A Scanner Darkly Sneak-Peek

An anonymous reader writes "Some images for the upcoming film 'A Scanner Darkly' have been posted on aintitcool.com. Looks like it's going to look alot like one of Richard Linklater's previous films, Waking Life."

Comments

a-ha!

[Scrameustache]

Taaaaaaake oooooon meeeeeee
Take! On! Me!

Taaaaaake meeeeeee ooooooon!

Great! I'm gonna have song in my head all day now!

I like it...!

[soliptic]

I had no idea this movie was taking this approach, I thought it was going to be standard live action.

I've got to say, I think this could really work. Being "non-realistic" in the first place adds scope for elegantly coping with the multiple (and extremely blurred) levels of reality in the book (which, btw, is my favourite from all the Dick I have read so far).

Re:I like it...!

[sakusha]

Yeah, I thought this was going to be regular live action too. And this book deserves to be a regular film. All the action is plain old reality, is are hardly any SF geekery except the "scramble suit" to disguise someone's identity. This film SHOULD be a live action film. That's one of the main points of this film, that it happens in a reality so close to ours, not some unimaginably unrealistic SF world. This film is about the 1970s, not the 2070s.

This style vs. Miyazaki

[Dancin_Santa]

I gotta tell you, this more "realistic" style of cartooning is much more interesting than the anime style of Miyazaki. For one, the 3 dimensional depth aspect is added through the use of very well thought out shading, so the characters seem more alive than most other cartoons.

With the exception of Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka), which succeeded because of the power of the story more than anything else, Miyazaki's work pales in comparison to the screenshots shown here.

Re:This style vs. Miyazaki

[dq5 studios]

You do realise "this more 'realistic' style" is just advanced rotoscoping? They film it like a normal movie then just animate on top of that. That is why it looks like there is great depth, because there actually is depth.

Re:This style vs. Miyazaki

[nEoN nOoDlE]

this isn't a more realistic style of cartooning, this is rotoscoping, and as such can't even be considered animation. It's a more tedious process of color correction. If you apply a brush stroke photoshop filter to a photograph, it isn't called a painting, so doing the same to a live action segment (even if it's manually traced over instead of completely automated) can't be considered animation.

Re:This style vs. Miyazaki

[krymsin01]

Wait...

Just because the source for the work happens to be series of photographs instead of a series of sense impressions in some artists mind means that it's not animation?

Please, that's just the fanboy mentality that calls pen & inkers "tracers." It's demeaning to the work involved in the process. In pen & ink, the artist takes a base drawing and adds furthur dimension and artistic merit by applying his or her own style.

That's exactly what they animators (and yes, rotoscoping IS animation) are doing here, and you are doing them a diservice by belittling their work.

If you want to attack this film, there are plenty of other avenues to go down.

Re:This style vs. Miyazaki

[popo]

Scanner Darkly isn't "animation" at all. Its a misnomer. Scanner Darkly is rotoscoped -- meaning that the scenes *are* actually filmed with a traditional camera. Then in post production, the individual frames are traced (or image-filtered) in order make the film look like hand-drawn animation.

Rotoscoping used to be very time consuming, but now most of the rotoscoping is achieved through PC based image filters (like photoshop filters). (Here's the wiki for more info on Rotoscoping.)

For you to compare "This style", ie: ("Rotoscoping") with the unbelievable amount of work that goes in to frame by frame hand drawn cel animation is like comparing a photocopy to a mosaic. One takes almost no work, and the other takes an enormous amount.

Re:wtf? why, what?

[orangesquid]

Philip K. Dick is a rather famous sci-fi author responsible for Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, upon which the film Bladerunner was based.

While the plots in some of his books don't really come together neatly in the end, he does quite well at creating vivid imagery, fascinating characters, and imagination-sparking ideas.

A Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electrip Sheep? are two of his more famous, and some of his best, published works.

I'd just like to say...

[los furtive]

I want to see a great movie, not a great special effect.

Re:wtf? why, what?

[orangesquid]

*shrug* It doesn't have to.

Most nerds like sci-fi... Most people don't complain when Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, and/or Arthur C. Clarke are mentioned in stories.

What the heck, I'll feed the trolls.....

[rsilvergun]

Either you lack imagination or you're just lazy. Not trolling btw, just stickin' up for Miyazaki and for unrealistic animation in general. I've never once understood why people would go to the movies to see reality, or why they'd complain when they don't. Then again, I'm a boy, and I watch my niece play pretend that she's a mom/teenager all day and I don't understand that.

Anyway, back on topic, what makes Miyazaki great is that it isn't real, it's better than real. When you're being real, you're limited by what's believable. When you don't bother with reality, you're only limited by consistency (i.e. stuff shouldn't come out of nowhere, and it doesn't in a Miyazaki film). It's easier, and more fun, to suspend disbelief when reality isn't smacking you in the face every couple of minutes....

retro 70s sci-fi

[Bootle]

I like the animation style, but animation seems to be a bit strong of a word. The technique, developed by a guy from MIT, strikes me as a cross between rotoscoping and key-frame animation. The actors are filmed and then painted over. So they have a complete reference for the shadows, etc. It's tracing, not true animation. I always pictured A Scanner Darkly the movie as looking very much like Cheech and Chong with bits of neat sci-fi tech. The book oozes its 70s setting with the cars and the guy's house and stuff. Also, the book starts off very funny, like C&C, and starts to tumble down from there. If I was filming it (thank god I'm not), Up in Smoke would have been my main visual inspiration!

Re:In what way is this 'news for nerds'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, its a well known fact that most nerds are left-of-center in their politics. RMS Aka Richard Stallman is a well known communist who beleives that everything should be free. Linus (the developer of Linux) comes from Sweden, a Socialist country with free medical care and very high taxes. Theo De Raadt the original brains behind BSD also seems pretty left wing to me.

I think there is something about the logical brains posessed by nerds that makes them realise what other less intelligent people cannot see, which is that although Capitalism is great for some, it is not the most efficient way to maximise the average person's happiness.

So as I have shown, left-wing and nerd are almost synonymous.
Of course you will get the odd right-wing loony, >coughcough, but on the whole, intelligence (in the computer science / nerd domain) seems highly correlated with left wing/compassionate political views.

Re:wtf? why, what?

[orangesquid]

The movies are pretty much all under the "Movies" category. If you have a useraccount, you can simply choose to filter these out of the frontpage.

You don't have to venture into any stories you don't want to read, either... that's the idea behind having the short little blurbs on the front page. If something doesn't interest you, just keep scrolling :)

I'm not trying to sound like a smart-aleck, but, I agree with the slashdot admins in that I think there should be a lot of different things here, not just science, math, and computer technology articles.

Re:Let the suck-fest begin.

[PurpleFloyd]

A note to those who haven't read the book: spoilers present.

While the erosion of the mind is a main theme in A Scanner Darkly, it is not the only theme presented. In fact, the psychological split between addict and police officer is arguably more important to the book.

Dick has stated that in A Scanner Darkly, he wanted to investigate the mind of an undercover agent - one who works toward one set of goals in one persona, then works to undermine those goals as another persona. While Substance D (the drug in the book, for those who don't know) exacerbates the problem and creates two independent entities from one mind, it is arguable that anyone trying to work undercover must segregate their mind in the same fashion. While the theme of descent into madness is certainly a large part of A Scanner Darkly, as well as many of Dick's other works, it is not the only theme.

I would imagine that it would be extremely difficult to adapt the theme of a split personality to film. While the artists could certainly provide differing character traits to each half of the split personality, it seems that it would be difficult to maintain the cognitive dissonance presented towards the end of the book, in which the two halves seem like completely different characters. It would seem that some innovative cinematography would have to come into play here; it would take a truly talented team of artists to accomplish this. I can only hope that they're up to the task.

Rotoshop - June 2006

[lawpoop]

This snippets were rotoscoped in a program typically dupped Rotoshop ( a combination of rotoscope and photoshop ) by Bob Sabiston at Flat Black Films. You can find other examples of this type of animation. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio in 2001, IIRC. He's a programmer, and his preferred platform is the Mac.

During the talk, people asked when he was going to release the program. He basic answer was he didn't want to become involed in anything that would take him away from programming -- starting a business, licensing, etc. I asked him about releasing it open source, and he said something to the effect of "I know it works, I'm just not sure how".

In any case, I just checked on the studio's website, and it appears that the program will be released in June, 2006. You can put yourself on an email list to be notified of its release.

Read Charlie Kaufman's adaptation...

[mattyohe]

http://www.beingcharliekaufman.com/scanner.pdf

I would have prefered to see this one.

missing Dick's point about the drug war?

[willwarner]

The protagonist is a drug dealer and a narcotics agent. The IMDB summary implies this is only because he uses drugs that split his personality. The much more interesting truth, which shone through Dick's novel, is that people do switch sides all the time! Captured drug dealers really are offered immunity from punishment if they'll be DEA double-agents. And agents who realize the money to be made, and their privileged position, really do succumb to temptation and start dealing drugs. More generally, both cartels and the DEA work to preserve the current Drug War, rather than managed and taxed legalization as with alcohol since Prohibition. Hopefully the movie pushes this home, despite IMDB's summary.

Plus, he's played by Keanu Reeves. I mean, really.

On the plus side, if they left the EEG machine in the movie, this should spike interest in OpenEEG.

Shameless fanboy

[adun]

I enjoyed Waking Life, and I'm a certified Dick nut. A Scanner Darkly is one of the greatest pieces of "short" fiction of our century, and it's a shame that society regards Dick primarly as a scifi writer, when he was one of the most astute social commentators of our time. He just happened to be good at expressing his fears and thoughts through a captivating medium.

For the unitiated, A Scanner Darkly is at the front of the reality-bending/drug/psychological thriller genre. Before there was Thomas Harris or Hunter S. Thompson, there was Dick. God, I have shivers already.

Difficult? It's been done.

[mblase]

I would imagine that it would be extremely difficult to adapt the theme of a split personality to film.

How about "Fight Club"? Or "Me, Myself and Irene"? And those are just the first two that come to mind.... It's not as if split personalities are a new plot device where Hollywood is concerned, but it does require some uncommonly good acting and directing talent.

Apparently you can read the book online

[felix rayman]

It looks like the text of the original the novel is online.

The main thing to note here is that they will fuck up the movie. There is no way they can be honest to the spirit of the novel and get the movie distributed in the malls of America. Then again, the perversion of the novel will pay for a shopping trip to those malls for the heirs of PKD, who, I would assume, are happy to live in the world he predicted.

Anyways, my favorite part of the novel is this, where one of the characters has decided to commit suicide by overdose:

Back home again, he uncorked the wine, let it breathe, drank a few glasses of it, spent a few minutes contemplating his favorite page of _The Illustrated Picture Book of Sex_, which showed the girl on top, then placed the plastic bag of reds beside his bed, lay down with the Ayn Rand book and unfinished protest letter to Exxon, tried to think of something meaningful but could not, although he kept remembering the girl being on top, and then, with a glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon, gulped down all the reds at once. After that, the deed being done, he lay back, the Ayn Rand book and letter on his chest, and waited.
However, he had been burned. The capsules were not barbiturates, as represented. They were some kind of kinky psychedelics, of a type he had never dropped before, probably a mixture, and new on the market. Instead of quietly suffocating, Charles Freck began to hallucinate. Well, he thought philosophically, this is the story of my life. Always ripped off. He had to face the fact--considering how many of the capsules he had swallowed--that he was in for some trip.
The next thing he knew, a creature from between dimensions was standing beside his bed looking down at him disapprovingly.
The creature had many eyes, all over it, ultra-modern expensive-looking clothing, and rose up eight feet high. Also, it carried an enormous scroll.
"You're going to read me my sins," Charles Freck said.
The creature nodded and unsealed the scroll.
Freck said, lying helpless on his bed, "and it's going to take a hundred thousand hours."
Fixing its many compound eyes on him, the creature from between dimensions said, "We are no longer in the mundane universe. Lower-plane categories of material existence such as 'space' and 'time' no longer apply to you. You have been elevated to the transcendent realm. Your sins will be read to you ceaselessly, in shifts, throughout eternity. The list will never end."
Know your dealer, Charles Freck thought, and wished he could take back the last half-hour of his life.
A thousand years later he was still lying there on his bed with the Ayn Rand book and the letter to Exxon on his chest, listening to them read his sins to him. They had gotten up to the first grade, when he was six years old.
Ten thousand years later they had reached the sixth grade.
The year he had discovered masturbation.

That, my friends, is some fine fucking literature.

Re:Apparently you can read the book online

[justins]

I have no reason to believe the person posting the text of the novel does not have legal permission to do so.

It's sort of a common-sense thing. The internet being what it is a reasonable person ought to assume that the copyright is being infringed, since in 99.99% of the cases that's what is happening when you stumble across a poorly-formatted plaintext of a currently copyrighted work. A legit copy of a popular work that is legally available for free distribution will probably have been lovingly prepared by a Project Gutenberg volunteer or in rare cases by the publisher, and will look a lot better than a simple OCR rip deal.

If you actually give a shit you can email the guy who owns this page:
http://paulwilliams.com/pkds.html

Not only was he the literary executor of Dick's estate, he ran the pkds which was mentioned on the title page of the book, so he's obviously got some credibility. I'm sure he'll be happy to state the obvious for you.

Re:The secret to enjoying it

[Bastian]

I hated Waking Life, too. But then the bong made it around to me, and a few minutes later, I realized why everyone liked it so much.

But then I tried to show it to someone else. There was no bong this time. I quickly apologized for ever suggesting the movie, and we both agreed to watch the Disney Channel because it's more mentally stimulating.

Why this film actually has a snowball's chance

[Ohreally_factor]

#5 Irrelevant.

#4 I argue elsewhere that Ridley Scott stayed true to PKD*, despite, or even because of the way he transposed the emotional meaning of Decker/the androids. Pretty much all the others I've seen I'd agree with you. *(I'm refering to the director's cut. The studio version was an abortion.)

Furthermore, stripping elements is pretty much a given when adapting any novel to the screen. The key to a good adaptation seems to be knowing which elements are essential and which aren't. So, yes, there are huge amounts of material missing from Bladerunner, and I'm sure we all have our favorite bits that were left out (I especially missed the Penfield Mood Organ), but that's pretty much the way it goes, unless you're talking Elmore Leonard.

Anyway, by this criteria, all adaptions must fail it.

#3. This is a failing of your imagination, not mine.

#2. A big budget movie will suffer from exactly the problems that Paycheck, Total Recall, Minority Report, etc., etc. suffer from. A big budget scanner darkly will be burdened by flashy special effects and the twisted story itself will be jettisoned in favor of some formulaic doppelganger abortion because with so much money on the line, the studio will be nervous. In the big budget version, Bob Arctor kicks his substance D addiction by the end of second act, kills the Islamic terrorist drug manufacturers that killed his best friend Jerry with invisible bio-engineered aphids in the first act and finally marries Donna, and they all live happily ever after. The only chance this project stands of succeeding on our terms is if it's a low budget prestige project that stays mostly under the radar of the execs, lawyers, and bean counters.

#1. You've got me there. I'm pretty worried about this aspect. I can think of a hundred name actors they might have gotten. Why not Ed Norton? Why Keanu? As far as I am concerned, the three actors that would stand the best chance of totally wrecking this movie are Keanu, Matt Damon, and Ben Afleck. Shit! I think I'd rather see Jean Claude Van Damme in the role.

Still, the rest of the cast sounds incredibly impressive, so I still hope for the best.

Re:Buy the book, read the book

[HeghmoH]

Yeah, right. I read Minority Report after seeing the movie, and had no problems, because there was basically no relation beyond the title. Most of Dick's movies seem to get this treatment, so there probably isn't anything to worry about.

the OTHER way around!!!!

[Scrameustache]

Now is the time - now that you have been warned. It'll be a miracle if this doesn't rubbish the book in some respect so just do yourself a favour and read A Scanner Darkly before it gets Keanu'd and you can never think of it without, uh, like, you know, dude.

GAH!!! NO! no, no NO!

No! When a story you are interrested in is coming up soon on the big screen and you have not yet read the book, do NOT read it now. The book is always better than the movie. So the only logical thing to do is to watch the movie first, enjoy it, and THEN read the book and enjoy it MORE.

That way you get

1. Movie, good.
2. Book: Better!

. If you do it the other way, you get

1. Book: Good.
2. Movie: Bad!

Why would you willingly subject yourself to not liking the movie? The book will still be there, as good as ever, after you've had a chance to enjoy the movie. If you rush out and read the book before, you ruin your chances of liking the movie.

My way makes you happy twice, your way makes you happy once, sad/mad once. Think about it, isn't the world bad enough as it is? Don't make it harder for yourself.