philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

You Can Make Movies With Drones and CGI, Sure. But Why Not Make Them the Stars?

In that film, autonomous drones follow characters through bleak 70’s-era public housing over a soundtrack of demonic, industrial music. The film, shown through the drone’s point of view, tells the story of a young woman and her boyfriend who send surreptitious and illegal messages with the drones. In addition to shooting and starring in the films, the drones directed it, too. Their flight algorithms, navigation system, and facial recognition software allowed them to decide where to go and what to film. Young edited the footage into the final story, following the whims and foibles of the drones. “The technology has its own tendencies and personality,” he says. “We’re trying to see the world through their eyes.”

In Renderlands, Young creates a dark collage of live-action shots of computer renderers—their faces glowing in the light of their monitors—working in India and the CGI visions of Hollywood they’re creating. It’s a misty, neon-lit place replete with long piers, hilltop vistas, and other Southern California clichés that the workers have never seen and only imagine. The process of rendering imagined worlds becomes an important part of the film’s look, structure, and plot.

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