RMTRIPLEX

Here are some full resolution screen shots, since the quality on the video uploaded was so bad?

Click-click:

Enjoy.

Debunking the marijuana > schizophrenia myth ...

Marijuana Duck, Duck, Goose - Same Old Story

I'm working on a new segment for RMXXX:01 and I thought I'd share some of my workflow process with you.  Since this isn't a commercial DVD and will be released anonymously due to subject matter, copyright, etc. we're rocking this on a zero budget.

The first thing I do is identify the content I want to edit.  That's the hard part.  I have a software bot I wrote that monitors the usenet newsgroups and downloads DVD's that hit certain keywords.  I use uTorrent for a similar function but strictly off bittorrent.  In the last year I've amassed closed to two tera-bytes of porn.  I've stayed away from american porn for a couple of reasons, it's mostly Japanese and German.  I find American porn lacking the authenticity that foreign porn affords, but that's a subject for another post.

Once I've identified the content, I trim down certain scenes and then run those clips through either Handysaw DS or a custom piece of software I've written that can optically identify the cuts.  Handysaw is pretty good at what it does, but sometimes the custom software is better suited for what I'm trying to go for.  The difference?  Handysaw is always usually off by a couple of frames so there is some manual trimming required.  The custom software is almost always finds the actual cuts frame on, but can be confused by pans and zooms, but for my purposes that's usually fine.

Either piece of software kicks out an EDL (Edit Decision List/Log) that I either import into Final Cut Pro or Sony Vegas.  For the clever, I use both OS X and Windows, usually at the same time via Parallels.  As media centric as OS X is, Windows has better freeware/shareware video tools like VirtualDubMod for ripping DVD's, Sony Vegas for putting together rough cuts (I prefer Final Cut Pro's trim tools better, but Vegas is way faster). 

The EDL is an important part of the workflow.  Using text editors and command line tools, I can manipulate the EDL to generate clips of exact length.  For example, if I'm going to be editing to a specific tempo, say 130 beats per minute, I make sure the length of my clips are the same length as a bar, a bar being 4 beats in 4/4 time.  130 bpm == 2.166 beats per second == 64.91502 frames per beat @ 29.97 frames per second.  I make sure my clips are multiples of this length.  This is pretty easy to accomplish with an EDL and TextMate.

Once I've created all the clips and sub-clips, I import them into an NLE and do an editorial process where I delete uninteresting clips and adjust lengths on the more important clips.  I then re-export this EDL list.  Once I've got my final list, I import it into Excel and tag the clips with keywords in the spreadsheet. 

Still with me?

For the first rough edit, a custom piece of software will take the Excel and use it as a "database".  I define "sequences" which are simply rhythmic patterns in an xml file.  It looks something like this:

<sequence id="clothed_1" step_size="8">
    <step length="3" tags="molest,clothed" />
    <step length="1" tags="expression,closeup" />
    ..
</sequence>

<pattern>
    <sequence id="clothed_1" loop="4" />
    <sequence id="clothed_2" loop="2" />
    ..
</pattern>

The software will take this xml and build a rough edit by pulling clips from the spreadsheet that contain the specified tags and sequence them to the defined pattern.  It kicks out a final EDL that gets imported back into the NLE, where another editing process begins ...

... to be continued ...

RMXXX is a project a few of us have been working on for well over a year.

RMXXX is many things.  It is a reaction to pornography.  It is a statement about pornography.  It is a celebration, a criticism, a study.

RMXXX, the shallow explanation:  We've taken pornography found across the internet - bittorrent, web, usenet, gnutella - and have remixxxed it in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons.  Some of these reasons are shallow, some of these reasons are intellectual, some of these reasons are purely technical.

The first DVD, RMXXX:01, will be released on bittorrent in the next coming months.  It is comprised of several segments; each segment dealing with pornography in a different way.  Some segments deal with the visceral impact of pornography and attempt to heighten that impact through visual and/or auditory manipulation.  Can pornography be made more reactive by disassociating time and audio?  Can we change the intent and meaning by subverting the audio through a mix of abstract soundtracks and soundscapes?  Is pornography exploitation, or is the "exploitation" badge applied simply because it engages and strokes the non-thinking parts of our brain?

People fear pornography because it reminds them that they are, in fact, animals.  Pornography is a cause and effect phenomenon.  Regardless of what our thinking mind screams, when we view the pornographic image, something about it stirs the animal inside of us all and because we've been taught that we are not, in fact, animals, it makes us uncomfortable, it makes us ashamed - and for some - makes us afraid.

With RMXXX, we are asking questions but trying not to supply the answers.  We leave that to the viewer to do for themselves.

Finally, RMXXX is also about us all making our own pornography for our own purposes.  As much as it is an intellectual exercise it is also a statement about the current state of pornography and how, as an art form, it is lagging behind the evolution of the intellect.  In many ways, it is really - at it's heart -  a reaction or response to the industry and a challenge to them to be more forward thinking.  A joke amongst the different segment producers has always been, "Everyone wants to make their own porn." and in many ways, RMXXX has allowed us to do just that.