Eno | Deadline Studio at Sundance - video Dailymotion

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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.

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Eno | Deadline Studio at Sundance

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