The idea
I’ve been working with Luis Alvarez on his conception of a video editing system with a physically interactive interface.
Background
Given that editors must manipulate and rearrange movie clips for hours on end, they commonly suffer from repetitive stress injuries. In post-production of a film, production houses commonly cater to the editors by bringing them coffee, food, and sometimes drugs, in order to coerce them into working longer and longer hours.
Like many other repetitive tasks, editing would be better performed with full-body aerobic movement. This would keep the editors healthier, maintain their excitement and level of involvement, and presumably improve the quality of the movies they produce. (note: this philosophy has already been applied to making pizza)
The Interface
The editing interface consists of a large rubber pad on the floor. You take your shoes off, stand on the rubber pad, and step on areas marked Play/Stop, Rewind, Fast Forward, Speed Down, Speed Up. Stepping on any of the areas cause the movie to perform the corresponding operation. Eventually the editor will devolop his/her own “Editing Dance” as he/she grows accustomed to the interface.
The Technology Behind the Interface
The rubber pad sits on top of 5 Force Sensitive Resistors (FSRs) – one for each funtion – play/stop, rewind, fast forward, speed down, speed up. These feed into a BX-24 microprocessor running this code.
The code simply converts the input from each of the FSRs to MIDI output. Information from each sensor is output on its own MIDI channel to a Mac running Max/MSP and Jitter. The Max patch I wrote takes the incoming MIDI information and alters the playback speed of the video depending on the input.
Conclusions
The results are spectacular. Given a simple interface such as this as a tool, an editor can quickly come up with his/her own unique dance. Not only is there freedom from the confines of a computer keyboard, there is also freedom of choosing an editing dance that works for you.
Further on…
Editing a movie with my feet is really not interesting to me. What is interesting are the possibilities afforded by physical interaction in general and the feet in particular. An interface such as this footpad used to control video playback has many possibilities much more abstract and interesting than straight a video edit. In what environment do you position a tool such as this? How does it interact with the space and with the people around it? I will be exploring this soon….