at some point these movie posters are going to disappear and if that were the case, how could you create some kind of interaction out of it. Someone has to walk in front of it to trigger it."
    Using the technology for his moving posters, Fitch is now applying the the same techniques to allow a movie to 'watch' its audience. The so called 'thinking movie' could monitor an audiences' reactions and provide instant feedback to filmmakers.
    "It's like a stand up comic telling a joke. If he tells a bad joke, he cannot tell that joke any more. For motion picture it is basically deaf and blind. It's telling the story and has no awareness if whether audience is laughing or feeling or in the house. So in order to create a thinking picture, I want to provide the flexibility a human provides when they are telling a story to the motion picture industry."
    This technology provides a step up from merely marketing a film, to actually getting the audiences feedback - which could help studios in their design and improvement of pictures. So what to directors think of the possible future ? Todd Haynes, director of the hot new critically acclaimed movie "Far From Heaven," has his few reservations Says Fitch, "I am a lover of celluloid. I am old school that way. I want to stay open to all the possibilities but I hate the idea that they would sacrifice the traditions that they have seen already and the beauty of celluloid."
    But Fitch says for better or for worse, artificial intelligence is here to stay. Says Fitch," It could read that data and say wow this person likes action film .It will look into the data base and show you can action film,. Why show you a trailer to a romantic comedy. Now all of a sudden, this poster case becomes a window to the studio to better market its films to this audience."
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