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FunTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 The project started almost exactly five years ago
00:19 with what I thought was a very simple question, which
00:21 was, why do movies always have to be the same?
00:25 They start here.
00:26 They end here.
00:28 Shows, features, all the kind of same format.
00:32 And when you start to think about that,
00:34 it's really kind of a fascinating question.
00:37 And you have to look back to the beginning of cinema,
00:40 like 130-something years ago, when
00:42 it was moving pictures on celluloid film,
00:47 and it had to be reproduced.
00:49 You had to be able to have a master copy
00:51 and make other copies to send out to the cinemas.
00:54 Well, generations now have kind of grown up
00:57 with and accepted that fact that, oh, a movie starts here,
01:00 ends here.
01:00 It's always the same.
01:02 And now that we've gone to digital,
01:04 there is no reason that that has to exist.
01:06 But we're just so used to it.
01:07 Like, we're used to turning it on.
01:09 It's going to be exactly the same every time we see it.
01:12 But there's so many other possibilities.
01:14 So with all the technology that we have,
01:16 I was just dreaming of a way that I could make a film that
01:19 changed.
01:20 The story is the same, but it changes every time
01:23 that you watch it.
01:25 And I thought that was an interesting idea
01:27 and an experiment to try.
01:29 And five years later, here we are with Eno.
01:33 Brian has used generative software and technology
01:36 in his music making for decades now.
01:39 He's been a pioneer of using technology in his art.
01:43 And so it kind of made sense to use an approach that
01:46 was not a standard approach.
01:48 So he was very--
01:49 I mean, it was the reason that he did the film,
01:51 because he's turned down many people approaching him
01:54 to try to do a career-spanning documentary.
01:57 But he hates the standard music star bio doc.
02:03 But this was an interesting idea.
02:05 And when I had the original concept five years ago,
02:09 I talked to a friend of mine, Brendan Dawes,
02:11 who's a digital artist and programmer based in England.
02:16 And he thought we could probably do this,
02:19 make this movie that could be constructed in software
02:22 and be different every time it plays.
02:24 So we made really just a basic kind of demo of the architecture
02:28 and showed it to Brian in the summer of 2019.
02:32 And he just loved the idea.
02:34 He was like, this is exactly what I want to do.
02:36 So we started the project there and got a little bit
02:39 interrupted by the pandemic and not
02:41 being able to travel to England as much.
02:43 But we started digitizing and restoring
02:46 Brian's archive, which was like 500 hours of material,
02:49 and then doing new filming with him and conversations.
02:53 It took a lot of work and a lot of trial and error
02:57 playing with the idea of scenes that could maybe show up
03:02 in the film but maybe not show up in the film.
03:04 And how do you craft a story when you're not really
03:07 sure what the order of the sequence is going to be?
03:10 One thing that we have in our favor is it's all about Brian.
03:13 It's about one person.
03:15 And if you learn about Brian's work with David Bowie
03:18 at the 20th minute or the 40th minute or the 50th minute,
03:22 it kind of doesn't really matter.
03:24 A lot of my films don't have a kind
03:26 of rigid chronological structure.
03:30 And I like movies that you learn different things
03:33 about the subject, but you as the viewer
03:36 kind of make the connections.
03:37 No one's making those connections for you.
03:39 I always think that's a lot more rewarding as a viewer.
03:45 Like our brains love to figure out puzzles.
03:47 And they love to kind of make those connections.
03:50 So the order of the film and the scenes that are in the film
03:54 can kind of change from movie to movie.
03:57 But it starts the same and it ends with the same scene.
04:00 Everything in between can change.
04:02 And it's a different kind of filmmaking.
04:07 But it's also a different kind of film watching.
04:09 As a viewer, you kind of have to kind of be open to the next time
04:14 you see the film, it's going to be different.
04:16 You might see the David Byrne scene this time.
04:18 You might have to watch it five times to see the David Byrne
04:20 scene.
04:21 And there are just like billions of different combinations
04:26 that could possibly exist of this movie.
04:29 And every time you watch it, you'll
04:31 never see that version again.
04:32 So it's an interesting experiment
04:35 and kind of a perfect idea to throw out here at Sundance,
04:40 just to kind of get feedback from other filmmakers
04:43 and audiences of like, OK, well, this
04:45 is an idea, like we can change the way that film,
04:48 the form of film works.
04:50 And let's talk about the possibilities.
04:53 Each scene needs to kind of do a job.
04:56 They're almost like little short films in some ways.
04:59 And we sort of divided up a lot of the footage
05:04 into types of scenes.
05:06 You can have kind of creative strategy tools
05:09 that Bryan's developed.
05:10 You could have a biographical scene.
05:12 You could have an archival scene.
05:14 You could have a music performance.
05:17 So there's a little bit of a rhythm
05:19 that you can establish just by kind of like,
05:21 you don't want to have three big ideas in a row
05:24 or three creative strategy tools in a row or something.
05:27 So we sort of came up with a language,
05:30 working with our editors, to sort of have
05:34 these scenes kind of do a job wherever they appear
05:38 and establish a little bit of a rhythm of that.
05:41 So it's not like we're just throwing a bunch of footage
05:43 into something and letting some software kind of figure it out.
05:47 There's more editing involved in this project
05:49 than any project I've ever been involved with.
05:52 Because on one hand, we're editing way more footage
05:55 than you'd normally need for a 90-minute movie.
05:59 And we're going in and, like I said,
06:01 there's like 500 hours of archival footage
06:03 that Bryan has.
06:04 So we're formatting the things and preparing those
06:09 for the system as well.
06:11 And then it's just trial and error.
06:13 We would watch an output from the software system
06:16 and be like, that's kind of a little weird.
06:18 Like, maybe we need to have transitions here.
06:21 So it's just been several years of developing and playing
06:26 with it to get to this point.
06:29 I'm surprised how prolific he is.
06:32 And even now at 75, he's in studio eight hours a day
06:37 making music.
06:38 That is all he wants to do.
06:39 He does not want to be talking to documentary filmmakers
06:42 about his past or anything.
06:45 So he's just making records and scoring Netflix series
06:49 and doing all kinds of stuff still and visual art.
06:53 And if you look back at his career,
06:55 it's just mind-blowing, the stuff that he's done.
06:58 So it was the sheer volume of it.
07:03 What surprises me is I've spent five years just kind of looking
07:07 at his life and his work.
07:09 There's still stuff that comes up that I see.
07:12 I'll find something on YouTube.
07:13 And I'm like, whoa, what the hell was this?
07:16 I'm still discovering things about this person.
07:18 So on one hand, we had 50 years of material and his lectures
07:24 and interviews and performances.
07:26 So you can see how his thinking and how his creativity
07:31 has evolved over the time.
07:33 And we can have 1970s Brian having a conversation
07:36 with 2000s Brian and 1980s Brian.
07:40 It's almost like we're mapping the inside of his brain
07:43 or something in the film.
07:45 And the way the film works is kind of a little bit more
07:48 like how our memory actually works.
07:50 We don't remember the same story the same way every time.
07:53 And sometimes in different parts of our lives,
07:56 we remember things differently.
07:58 So that's all somehow reflected in the structure of the film.
08:02 Yeah, I mean, I think that's the exciting part
08:05 because there's a million different things we can do.
08:08 The film could be different every day.
08:10 The film could be different for different cities.
08:12 The ultimate goal is that every person who
08:16 streams the film gets their own unique version
08:19 that no one else in the world will see.
08:20 Doing a new film every day is easy.
08:23 We just make a lot of files.
08:24 Because every time I click Generate,
08:27 a 90-minute film comes out that's
08:29 different than any other version.
08:31 So we can do a lot of different things.
08:33 And part of premiering it here and talking to people
08:37 and talking to the streamers is trying to find out,
08:41 what are the possibilities?
08:43 Is this an interesting thing for audiences
08:45 to watch a film that's different every time?
08:48 How do you review a film that's different every time?
08:51 I mean, all these questions are coming out
08:52 of the project, which is really incredible.
08:56 Why we made it and why we brought it here to Sundance.
08:59 My films have always been about the creative process,
09:03 whether it's design or art or architecture.
09:05 So for me, as much as I'm a huge fan of Brian's music
09:09 and the stuff he's done with Bowie and Talking Heads
09:11 and U2 and all these bands, it's about the creativity.
09:17 That's what I take from it.
09:20 The way he thinks about creativity,
09:22 the way he thinks about art, those
09:24 are the things that I think people will be inspired by
09:29 if they help them in their creative lives.
09:34 [MUSIC PLAYING]
09:37 [MUSIC PLAYING]
09:41 [MUSIC]