WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: Beyond the Mind’s Eye 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:06.120 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.960 --> 0:00:16.079 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb. 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:19.759 And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.159 Cinema we're doing something a little bit different. Most of 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:28.000 the time we focus on narrative feature films, at least 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:33.520 within the weird genres. But today we are not looking 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:35.960 at a narrative feature film. We're going to be talking 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:41.080 about an anthology format art film from nineteen ninety two 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:46.240 called Beyond the Mind's Eye, which was the second part 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:48.920 in a series of similar films beginning in the year 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:55.320 nineteen ninety with The Mind's Eye, a computer animation odyssey. Now, 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:59.360 as the name implies, the Mind's Eye films were showcases 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.080 computer animation, showcases for sort of the cutting edge of 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:08.320 computer based animation techniques of the day, and the typical 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.039 format of all these films in the Mind's Eye series 0:01:12.040 --> 0:01:16.200 would be a sequence of musical numbers usually I think, 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:21.119 just by a single artist throughout, accompanied by strange computer 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:26.240 generated imagery scenes and imagery. Now, Rob, I don't know 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:28.200 if you were able to get more clarity on the 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.640 source of all of these animated segments. One thing that's 0:01:31.680 --> 0:01:35.440 clear is that a lot of the segments were created 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:40.520 for other projects originally, things like TV commercials, sci fi movies, 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:44.959 video games, demo reels, just industry stuff and so forth, 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:47.800 and then a lot of that was edited together and 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:51.240 set to music for these projects. But I don't know 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:53.880 if that's the case with all of the animation or 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.720 just some of it. It's possible some segments were created 0:01:56.760 --> 0:02:00.000 specifically for the mind S Eye movies, but I couldn't 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:01.160 get a clear answer on that. 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.400 Yeah, this is one of those situations where the movie 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:09.760 database listings for this title, beyond the mind side that 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.880 we're going to be talking about here today, seem kind 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.440 of limited. Now, I will add that the actual credits 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:21.480 for the feature itself. I mean, those credits do provide 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:23.720 a lot of names and a lot more of additional info. 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.079 But I feel like to really cite everything and to 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:30.080 source and to point to the source of everything that 0:02:30.080 --> 0:02:32.560 we see in the picture, you're dealing with like a 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:37.520 true sort of multi media archaeology, sort of an exercise 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:40.320 that we're we were not really all about here with 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.240 Weird House Cinema. So we're going to call out some 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.160 of the people that were involved, but we can't possibly 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:50.160 list everyone because again this is an anthology all these 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.480 different films, films that, especially for the time period, often 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:59.520 involved like multiple folks bringing it together from a technological 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.239 in ar two stick standpoint. 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:04.320 Yeah, that's right. So I wonder I bet a lot 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.280 of you out there listening remember The Mind's Eye if 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:11.280 you were around and watching TV, reading, reading Wired magazine 0:03:11.280 --> 0:03:14.919 in the early nineties or something. The Mind's Eye films 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:19.520 were apparently extremely popular on home video. I never rented 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:21.680 one when I was a kid, but I've had friends 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.640 mentioned them before, like, oh, remember the Mind's Eye, Like 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.639 you know, I'm I'm maybe somebody said they rented it 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.240 from Blockbuster or something. But anyway, they were very popular 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:34.400 on home video, initially on VHS and on laser disc 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.760 and then later on DVD, and I can only imagine 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:41.040 the number of hangouts cool hangouts in the early nineties 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:43.520 that began, like dude, you've got to come over and 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:48.080 watch this tape I rented. It's so trippy. And so 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:51.640 that's the series. But again, the specific film that we're 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.400 going to be talking about today is the second movie 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.000 in the Mind's I series, called Beyond The Mind's I 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:02.520 from nineteen ninety two, directed by Michael Boydston and featuring 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:07.400 music by Yan Hamer, who I know on the podcast before, 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:11.160 I've probably called Jan Hammer, but it's Jon Hamer. I 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:13.760 found out by listening to an interview. So when I 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:15.840 got the idea to do one of these one of 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.040 the Mind's Eye movies for the show, I was browsing 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:20.359 through a list of them and I saw one was 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:22.960 by one Head, music by Yon Hamer, and I knew 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:25.080 we had to pick the hammer fest. It had to 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:25.599 be that one. 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:28.760 Yeah. Yeah, Listeners to Weird House Cinema will remember that 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:32.560 Jon Hammer scored the film I Come In Peace aka 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.359 Dark Angel that we previously talked about on the show, 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:40.840 and most famously, of course, did the soundtrack for Miami Vice, 0:04:40.920 --> 0:04:45.920 including that absurdly great track Crockets theme. But anyway, we'll 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:47.760 come back to jon 'hammer in a bit and we'll 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:50.560 talk about him a lot, because basically this is a 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:55.240 film where his music is his front and center. Really, 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:58.560 I mean, it's the visuals and then the music of 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:02.440 Yon Hamer, and that what beyond the Mind's Eye consists. 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.080 Of, Yeah, now, whatever is going through your head right now? 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:09.480 Out there listening in the year twenty twenty four. Whatever 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:13.160 you are thinking about the idea of a combination art 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.839 house showcase and industrial demo reel entirely made out of 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:21.320 CGI from the early nineties, you do need to probably 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.320 shift your thinking a little bit, like, especially if you 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.200 weren't around at the time and don't like you can't 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.080 tap into that mindset again, because people in the nineties 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:37.440 were absolutely losing their minds about how astounding, futuristic and 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:41.440 even beautiful all this stuff was, which is kind of 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:43.839 hard to reconcile with the way it looks now, not 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.240 that it looks not that I'm insulting the way it 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:49.599 looks now, but it's just it was a different time, 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.360 and it's hard to get fully back into that brain space. 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.040 Yeah, I mean, it's it's very much a snapshot of 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.400 the time. I mean, this is a nineteen ninety two release. 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:04.919 This is hutting edge computer generated imagery from the early nineties, 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:08.039 the very early nineties. And you know, I honestly can't 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:10.680 remember if I ever rented this from a video store. 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.440 It's very possible that I did, but I mostly just 0:06:14.480 --> 0:06:17.000 remember seeing the commercials for it, because there were a 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.360 lot of TV commercials for it. As I remember, I'm 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.960 guessing I was watching, you know, it's probably MTV, maybe 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:28.440 the Sci Fi Channel as well, though honestly, I can't 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.000 remember offhand when that started out. I think it may 0:06:31.000 --> 0:06:34.320 have started in ninety two, so maybe not Sci Fi Channel, 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.560 But I feel like MTV at least was prime, prime 0:06:38.600 --> 0:06:42.560 target area for these commercials. And it really did feel exciting. 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:46.919 It felt like a revelation. This is the future. This 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:50.200 is what computer generated imagery can do for us, this 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:52.039 is what video games can do for us, because our 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:54.560 video games were not like this, not yet, but it 0:06:54.680 --> 0:06:57.560 was the promise that they could be. And in general, 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:00.560 it's like, this is the future, and and you had 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:04.600 every reason to be excited. And honestly, I was looking 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:06.320 back on I was thinking about the fact that, well, 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.040 of course I was a child at the time. I 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:11.440 was a kid, so of course I was excited. You know. 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.880 Did adults feel the same way, Well, obviously they did, 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:18.640 because on one hand, these videos were highly successful. They were, 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.040 you know, on the best sellers lists and all. And 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.160 I looked around and I found that Roger Ebert was 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.760 a big fan. On the Cisco and Ebert Show, there's 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:29.960 a particular episode I was able to. You can look 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:32.640 it up on the archives and find the full episode. 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:36.680 It's the one where they they review Lorenzo's Oil and 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.800 Chaplain and some other you know, kind of stuffy and 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:45.640 certainly non non futuristic movie. But at the end of it, 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:48.640 we have Roger Ebert's video pick of the Week and 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.320 it is Beyond the Mind's Eye, and he loves it. 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.480 He says, quote, one day computers will be able to 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.880 create entire movies, and the visual possibilities are breadth. To 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:03.240 look at where this shot takes us, and they cut 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.240 to one of the you know, the otherworldly vistas that 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.520 Beyond the Mind's Eye gives us, and he closes up 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:10.800 as saying, it's quite a trip. 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.960 One day computers will animate entire movies. 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.640 And they would like Yeah. In nineteen ninety five, that's 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:22.400 when we got Toy Story from Pixar, the first fully 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.920 CGI full length motion pictures, So yeah, it was just 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:29.480 about to happen basically, like they were already in production 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.280 on Toys. I think the descript for Toy Story was 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:35.280 kind of like finalized in ninety three, so like really 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.840 it was about to happen. So I feel like Ebert 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.120 was correct on all part, on all accounts here, this 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.040 is essentially what we're going to see, and we have 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.960 seen the perfection to some extent. I think of CGI 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:52.400 animated films and the Pixar Disney DreamWorks mold, though of 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.600 course it's worth pointing out that things like photorealistic CGI 0:08:58.280 --> 0:08:59.880 has a lot more to contend with. You know, there's 0:08:59.880 --> 0:09:03.440 a more uncanny valley to traverse in that realm, and 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:07.080 so I don't know if we've seen anything that truly 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:08.559 succeeds in that category. 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:11.440 Now, if you go back and read what people were 0:09:11.600 --> 0:09:16.120 saying about these movies at the time, one very common 0:09:16.200 --> 0:09:20.840 theme is that the Mindseye films are regarded as trippy 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.880 or psychedelic. Now, that might not seem all that strange 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:29.240 for a computer animated music video film, but that's not 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:35.040 necessarily said about all animated films, or even all art films. So, like, 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:39.719 what is it about this CGI package film idea that 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.600 specifically lends itself to descriptions having to do with with 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:48.000 visionary experiences or psychedelic drugs. I was thinking about this, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:50.440 and this is a theme I'll come back to multiple 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.360 times in the episode I've been thinking a lot about 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:59.320 linking techniques in the like just practical techniques of computer animation, 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:03.000 to the effect that the film has on us, and 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.120 I was wondering if the trippiness has something to do 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:11.720 with the with the particular capabilities of computer animation at 0:10:11.720 --> 0:10:16.920 the time that by algorithmically changing dimension values across time 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:19.040 for like a shape or an image on the screen, 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:23.800 you can create these shifting morphing forms which are all 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.559 throughout the animated segments in beyond the mind's eye. I 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.840 would say every single one of them has an image, 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:34.840 like a shape or an object that morphs into something else, 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:38.439 and these changes from one thing to another very much 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.119 mirror the form shifting visual effects that people commonly experience 0:10:42.160 --> 0:10:45.719 on some psychedelic compounds. So I wonder if that's one 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.840 part of it, that particular capability of computer animation and 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:53.040 its similarity to psychedelic visual effects. Of course, having one 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:56.240 shape morph into another is something you can do in 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.400 traditional hand drawn animation as well, but you see it 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:03.040 a lot in early CGI, and I wonder if it's 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.800 because it was like easier to automate by some kind 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:10.119 of stepwise manipulation or algorithm of just the number variables 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.560 that you use to create the dimensions of an image. 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:18.200 Another characteristic that I wonder if people were picking up 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:22.320 on in describing this movie as psychedelic or trippy, is 0:11:22.440 --> 0:11:26.079 just that the imagery looks super, super weird in a 0:11:26.120 --> 0:11:30.000 way that nobody would have been familiar with before CGI. 0:11:30.880 --> 0:11:32.640 And again this would have to do with the practical 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.600 state of the industry, Like it was impossible to code 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:40.240 a realistic looking human face with computer animation at this time, 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:43.520 so realism is off the table. But you also could 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.640 not easily reproduce familiar hand drawn art styles that had 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.720 been around for years in traditional animation, So you would, 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:55.560 by necessity, be establishing a whole new visual language for 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:59.440 representing forms from the real world, especially like animals and 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.760 plants humans, And so by necessity they look the way 0:12:03.800 --> 0:12:07.160 they're rendered is very unfamiliar to us. It doesn't look 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:10.839 either like reality or like any art we're familiar with. 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:14.040 Yeah, one thing that becomes obvious as you watch Beyond 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:18.520 the Mind's Eye is that a convincing reproduction of the 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:22.280 human body was not really achievable at this point, but 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.760 we still tried, because that's that's that's human art. We 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.079 always try to capture our own form in the forms 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.400 of animals in our vicinity, and yeah, they don't quite 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.640 hit the mark. But in not hitting the mark completely, 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:39.880 there is this it's close enough, you know, it doesn't 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:44.400 you know, we're we're vain pattern seeking creatures. So if 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:47.440 you get close enough to a human form, we'll identify 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.840 with it and we'll work with it. Right, So it's still, 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:55.160 you know, engrossing, even if some of the characters are 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:57.160 still a bit on the grotesque side. 0:12:57.000 --> 0:12:59.679 Of things, which is the segment that has a human 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:02.960 figure but it just has leopard print flesh. 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.520 We we'll have to maybybe that'll come to me as 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:10.199 we get into the blow by blow plot of this movie. 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:13.240 But but yeah, you have things like like that that occur, 0:13:13.280 --> 0:13:15.920 and yeah, you can still you can still connect with them, 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:18.520 you know. I was reminded in all of this, like 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.440 trying to think about like how it felt to see 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.240 these things, how it felt to see these kind of representations, 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:27.720 even if they, you know, were very by today's standards, 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.079 like crude representations of of like a human body or 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:35.280 an animal and whatnot. I'm reminded a little bit of 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:40.280 some of the these the AI generated images that we've 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:42.880 seen more of them. I'm thinking more of the things 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.880 that were really hitting maybe a year or two ago, 0:13:46.840 --> 0:13:48.920 you know, during the era where it's like that you 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.080 could definitely look at the fingers and count the fingers 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.560 to see if something was was computer generated or not 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.200 AI generated or not. And I think one of the 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:00.440 things about those images is that, like the images we're 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:02.400 seeing and beyond the mind's eyes when they first hit, 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:09.040 they are not achieving like photorealism, they're not completely convincing. 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.080 You see them and you know something is off, but 0:14:12.240 --> 0:14:15.720 also in it being off, it's something that you haven't 0:14:15.800 --> 0:14:18.560 quite seen before, you're like, because I remember the first 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:21.440 time I saw some of those AI generated images, I 0:14:21.480 --> 0:14:23.480 was like, who is this artist? Like it's clearly the 0:14:23.520 --> 0:14:26.160 same person because they all kind of look the same, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.800 but it's a little different than anything I've seen before, 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:32.440 and that makes it enthralling. Then then you get bored 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:35.880 with it and you move on. But the technology moves 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:39.480 on as well. The technology advances and it's no longer 0:14:39.680 --> 0:14:44.040 capable or it's no longer creating things like it was before, 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:45.320 but the mood is still. 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:45.480 There, you know. 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:50.280 Yeah, Yeah, Now in terms of your point about like 0:14:50.520 --> 0:14:54.640 psychedelia and the imagery that we see and beyond the 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:58.040 mind's eye. It is interesting to think about how there's 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:01.960 probably a number of nexus points between like various counterculture 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.760 movements and folks as well as some of the individuals 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.640 who are like pushing these developments. You know, I'm thinking 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:14.560 of you know, sort of Silicon Valley types, that convergence 0:15:14.760 --> 0:15:19.320 of programming and art, like those worlds are probably you know, 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:20.960 inevitably bumping up against each other. 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.560 Here. You can just feel the techno hippie culture dripping 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:28.640 off of this. It's very it's a very West Coast product. 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.960 Yeah, Yeah. And at the same time, like think about it, 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:36.000 It's ninety two. A new millennium is coming, and it's 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:38.560 coming fast, and so there are a lot of ideas 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.240 about like what is going to happen, How are we 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.400 transforming for this new millennium, How is technology going to 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.520 change us? How can we elevate ourselves through it? So 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.880 there's a you know, there's always a certain amount of anxiety, obviously, 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:54.920 but there is also a certain amount of technological optimism 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.840 that's very strong, especially in beyond the Mind's eye. 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:01.560 I mean, it's quite literally promising to take you to 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.960 new realms. There is even today, looking back on it now, 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:11.680 a genuinely infectious sense of exploration and enthusiasm for the 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:13.000 new and the weird in it. 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:16.840 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, you can also see 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:19.600 other examples of this, you know, sort of like trance 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:24.800 music culture taking up various sort of futurism ideas, you know, 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.240 thinking about the blending of say, you know, trance music 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:31.080 and the writings of Terence mckinna and so forth. So yeah, 0:16:31.120 --> 0:16:33.080 I feel like Beyond the Mind's Eye seems to set 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.160 right alongside that. And also the title is just so perfect. 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:39.440 I'm always a little bit shocked to realize that it's 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:41.560 called Beyond the Mind's Eye because it's the second in 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:43.640 a series and the first was just the Mind's Eye. 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:46.960 Because Beyond the Mind's Eye is perfect because there is 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:49.680 this sense that like it is promising to show you 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.760 things that you cannot imagine yet like it takes this 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:58.120 technological evolution in order for us to even conceive of 0:16:58.160 --> 0:17:01.120 these ideas, you know, like that's that's how this hit, 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.280 that's how this felt back in the nineties. 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.800 Well, as Professor Brian Oblivion taught us the television screen 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.639 is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, it is 0:17:10.720 --> 0:17:13.720 part of the physical structure of the brain. And so 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.320 by showing you this movie, they are offering you a 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:20.159 brain upgrade. That's what it feels like. 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.960 Yeah, And so hopefully we'll be able to hold on 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:26.439 to that as we continue discussing this film, because on 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.760 one level, we do have to look at it as 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.120 a thing that doesn't hit the same anymore, that is 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:35.800 going to feel more uncanny than it did, that is 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:38.240 going to feel rougher around the edges than it did 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:40.800 back in the day. But at the same time, I 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:44.679 just want to be clear that nobody can discount how 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:47.960 impressive this felt back in the early nineties, and it 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:53.400 is a snapshot of cutting edge technological artistic achievement of 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:54.199 that time period. 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.879 Well, despite the tremendous advancements in what's possible with computer 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.840 animation since then. I would kind of have a hard 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:05.359 time imagining someone could watch this and not sort of 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:09.720 love it. Now, Yeah, yeah, what what is there to 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:11.959 not like about Beyond the Mind's Eye? 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.200 Yeah, because it's gonna I think. On one hand, the music, 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.639 of course still stands there. Jon Hammer's music is tremendous 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:20.520 and so that's going to pull you in and if 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:23.120 nothing else, it's going to relax you. The images are 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:26.000 going to relax you. There's nothing here that can hurt you. 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:30.200 This movie is like a nice, warm hug. It spoons 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:34.120 you for its runtime of what an hour and some change, 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:36.440 and yeah, you can you can giggle a little bit 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:39.600 at how some of the effects hold up today, but 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.800 it's it's still it's still impressive, all right now. Sadly, 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.359 I could not find a rip of the TV spot 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.960 for Beyond the Mind's Eye, either to include or just 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:53.000 to re experience it, because I know I must have 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:56.800 seen this commercial hundreds of times back in the day, 0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:59.440 but as far as I could tell, nobody has ripped 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:01.000 it in upload. So that's a shame. 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:03.199 I went looking for that as well and could not 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:03.679 find it. 0:19:04.000 --> 0:19:07.159 Now. Fortunately you can find the film itself. There are 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.640 a lot of streaming options for it out on the web, 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.080 and you can still buy it on DVD. That's assuming 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:14.760 you don't want to go retro and get yourself a 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:16.280 VHS or a laser disc. 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:18.760 I know we've talked about this before, but when are 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:20.920 laser discs going to come back in the same way 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:24.680 Vinyl has. It just feels right, doesn't it, that we'd 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:25.200 go back. 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:27.920 To laser It seems like there would be There probably 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.919 are a laser disc enthusiasts out there. I know for 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.480 a while they held on because there were still certain 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:38.040 films and there. This may still be the case where 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.480 there had not been a release superior to the laser 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:53.320 disc release, So I'm not sure. All right, Well, let's 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:55.320 briefly talk about some of the folks involved here. This 0:19:55.359 --> 0:19:57.320 is going to be a little different than usual because 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.800 we have no human cast, but we do have there 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:02.560 are We're ultimately a lot of humans involved in this. 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:06.320 We're not going to highlight all of them. But credited 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:09.320 as the director and as an editor on this film 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:13.480 is Michael Boydstone. The same year, he had also worked 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:17.399 with musician Pete Bardens I believe of Camel Fame on 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.480 a project called Watercolors. I wasn't able to find streaming 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:25.240 content of this, but it apparently combined footage of running 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:31.480 water from Yellowstone with Pete Barden's music. Boydston would go 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:34.119 on to work with Thomas Dolby on nineteen ninety four's 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:36.720 The Gate to the Mind's Eye, which he also directed. 0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.800 And he also worked on a project called Televoid in 0:20:39.880 --> 0:20:42.159 ninety seven, which I'm not saying. I think it's an 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:46.120 unrelated project that does similar things like using different different 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:50.200 computer animated shorts and sort of stitching them together into 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:52.120 a cohesive full picture. 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:56.359 Did Boydston work on the Mindseie movie that had Kansas 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:57.560 music by Kansas? 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:00.960 I don't think he did have to. You know, there 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:03.879 are different people involved in these Different people did the music, 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.320 like Thomas Dolby again was on the Gate to the 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:11.560 Mind's Eye, but he Boydsten went on to work on 0:21:11.720 --> 0:21:14.840 a number of educational programs, including at least one episode 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:17.080 of Bill and I The Science Guy, as well as 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:20.960 a series called Diz Kids, and he served as cinematographer 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:23.720 on various TV and film projects, including the twenty sixteen 0:21:23.760 --> 0:21:29.000 film Beta Test starring Manu Bennett. And I wasn't able 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.439 to find much else about like his role in this 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:34.280 production and how it went down. So I was looking 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.280 around and I found his contact information. I reached out 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:39.320 to him and I was like, hey, can we ask 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:41.720 you a few questions about Beyond the Mind's Eye? And 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:43.560 he said, he said, sure, you know it feels like 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:45.960 several lifetimes ago, but I'd be up for that, so 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.760 we sent him some questions. As of this recording time, 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:52.320 we have not heard back from him, but if we 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.320 hear back from him before publication, we'll tack it on 0:21:56.560 --> 0:21:58.600 at the end of this episode, and if he gets 0:21:58.640 --> 0:22:01.800 back to us after the episode is published, well, then 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:04.720 we'll include it in a future listener mail segment. I 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:07.399 can't wait to know more, all right, we already mentioned 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:12.080 Jon Hamer born nineteen forty eight check American musician, composer, 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.119 and record producer again, best known for his tracks Miami 0:22:15.200 --> 0:22:18.400 Vice Theme and Crockett's Theme, both from the nineteen eighty 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:23.640 series Miamivice Again. Crockett's theme especially is just incredible. That's 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:25.920 when you just need a You've probably heard it before, 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:28.880 but if you haven't, go listen to it. Tremendous track. 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.320 He won two Grammy Awards for the Miami Vice Theme song. 0:22:32.760 --> 0:22:35.719 His other scores include two episodes of Tales from the Crypt, 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:39.679 night Rider two thousand, nineteen ninety six is Beastmester three, 0:22:39.720 --> 0:22:42.840 The I of Bracus, and of course that nineteen ninety 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:46.199 Dolph Lugrean film I Come In Piece aka Dark Angel, 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:48.680 which we previously discussed on Weird House Cinema. 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:53.240 Before recording this episode, we were both watching a news 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:57.679 segment where Jan Hamer was being interviewed primarily about his 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:01.879 work on Beyond the Mind's Eye. Before for the interview began, 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:06.360 there was just the sickest ever clip of him absolutely 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:10.359 shredding a strap on keyboard what you might be tempted 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:12.400 to call a key tar, but I don't know if 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:13.440 he called it a key tar. 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:17.119 I've seen it referred to as a signature model link 0:23:17.280 --> 0:23:20.640 keyboard and maybe our synth junkies can chime in more 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.800 on that, but I've read that, like one of the 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:25.440 things about him is the Yeah, he's very much a 0:23:25.560 --> 0:23:30.920 keyboard synth guy, and he developed in augmented a way 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:34.399 so that he could jam out on a keyboard like 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:37.680 it was a guitar, like with the energy of rocking 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:40.960 out to a guitar, and as someone who cannot rock 0:23:41.040 --> 0:23:43.480 out on a keyboard or a guitar, I can't really 0:23:43.520 --> 0:23:47.080 speak to the differences there. Joe, you have guitar experience, 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:49.680 maybe you can tell us what that might entail. 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:52.199 Oh well, I mean performing with a guitar can be 0:23:52.240 --> 0:23:55.359 a kind of fun sort of semi athletic thing because 0:23:55.400 --> 0:23:57.560 you're standing up. You can run around with it, and 0:23:57.600 --> 0:24:00.119 you can sort of dance while you're playing it. Yes, 0:24:00.200 --> 0:24:01.919 you can sort of dance while playing a keyboard. I 0:24:01.920 --> 0:24:04.480 have less experience there because I can barely play the keyboard, 0:24:04.600 --> 0:24:08.040 so I don't I don't know. Yeah, you can't run 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:10.480 around with keyboard unless you turn it into a strap 0:24:10.480 --> 0:24:13.600 on keyboard, like like this thing that I'm tempted to 0:24:13.640 --> 0:24:14.400 call a guitar. 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.359 I guess, like thinking of clips, I've seen of spirited 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:21.399 guitar players and spirited keyboard players, because there are some 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:25.320 very spirited keyboard players, you know. I mean there's a 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:27.679 different type of rocking out that it can occur. I 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:30.240 guess you can if you're like really rocking out on 0:24:30.320 --> 0:24:32.639 the on the synth or the keyboard, like you're still 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:36.760 localized to that machine. You can't like run the stage 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:37.600 or anything, so. 0:24:37.720 --> 0:24:40.240 Right, you can kind of headbang, I guess while you're playing, 0:24:40.280 --> 0:24:43.719 but yeah, your feet need to stay roughly where they 0:24:43.720 --> 0:24:45.439 are now. 0:24:45.520 --> 0:24:49.560 Johanhamer's music is widely available on music streaming platforms, and 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:52.800 that includes Beyond the Mind's Eye as an album. You 0:24:52.800 --> 0:24:55.240 can listen to it on you know, Apple Music, Spotify, 0:24:55.280 --> 0:24:57.800 wherever you get your digital music. He has a lot 0:24:57.840 --> 0:24:59.439 of other track I was going through some of his 0:24:59.480 --> 0:25:03.080 other album and taking him in. There's a nineteen seventy 0:25:03.119 --> 0:25:05.840 five album of his title The First Seven Days, and 0:25:05.880 --> 0:25:09.600 there's a track on there titled Light Slash Sun, and 0:25:09.640 --> 0:25:12.400 I thought it was very good, all right. The producer 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:15.359 of Beyond the Mind's Eye was Stephen Churchill born nineteen 0:25:15.400 --> 0:25:18.879 fifty seven. He produced, I believe all of the Mind's 0:25:18.880 --> 0:25:22.080 Eye videos, beginning with nineteen nineties The Mind's Eye, followed 0:25:22.240 --> 0:25:24.920 by this film, and then ninety four is The Gate 0:25:24.960 --> 0:25:27.359 to the Mind's Eye, ninety six is Odyssey into the 0:25:27.400 --> 0:25:31.920 Mind's Eye, ninety seven's Computer Animation Showcase, nineteen ninety eight's 0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:36.240 Ancient Alien, and nineteen ninety eight's Computer Animation Celebration. I 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:39.480 don't know why the the title breakdowns seems too much. 0:25:39.560 --> 0:25:42.240 At this point, we're no longer talking about the Mind's Eye. 0:25:42.800 --> 0:25:45.840 He previously worked as an animator on Disney's The Black 0:25:45.880 --> 0:25:49.120 Cauldron in nineteen eighty five. He was a character designer 0:25:49.119 --> 0:25:51.480 on The Great Mouse Detective in eighty six, a background 0:25:51.600 --> 0:25:54.280 artist on Oliver and Company in eighty eight and an 0:25:54.359 --> 0:25:57.399 in between artist on The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine. 0:25:57.680 --> 0:25:59.679 I remember the Great Mate. He was a character designer. 0:25:59.720 --> 0:26:03.160 The Great Mouse Detective had some extremely scary characters when 0:26:03.160 --> 0:26:06.160 I was little, at least I remember I rented that one, 0:26:06.200 --> 0:26:08.800 and there's this bat with sharp teeth on it that 0:26:08.960 --> 0:26:13.280 freaked me out. Also, it has a rat villain voiced 0:26:13.359 --> 0:26:16.000 by Vincent Price, I think, who gets very scary at 0:26:16.000 --> 0:26:16.320 the end. 0:26:16.720 --> 0:26:20.000 Oh yeah, yeah, that is definitely a Vincent Price role, 0:26:20.000 --> 0:26:22.400 and he is quite good. I'm trying to remember who 0:26:22.760 --> 0:26:27.520 voiced the bat. Nobody ever heard of Candy Candido, not 0:26:27.640 --> 0:26:30.040 a I believe he was a radio performer and voice actor, 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:33.600 but I don't have a lot of familiarity with his work. 0:26:34.240 --> 0:26:37.480 Well, the two villainous rodents in this movie were They 0:26:37.520 --> 0:26:40.640 both freaked me out when I was young, So so 0:26:40.680 --> 0:26:41.960 maybe he designed them. 0:26:42.320 --> 0:26:44.480 And then ne was Sherlock Holmes in that? 0:26:44.880 --> 0:26:45.359 Oh really? 0:26:45.560 --> 0:26:46.359 Yeah? 0:26:46.560 --> 0:26:49.600 Oh wait, but Sherlock Holmes is just like the human 0:26:49.640 --> 0:26:52.399 who happens to live in the room above the basle 0:26:52.480 --> 0:26:53.600 The Great Mouse Detective. 0:26:54.320 --> 0:26:55.880 I think you're right. It's been a long time since 0:26:55.920 --> 0:26:56.560 I've seen it. 0:26:56.480 --> 0:26:59.080 Like it's not primarily an adventure about Sherlock Holmes. It 0:26:59.119 --> 0:27:02.280 is about his mouse equivalent, Basel though whatever. 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:05.480 Yeah, the Black Cauldron is when I've been tempted to revisit, 0:27:06.000 --> 0:27:08.360 but I have not yet gotten around to it. It's 0:27:08.400 --> 0:27:11.120 got some great dark fantasy elements to it, but it's 0:27:11.119 --> 0:27:14.560 not one that I think was well regarded at the 0:27:14.600 --> 0:27:16.520 time of its release, and I don't know if people 0:27:16.520 --> 0:27:19.520 have warmed up to it or not now. Obviously, this 0:27:19.600 --> 0:27:24.320 project encompasses the computer effects work of various individuals, and 0:27:24.359 --> 0:27:25.840 again we're not going to be able to have time 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:28.800 to really do justice to everyone, but we'll reference some 0:27:28.880 --> 0:27:31.359 of them as they come up. I know that in 0:27:31.400 --> 0:27:35.800 the movie databases, the Flora section is credited to yo 0:27:35.920 --> 0:27:40.120 Chiro Kawaguchi, and Journey to the Fourth Dimension is credited 0:27:40.119 --> 0:27:43.280 to Rick Harper and David Thornton. But of course, is 0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:45.840 that that's just some of the people involved in this, 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:47.040 and there are many others. 0:27:47.359 --> 0:27:49.960 Now, as we said earlier, the movie is sort of 0:27:50.560 --> 0:27:53.399 you could kind of think of it as like just 0:27:53.440 --> 0:27:56.919 a series of music videos. So that's a little misleading 0:27:57.000 --> 0:28:01.040 because they're they do kind of have an narrative flow 0:28:01.119 --> 0:28:04.120 in a way, but they are a it's a series 0:28:04.160 --> 0:28:08.400 of discrete musical numbers on the soundtrack that are each 0:28:08.520 --> 0:28:12.640 paired with an animation sequence that maybe sort of one 0:28:12.760 --> 0:28:16.760 continuous theme throughout, or might just be just a Shmorgus 0:28:16.760 --> 0:28:17.720 board of imagery. 0:28:18.280 --> 0:28:20.600 That's right. And you know, the interesting thing is, like 0:28:20.640 --> 0:28:24.600 any anthology, we kind of have a host. Yeah, we 0:28:24.680 --> 0:28:27.360 have we have something or someone that is going to 0:28:27.400 --> 0:28:30.159 introduce us to the concept of beyond the mind's eye. 0:28:30.240 --> 0:28:34.080 We get a floating virtual bald head with these you know, 0:28:34.160 --> 0:28:38.240 polygons on its surface. It almost looks I don't know 0:28:38.240 --> 0:28:39.960 if you caught the same thing. Maybe I'm out of 0:28:40.000 --> 0:28:41.640 my mind here, but it looks almost kind of like 0:28:41.680 --> 0:28:43.400 a floating Jeff Bezos head. 0:28:45.600 --> 0:28:47.720 Yeah yeah, there's a little bit of Bezos to it. 0:28:48.840 --> 0:28:50.840 Yeah yeah, I think that's a strong comparison. 0:28:51.240 --> 0:28:55.000 Anyway, the bezos head tells us you are now entering 0:28:55.040 --> 0:28:59.280 a world inside the essence of your imagination, look within 0:28:59.360 --> 0:29:04.760 your dreammes. They can take you beyond the mind's eye. 0:29:05.360 --> 0:29:08.320 And then we begin to zoom. We begin to zoom 0:29:08.400 --> 0:29:13.360 through just a tunnel of textures and colors and things 0:29:13.360 --> 0:29:16.360 start to pop out at us. And it is a 0:29:16.480 --> 0:29:20.720 fairly overwhelming experience. At first, you're just like plunging down 0:29:20.800 --> 0:29:25.480 this tunnel into darkness with colors emerging from out of everywhere, 0:29:25.480 --> 0:29:27.560 and you don't even know what you're looking at, and 0:29:27.600 --> 0:29:29.520 you can't quite make sense of it. And by the 0:29:29.600 --> 0:29:33.040 time you sort of focus on one shape and image, 0:29:33.080 --> 0:29:36.680 it's turning into something else. And I can see why 0:29:36.720 --> 0:29:40.480 they put this animated segment first, because even in retrospect, 0:29:40.560 --> 0:29:42.520 it kind of takes your breath away, and I'm sure 0:29:42.560 --> 0:29:45.560 in nineteen ninety two you'd just be like, Wow, I 0:29:45.680 --> 0:29:48.760 can't even begin to describe what I'm looking at. 0:29:49.080 --> 0:29:51.920 Yeah, because especially if you're watching this on VHS, you 0:29:51.960 --> 0:29:54.240 can't just skip to the next chapter. You'd have to 0:29:54.280 --> 0:29:57.200 fast forward through stuff, and so it really needs to 0:29:57.320 --> 0:30:01.280 hit hard immediately, and it does. Just lots shifting psychedelic 0:30:01.320 --> 0:30:07.280 CGI landscapes, fractals and particles, virtual reality bodies, including a 0:30:07.320 --> 0:30:10.640 pair of lovers who merge in their love making into 0:30:10.640 --> 0:30:14.920 a single extra dimensional dragonfly. And then there's a butterfly, 0:30:15.120 --> 0:30:20.360 a bird, a terosaur, a haunted castle, an electric vortex, 0:30:20.440 --> 0:30:22.960 and then finally like a reading rainbow butterfly. 0:30:23.240 --> 0:30:25.920 I love when it turns into the haunted castle, because 0:30:25.920 --> 0:30:28.480 that has nothing to do with anything that came before. 0:30:28.520 --> 0:30:31.680 But suddenly we're in Spirit Halloween and this is just 0:30:31.720 --> 0:30:35.480 an animated castle. It's a whoo and bats flying through 0:30:35.520 --> 0:30:38.320 the sky. But then when we get close to the bats, 0:30:38.360 --> 0:30:41.680 we realize they're not bats, they're terosaurs with devil tongues. 0:30:42.040 --> 0:30:46.040 And one of the terosaurs crashes into the quote camera 0:30:46.280 --> 0:30:48.800 and breaks the glass of the lens, sort of just 0:30:48.840 --> 0:30:54.040 spiderwebs of fracture across the screen, and then the does 0:30:54.080 --> 0:30:57.680 the terrator kind of like slide down like a It 0:30:57.720 --> 0:31:00.000 does like a bug smeared on a windshield. 0:31:00.400 --> 0:31:04.520 So, on one hand, this whole intro bit feels very demo, 0:31:04.840 --> 0:31:07.440 you know. It feels like they're saying someone is saying, 0:31:07.560 --> 0:31:10.719 look what CGI can do for you. But on the 0:31:10.760 --> 0:31:15.440 other hand, we are definitely seeing parts of a sequence 0:31:15.520 --> 0:31:19.360 from the nineteen ninety two film The lawnmower Man. This, 0:31:19.440 --> 0:31:23.880 of course, was a science fiction horror movie directed by 0:31:23.880 --> 0:31:28.240 Brett Leonard and originally sort of kind of based on 0:31:28.240 --> 0:31:30.800 a Stephen King's story, but I believe he was able 0:31:30.840 --> 0:31:32.920 to get his name taken off of that. The original 0:31:32.960 --> 0:31:36.280 lawnmower Man short story is very creepy but has nothing 0:31:36.320 --> 0:31:38.880 to do with virtual reality or computers. 0:31:39.160 --> 0:31:40.880 Yeah, I've looked at this up before. I think the 0:31:40.960 --> 0:31:44.600 movie has nothing to do with this story except that 0:31:44.640 --> 0:31:47.200 there is a guy who operates a lawnmower. That's it. 0:31:47.800 --> 0:31:50.400 Yeah, And so there's a scene I had to go. 0:31:50.840 --> 0:31:53.280 I was able to find this online include a link 0:31:53.320 --> 0:31:55.240 for here, jove you wanted to check it out. But 0:31:55.720 --> 0:31:59.920 there's a sequence in The lawnmower Man where the character 0:32:00.200 --> 0:32:03.760 job Smith played by Jeff fay uh he had he 0:32:03.960 --> 0:32:09.280 invites his girlfriend Marnie Burke played by Jenny Wright, to, hey, 0:32:09.320 --> 0:32:12.120 come join me in the cyber realm for some of 0:32:12.160 --> 0:32:14.920 the cyber sex. And so they're in these you know, 0:32:15.280 --> 0:32:18.640 virtual reality harnesses, and then we see in the virtual 0:32:18.680 --> 0:32:22.680 realm they are these two lovers that you know, embrace 0:32:22.760 --> 0:32:25.440 each other and then they sort of like merge with 0:32:25.520 --> 0:32:29.640 each other become a dragonfly. But in The lawnmower Man, 0:32:29.720 --> 0:32:32.800 this sequence takes a dark turn. She like gets stuck 0:32:33.200 --> 0:32:36.560 in the like the ground or something, and then she 0:32:36.680 --> 0:32:39.800 starts freaking out and he turns into a monster and 0:32:39.880 --> 0:32:43.640 eats her. So we do not see anybody turn into 0:32:43.640 --> 0:32:46.120 a monster and beyond the mind's eye because Obviously that 0:32:46.160 --> 0:32:48.480 doesn't fit the vibe here. This is not this is 0:32:48.520 --> 0:32:51.960 not about feeling anxious about technology. This isn't about being 0:32:51.960 --> 0:32:54.600 afraid that technology is going to eat you. This is 0:32:54.640 --> 0:32:59.000 about what technology can transform you into. And it's not 0:32:59.080 --> 0:33:01.280 a monster. It is you know, the eternity. 0:33:01.600 --> 0:33:04.760 Well, but we do go from the cybersex to the 0:33:04.800 --> 0:33:08.680 Haunted Castle. But it's I guess nothing bad appears to 0:33:08.720 --> 0:33:11.680 happen to the two lovers on the screen. It's just 0:33:11.680 --> 0:33:13.480 like we're looking at something else now, and it is 0:33:13.480 --> 0:33:14.400 a haunted castle. 0:33:14.560 --> 0:33:17.120 Yeah, that haunted castle looks inviting though. It's like it's 0:33:17.160 --> 0:33:19.840 like you said, spirit Halloween territory. It's like, don't you 0:33:19.880 --> 0:33:21.920 want to go over there and meet the fun vampires 0:33:21.960 --> 0:33:22.480 that live there? 0:33:22.560 --> 0:33:25.480 Yeah, that's castle. They give out the full sized candy 0:33:25.520 --> 0:33:26.640 bars exactly. 0:33:27.120 --> 0:33:31.000 Now. Multiple individuals and I believe studios worked on the 0:33:31.000 --> 0:33:36.040 CGI sequences for The lawnmower Man, but they include let's see, 0:33:36.080 --> 0:33:38.840 there's a Gimmel Everett, who lived nineteen fifty one through 0:33:38.880 --> 0:33:42.880 twenty eleven, who also worked on ninety five's Virtuosity and 0:33:43.000 --> 0:33:45.200 nineteen eighty eight Killer Clowns from Outer Space. 0:33:46.000 --> 0:33:49.520 The Virtuosity is the movie with a virtual reality character 0:33:49.600 --> 0:33:52.920 played by Russell Crowe who is a virtual serial killer 0:33:53.240 --> 0:33:56.160 who comes into the real world. And the main thing 0:33:56.200 --> 0:33:58.160 I remember about it is that the trailer for the 0:33:58.200 --> 0:34:01.240 movie had Russell Crowe walking through mall while playing Stay 0:34:01.240 --> 0:34:01.719 in Alive. 0:34:03.440 --> 0:34:05.560 Yeah. I think they basically they three D print him 0:34:05.600 --> 0:34:08.600 and he's a carbon based organism with blue blood or 0:34:08.640 --> 0:34:09.359 something like that. 0:34:09.600 --> 0:34:12.440 It's reverse tron is the situation. 0:34:12.880 --> 0:34:16.919 Yeah, sounds like a great idea. I think I saw 0:34:16.920 --> 0:34:19.319 it back in the day and I remember enjoying it. 0:34:19.360 --> 0:34:23.520 But let's see. We also have Helene Plotkin who also 0:34:23.560 --> 0:34:26.879 worked on something that she's credited for, nineteen ninety one's 0:34:26.880 --> 0:34:29.680 Liquid Television. Liquid Television that was a similar situation where 0:34:29.680 --> 0:34:34.080 they're bringing in different like short films and other short projects. 0:34:34.480 --> 0:34:37.400 And then she also was involved in nineteen ninety nine's 0:34:37.400 --> 0:34:41.480 Toy Story two. And then there's Brett Leonard born nineteen 0:34:41.560 --> 0:34:44.680 fifty nine, who also worked on Virtuosity and Killer Clowns 0:34:44.680 --> 0:34:47.480 from out He Space. He also directed the music video 0:34:47.520 --> 0:34:50.560 for Peter Gabriel's Kiss That Frog in two thousand and four, 0:34:51.000 --> 0:34:54.720 which I had great track, amazing album, big fan of Us. 0:34:55.239 --> 0:34:58.480 The other interesting thing about Brett Leonard, who again it's 0:34:59.680 --> 0:35:02.480 some connection to this film is that he directed the 0:35:02.560 --> 0:35:05.920 nineteen eighty nine film The Dead Pit, a horror movie 0:35:05.960 --> 0:35:09.440 that is best known to VHS fans for its box 0:35:09.560 --> 0:35:14.000 VHS box with the light up eyes. So look up 0:35:14.000 --> 0:35:15.719 an image of this. If you ever went into a 0:35:15.800 --> 0:35:18.960 VHS rental store back in the day, you inevitably saw this. 0:35:19.320 --> 0:35:21.760 And if the people running the place remember to refresh 0:35:21.760 --> 0:35:24.600 its batteries, it's the eyes on the front of the 0:35:24.680 --> 0:35:26.480 VHS box would light up. 0:35:26.760 --> 0:35:29.160 That's a really good gimmick. I you know, I feel 0:35:29.239 --> 0:35:33.120 I was a connoisseur of VHS boxes in the nineties 0:35:33.120 --> 0:35:35.000 in the video store, and I don't remember this. 0:35:35.640 --> 0:35:37.560 Yeah, I mean it's not a I don't think. I 0:35:37.560 --> 0:35:39.480 don't know anything about the film itself, and I never 0:35:39.480 --> 0:35:41.719 rented it. How could I. I was a child and 0:35:41.760 --> 0:35:45.880 this was scary, But you know it's I've seen it 0:35:46.480 --> 0:35:49.680 for sale and you know, prize by collectors. So anyway, 0:35:49.680 --> 0:35:52.360 those are just some of the folks that were connected 0:35:52.480 --> 0:35:55.920 to these sequences from The lawnmower Man, which have been 0:35:55.960 --> 0:35:59.319 repurposed here in Beyond the Mind's Eye. And this won't 0:35:59.320 --> 0:36:01.920 be the last time we see lawnmower man footage in 0:36:01.600 --> 0:36:02.560 this feature. 0:36:03.200 --> 0:36:06.359 Okay, well, that's just the introductory segment. We cannot speak 0:36:06.400 --> 0:36:08.759 at great length about all of the segments in the movie, 0:36:08.840 --> 0:36:10.840 but we'll try to talk about at least most of 0:36:10.880 --> 0:36:13.200 them for a bit. The second one I thought was 0:36:13.239 --> 0:36:17.120 also pretty interesting. This one is called Seeds, and it's 0:36:17.160 --> 0:36:21.120 an animation on the concept of pan spermia, with like 0:36:21.239 --> 0:36:23.440 a nut or a thing that looks kind of like 0:36:23.440 --> 0:36:28.760 a pumpkin seed flying through space and then landing on Earth. 0:36:28.840 --> 0:36:30.359 I don't know why I said a pumpkin seed, because 0:36:30.360 --> 0:36:31.960 it doesn't look like a pumpkin seed. It's some other 0:36:32.040 --> 0:36:33.600 kind of seed. I don't know what seed. 0:36:33.600 --> 0:36:35.799 Would you compare it to, rob It's just a big 0:36:35.840 --> 0:36:36.600 old space seed. 0:36:36.960 --> 0:36:39.319 Yeah, I don't know, caraway seed or something. It's a 0:36:39.320 --> 0:36:42.200 big old seed. It flies through space and then it 0:36:42.320 --> 0:36:46.160 plunks down on Earth, and then it gives rise to 0:36:46.280 --> 0:36:49.160 life on Earth, and we see all kinds of just 0:36:49.480 --> 0:36:52.560 kind of you know, life dancing about. We see trees 0:36:52.680 --> 0:36:57.520 as groovy shape shifting dancing machines. Like the trees to 0:36:57.600 --> 0:37:01.280 the beat of the song, they shift to transform into 0:37:01.320 --> 0:37:05.240 different kinds of trees with different arrangements of branches and leaves, 0:37:05.640 --> 0:37:08.040 which again goes back to this morphing concept that we 0:37:08.080 --> 0:37:11.560 see throughout this whole thing. So there's all these kinds 0:37:11.600 --> 0:37:15.320 of different representations of life growing and morphing and shifting 0:37:15.360 --> 0:37:18.440 and taking these different forms, and then eventually there are 0:37:18.520 --> 0:37:21.920 these pods, these plants that grow as pods that end 0:37:22.000 --> 0:37:25.480 up shooting seeds back out into space. So it's as 0:37:25.480 --> 0:37:26.839 if the cycle continues. 0:37:27.400 --> 0:37:30.960 Yeah. Apparently this sequence uses imagery created by computer graphics 0:37:31.040 --> 0:37:34.319 artists and researcher Carl Simms born nineteen sixty two from 0:37:34.400 --> 0:37:39.160 his nineteen ninety short Panspermia. He incidentally served as a 0:37:39.280 --> 0:37:43.440 producer on the first Minds I release, and this footage 0:37:43.480 --> 0:37:46.640 would later be used in the Boydsten directed music video 0:37:46.719 --> 0:37:51.280 for Pantera's cover of the Black Sabbath instrumental Planet Caravan, 0:37:51.600 --> 0:37:53.480 and you can also find this on YouTube. 0:37:53.640 --> 0:37:57.400 I love Sabbath, I like that song. I did listen 0:37:57.440 --> 0:38:00.879 and watch this, and I don't love the pinter A cover. 0:38:04.080 --> 0:38:07.359 I have to say this whole Panspermia section, I felt 0:38:07.360 --> 0:38:10.360 like this one felt perhaps more dated by today's standards 0:38:10.360 --> 0:38:13.240 than the intro, perhaps because a lot of it hinges 0:38:13.360 --> 0:38:17.759 on depictions of natural world organisms like actual plants, actual animals, 0:38:18.000 --> 0:38:21.400 And again, what it accomplishes for nineteen ninety or nineteen 0:38:21.440 --> 0:38:26.279 ninety two is amazing. But I don't know. On top 0:38:26.320 --> 0:38:30.840 of that, it's not my favorite Hommer track beyond the 0:38:30.880 --> 0:38:34.200 Mind's Eye. But things do pick up again when we 0:38:34.280 --> 0:38:37.360 get back into the depictions of actual alien pant spermia 0:38:37.480 --> 0:38:40.560 with the big seed launching cannon plants and so forth. 0:38:40.880 --> 0:38:52.040 Yeah, yeah, Okay. The next segment I thought was interesting 0:38:52.120 --> 0:38:58.520 because it's called Afternoon Adventure, and this track incorporates both 0:38:58.960 --> 0:39:03.680 live action and computer animation, and it over lays one 0:39:03.760 --> 0:39:06.799 on top of the other, so we get shots. At 0:39:06.880 --> 0:39:08.919 least that's what I think is going on. I don't 0:39:08.920 --> 0:39:13.400 think that's cgi. It couldn't be. No, it is, it seems. 0:39:13.520 --> 0:39:16.080 For example, we get a footage of a real forest 0:39:16.320 --> 0:39:19.480 that is overlaid with animated insects, and we see a 0:39:19.640 --> 0:39:23.200 wasp chasing a bee. And what I love is that 0:39:23.600 --> 0:39:27.120 the Onhammer track that is paired with this sounds like 0:39:27.360 --> 0:39:29.960 chase music from an action film in the eighties or 0:39:30.040 --> 0:39:32.960 like from Miami Vice. It's like sick, you know, like 0:39:33.080 --> 0:39:34.920 guitar shredding kind of Chase music. 0:39:35.400 --> 0:39:38.280 Yeah, yeah, like like that bee just robbed a bank 0:39:38.320 --> 0:39:39.640 and the wasp is on the case. 0:39:39.880 --> 0:39:44.400 Yeah, Wasp, you're a loose cannon. But this has a 0:39:44.960 --> 0:39:47.920 kind of twist ending actually, So at the you know, 0:39:47.920 --> 0:39:49.160 we go around and we see a lot of the 0:39:49.239 --> 0:39:52.399 landscape and we end up zooming out in this one, 0:39:52.680 --> 0:39:54.520 and we zoom out and out and out, and we 0:39:54.600 --> 0:39:56.560 go up in the sky and see this whole, you know, 0:39:56.600 --> 0:39:59.239 the contours of the earth and the lakes and the 0:39:59.360 --> 0:40:03.280 rivers and the hills, and we keep zooming out until 0:40:03.320 --> 0:40:06.880 we go through a glass barrier and we realized the 0:40:06.960 --> 0:40:11.839 landscape where we were watching these insects interact was inside 0:40:11.840 --> 0:40:16.480 of a dome, a dome in space on the surface 0:40:16.520 --> 0:40:20.359 of a barren moon. And there are many domes like it. 0:40:20.840 --> 0:40:25.279 What this is great though, because, yeah, it starts off 0:40:25.440 --> 0:40:28.239 seeming like, yeah, bold choice to feature both live action 0:40:28.360 --> 0:40:31.799 and computer generated bugs, especially since you know, you really 0:40:31.840 --> 0:40:36.560 can't create a photorealistic bug at this point. But yeah, 0:40:36.680 --> 0:40:38.840 by the time you get to the domes, amazing. This 0:40:38.960 --> 0:40:42.520 is exactly what you want out of your CGI imagery 0:40:42.560 --> 0:40:45.400 at this point in time. Let us depict other worlds, 0:40:45.480 --> 0:40:48.719 Let us depict you know, the future show us give 0:40:48.800 --> 0:40:51.480 us this revelation, and it does. Now. 0:40:51.560 --> 0:40:54.400 The next segment I think, is called Brave New World. 0:40:54.680 --> 0:40:59.360 It is sort of a representation of the insides of 0:40:59.800 --> 0:41:04.760 a computer, but rendered in a dramatic, almost heroic fashion, 0:41:05.000 --> 0:41:07.640 And as I was watching it, it actually looked quite 0:41:07.760 --> 0:41:11.320 familiar to me, and I started thinking, wait a minute, 0:41:11.760 --> 0:41:15.160 is this footage that was created for those Intel Pennium 0:41:15.239 --> 0:41:16.680 commercials in the nineties. 0:41:17.400 --> 0:41:19.440 It might have been. I was looking around for an example, 0:41:19.440 --> 0:41:24.000 and I kept running across other Intel commercials, so I'm 0:41:24.000 --> 0:41:26.960 not sure about that. But yeah, we get dancing, floating 0:41:27.000 --> 0:41:31.840 silver squares, and then we enter various geometric shapes, a 0:41:31.880 --> 0:41:36.200 real kaleidoscope experience, and the track here from Jon Hammer 0:41:36.320 --> 0:41:38.319 is very soothing. But then it picks up the pace 0:41:38.360 --> 0:41:40.680 as we sail through the insides of a computer, and 0:41:40.719 --> 0:41:47.000 this is where we get into familiar processor commercial territory. Eventually, 0:41:47.080 --> 0:41:50.799 a golden titan rises from the computer realm to lift 0:41:50.880 --> 0:41:53.760 up a giant gear and oh, we realized this titan 0:41:53.880 --> 0:41:56.200 is Atlas. And I'm not sure I love the idea 0:41:56.239 --> 0:42:02.200 of computer technology as a shackled, eternally punished titan. I 0:42:02.560 --> 0:42:04.399 don't know exactly what we're trying to portray there. 0:42:04.920 --> 0:42:07.239 Yeah, whether it's the Greek themes or it's going in 0:42:07.239 --> 0:42:09.319 a different direction with some kind of I don't know, 0:42:09.440 --> 0:42:13.000 iron Rand meditation. In any case, this one doesn't hit 0:42:13.040 --> 0:42:13.680 so great for me. 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:17.359 Yeah, but the Titan looks cool, I will say that. 0:42:17.719 --> 0:42:20.880 Yeah, let's see. After this, there's a segment called I 0:42:20.920 --> 0:42:24.280 think Transformers. This one really looks like a video game, 0:42:24.800 --> 0:42:28.200 and I think that's because in part it is reproducing 0:42:28.760 --> 0:42:31.920 footage from The lawnmower Man of a video game they 0:42:31.920 --> 0:42:34.759 play in the lawnmower Man. And then also I think 0:42:34.800 --> 0:42:37.280 we actually just straight up see the Job, a character 0:42:37.400 --> 0:42:38.560 from lawnmower Man in. 0:42:38.560 --> 0:42:41.200 This we do like the raging virtual job. 0:42:41.080 --> 0:42:43.840 Where he's yeah, he's mad. 0:42:44.239 --> 0:42:46.960 Yeah. And then there's I haven't seen The lawnmower Man 0:42:47.080 --> 0:42:48.799 in a while. I didn't didn't have time to watch 0:42:48.800 --> 0:42:51.200 it in full for this, but yeah, there's a sequence 0:42:51.200 --> 0:42:53.440 in lawnmower Man where they're at an arcade. They're playing 0:42:53.440 --> 0:42:55.800 some sort of like a racing game, and we see 0:42:55.880 --> 0:42:58.319 the virtual footage from that part of the film here. 0:42:58.640 --> 0:43:02.080 Yeah, Okay, the race part being its people's zoomings through 0:43:02.120 --> 0:43:04.920 a kind of corridor with these closing teeth that you 0:43:04.960 --> 0:43:06.719 have to kind of navigate through gaps in. 0:43:08.360 --> 0:43:11.120 This reminds me there was there was a video game 0:43:11.160 --> 0:43:15.879 tie into the lawnmower Man and MYO. My video game 0:43:16.040 --> 0:43:18.080 capabilities at the time were very limited. I think I 0:43:18.120 --> 0:43:20.839 had a Sega Genesis and they put this game out 0:43:20.840 --> 0:43:24.400 on Sega Genesis, and I remember wanting it because basically, 0:43:24.440 --> 0:43:29.640 with the limited capacity of the Sega Genesis, they were 0:43:29.640 --> 0:43:34.000 able to create some sort of virtual sections, you know, 0:43:34.000 --> 0:43:36.440 where you're like flying around in a three dimensional space, 0:43:37.760 --> 0:43:40.359 something that you know, by today's standards is just old hat, 0:43:40.680 --> 0:43:43.960 but at the time on Genesis, like it was like, whoa, 0:43:44.200 --> 0:43:47.400 you can do things like that on this machine. I 0:43:47.520 --> 0:43:49.680 want in. Even though I don't know how I feel 0:43:49.719 --> 0:43:52.680 about that movie, I want to play the game. And 0:43:52.760 --> 0:43:54.439 to be clear, I think other parts of the game 0:43:54.440 --> 0:43:57.600 were just typical side scrolling, but they had some sort 0:43:57.600 --> 0:44:01.160 of a gimmicked sort of reality section. 0:44:01.719 --> 0:44:05.000 Okay, oh but wait a minute. This one's called Transformers 0:44:05.000 --> 0:44:07.400 and there's something like a transformer in it. 0:44:07.760 --> 0:44:10.719 Yeah, yeah, we do get We do get some sort 0:44:10.760 --> 0:44:15.239 of a laser night that's chasing around a transformer like 0:44:15.440 --> 0:44:18.279 a robot that changes into a race car. I don't 0:44:18.280 --> 0:44:21.080 know if this is an actual transformer or a gobot 0:44:21.560 --> 0:44:25.360 or just a general riff on the overall concept, but 0:44:25.719 --> 0:44:26.200 there it is. 0:44:27.280 --> 0:44:30.640 Man. So the next segment is one that really was 0:44:30.719 --> 0:44:33.960 a hit for me. It's probably the cheesiest segment, or 0:44:34.000 --> 0:44:36.360 one of the cheesiest in it, but I loved it, 0:44:36.480 --> 0:44:40.200 especially because of how catchy the music is. This is 0:44:40.239 --> 0:44:44.600 the one called Too Far, which has more different imagery 0:44:44.640 --> 0:44:48.239 in it than I can possibly recount here. But it's 0:44:48.239 --> 0:44:52.520 got what these sort of jazz design robots playing drums 0:44:52.560 --> 0:44:56.160 on a crumbling planet surface with desolate gray buildings. What 0:44:56.239 --> 0:45:01.560 a weird juxtaposition. So it's like a ray post apocalyptic 0:45:01.600 --> 0:45:05.480 world with ruined buildings. But these happy robots made of 0:45:05.520 --> 0:45:08.279 these kind of jazz squiggles are all like, oh boy, 0:45:08.360 --> 0:45:09.840 I'm feeling the feeling the groove. 0:45:10.120 --> 0:45:13.000 It's like you had a monkey's paw and you wished 0:45:13.120 --> 0:45:18.399 that windows clip Art became like syndient. You know, we're 0:45:18.440 --> 0:45:21.440 not clip art really. What's his name? The paper Clippy Clippy. 0:45:21.760 --> 0:45:25.480 It's like Clippy and his like demonic kin were brought 0:45:25.520 --> 0:45:28.120 to life and they're here to rock out at least 0:45:28.120 --> 0:45:30.440 in theory, but you know it's gonna get violent. 0:45:30.800 --> 0:45:36.120 Clip multicolored Clippy family reunion and they're all playing hand drums. Yeah, 0:45:36.160 --> 0:45:39.320 and uh, but then it's not just that. There's also 0:45:39.640 --> 0:45:44.000 an angry looking like hamhead guy sitting watching a TV 0:45:44.160 --> 0:45:47.239 and a necktie and he keeps kind of burping and 0:45:47.280 --> 0:45:49.800 his head comes off and then it sinks down into 0:45:49.840 --> 0:45:52.680 his neck and then it pops off again. And he's 0:45:52.719 --> 0:45:55.120 watching things on TV. And we see what he's watching 0:45:55.200 --> 0:45:58.960 on the TV, which is I think, robots on roller coasters. 0:45:59.560 --> 0:46:03.440 And then there's there's more TV watching themes with something 0:46:03.480 --> 0:46:06.560 that's just a straight up eyeball watching a TV. But 0:46:06.600 --> 0:46:09.400 then it gets scared and it hides behind the couch. 0:46:10.000 --> 0:46:13.120 Ah. You know. The roller coaster, the virtual roller coaster thing, 0:46:13.239 --> 0:46:15.920 of course, has never gotten old like that basically spawned 0:46:16.320 --> 0:46:20.040 a whole video game franchise, and I think Regal Cinema 0:46:20.120 --> 0:46:22.359 still rolls that out at the beginning of their seeing 0:46:22.360 --> 0:46:24.400 a picture in Regal Cinema. Right, you get to ride 0:46:24.400 --> 0:46:26.920 that virtual roller coaster a little bit. I think some 0:46:26.960 --> 0:46:29.200 people like will put their hands up to get into it. 0:46:29.239 --> 0:46:33.719 You know, I'll do that. Oh and then so this 0:46:34.440 --> 0:46:37.920 musical number has some vocals in it. Vocals are not 0:46:38.160 --> 0:46:41.560 super prominent in the music throughout this but a couple 0:46:41.560 --> 0:46:45.680 of tracks have vocals. Uh. And the only lyrics you 0:46:45.719 --> 0:46:48.239 get in this song, which again the segment is called 0:46:48.280 --> 0:46:51.359 too Far. We see these sort of these these three 0:46:51.440 --> 0:46:55.280 singers with big hair, all three of them. It's CGI singers. 0:46:55.280 --> 0:46:56.759 Of course. I don't know if I needed to say that, 0:46:56.840 --> 0:47:01.080 but yes, these sort of sort of CGI mannic figures 0:47:01.120 --> 0:47:06.120 with huge hair, and they're singing too far, take it easy, 0:47:06.160 --> 0:47:11.160 It's all right? What are those three phrases? How do 0:47:11.239 --> 0:47:14.520 they interlock? Too far? Take it easy, It's all right? 0:47:15.160 --> 0:47:17.240 It's like what the stages of grief or something? 0:47:17.320 --> 0:47:22.040 Right? Okay? Oh, and then there's like a whole eyeball family. 0:47:22.120 --> 0:47:24.520 Remember there was an eyeball earlier that was watching the 0:47:24.520 --> 0:47:27.919 TV and it got scared. But now there's a whole 0:47:27.960 --> 0:47:31.040 family of eyeballs. Is like a mommy and daddy eyeball. 0:47:31.080 --> 0:47:33.000 And then I'm a lot of little eyeballs and they're 0:47:33.000 --> 0:47:36.319 all watching the TV, and they're watching a robot on 0:47:36.400 --> 0:47:39.319 TV tell us that we've gone too far. And then 0:47:39.400 --> 0:47:41.560 my favorite part of the whole thing is we see 0:47:41.560 --> 0:47:45.480 this assembly line inside of a factory that makes terminators. 0:47:45.520 --> 0:47:49.400 They're just making terminator exoskeletons, good, pumping out T eight hundreds, 0:47:49.719 --> 0:47:56.480 and then they produce a canned beverage called Too Far Juice. 0:47:58.320 --> 0:48:02.040 Funny tie in here. I just on a lark. I 0:48:02.080 --> 0:48:04.239 don't know why it even occurred to me to do this. 0:48:04.320 --> 0:48:06.759 I was like, wonder if there's anything in reality called 0:48:06.840 --> 0:48:09.719 Too Far Juice? And I googled it and there is 0:48:09.760 --> 0:48:14.720 a brewery based in Minnesota called the Fair State Brewing 0:48:14.760 --> 0:48:18.200 Cooperative that I've never had a beer from them, so 0:48:18.239 --> 0:48:20.160 I don't know anything about them, except they have a 0:48:20.200 --> 0:48:23.600 beer called Too Far Juice, and I compared it. The 0:48:23.680 --> 0:48:27.000 can design looks exactly like this can in beyond the 0:48:27.080 --> 0:48:30.280 mind's eyes. That is a deep reference for a brewery 0:48:30.320 --> 0:48:31.840 to make. I don't know how that happened. 0:48:32.160 --> 0:48:34.560 I think it's just because of just all the beer 0:48:34.560 --> 0:48:37.000 out there. I'm not really a beer enthusiast, but I 0:48:37.040 --> 0:48:41.160 love seeing the variety. There's so many different beers. There's 0:48:41.200 --> 0:48:45.320 so many different like cool names for beers, and you 0:48:45.640 --> 0:48:49.440 even see cool stuff like the Wayland Utani beer. Aspen 0:48:49.520 --> 0:48:54.680 beer was finally brought into reality recently as a promotion 0:48:54.840 --> 0:48:58.560 for Alien Romulus by Angel City Brewery, you could finally 0:48:58.600 --> 0:49:00.880 get a can of the beer that they're drinking on 0:49:00.920 --> 0:49:04.240 the Nostromo in the original nineteen seventy nine Alien film. 0:49:04.360 --> 0:49:05.760 It's very safe to drink. 0:49:07.600 --> 0:49:10.960 But yeah, this does seem like a much deeper cut. 0:49:11.200 --> 0:49:14.560 Too Far Juice seems that maybe a bit too far. 0:49:14.680 --> 0:49:16.399 I don't know how many people who drank it really 0:49:16.400 --> 0:49:19.040 caught the reference, but you know, tip of the hat 0:49:19.080 --> 0:49:19.960 to those that did. 0:49:20.280 --> 0:49:23.000 If I'm ever visiting Minnesota, I'm gonna have to get 0:49:23.000 --> 0:49:24.280 me a too Far Juice. 0:49:24.680 --> 0:49:27.520 Well, this whole segment here of beyond the mind's eye, 0:49:27.560 --> 0:49:30.520 this one really made me want my MTV. This felt very, 0:49:31.200 --> 0:49:35.400 very in line with the Dire Straits video Yes for 0:49:35.520 --> 0:49:39.120 Money for Nothing. Yeah, so that's the vibe I got here. 0:49:39.440 --> 0:49:43.680 Absolutely. Yeah. Let's see. Now there are still more segments 0:49:43.680 --> 0:49:45.800 to talk about. There's one called Windows. It's kind of 0:49:45.840 --> 0:49:48.560 a change of pace because this one is fairly melancholy, 0:49:48.760 --> 0:49:51.799 like most of the others are I don't know, the 0:49:51.840 --> 0:49:53.759 others are jaunty here, they're you know, more of a 0:49:54.160 --> 0:49:58.359 kind of a spirit of fun or excitement. This one 0:49:58.480 --> 0:50:01.560 is a little bit down tim and a little bit sad, 0:50:01.640 --> 0:50:04.840 and we see a room full of paintings and wine 0:50:04.880 --> 0:50:07.799 bottles and a lute, and then the lute floats off 0:50:07.800 --> 0:50:10.040 of the wall, and then everything starts floating in the 0:50:10.120 --> 0:50:13.440 air and flying around, and there's a guitar solo, and 0:50:13.480 --> 0:50:17.239 it ends sort of with classic classical two D paintings 0:50:17.320 --> 0:50:22.280 like van Goffs self portrait peeling out into three dimensions. 0:50:22.000 --> 0:50:23.879 And this effect is pretty cool. I thought this held 0:50:23.960 --> 0:50:26.920 up pretty good. It doesn't feel as dated as as 0:50:26.920 --> 0:50:29.560 a lot of things inherently feel dated in this picture. 0:50:31.080 --> 0:50:33.440 And I like the music here, especially the early goings 0:50:33.440 --> 0:50:35.879 of it are very chill, very gentle. The gentle young 0:50:35.920 --> 0:50:37.240 hammer agree. 0:50:37.280 --> 0:50:40.880 Now the gentle themes continue because the next segment is 0:50:40.960 --> 0:50:43.880 quite tender. It's like a love story, and it actually 0:50:43.880 --> 0:50:47.560 has dialogue. We didn't have that since the intro. So 0:50:47.600 --> 0:50:50.279 the music here it's called nothing but Love, and it 0:50:50.320 --> 0:50:53.200 sounds kind of like soft acoustic guitar. We meet two 0:50:53.239 --> 0:50:57.600 different characters named Latta and Arturo, and we see a 0:50:57.680 --> 0:51:00.720 note on the wall that says a lot of birthday, 0:51:00.800 --> 0:51:05.520 see you at seven, virtually yours Arturo. So I guess 0:51:05.520 --> 0:51:09.320 these are characters that know they are. They're conscious self 0:51:09.320 --> 0:51:13.680 consciously virtual characters, but they're both sort of red tinted 0:51:13.800 --> 0:51:19.080 CGI bodies. Arturo comes in and meets Lata, and then 0:51:19.120 --> 0:51:22.000 he offers her a magic checkered cube kind of like 0:51:22.000 --> 0:51:26.120 a Rubik's cube that turns into a flying, liquid metal snake. 0:51:26.560 --> 0:51:30.759 And then Lota turns old and looks mad, and then 0:51:30.800 --> 0:51:34.160 we get dialogue and she says, I don't want your sculptures. 0:51:34.480 --> 0:51:37.920 I love you, and then they kiss and then they 0:51:37.960 --> 0:51:41.240 twirl and then they melt together as liquid metal. 0:51:42.000 --> 0:51:44.759 That's what love in the virtual realm consists of. I 0:51:44.760 --> 0:51:46.279 guess we have kind of This is like an Adam 0:51:46.320 --> 0:51:48.800 and Eve sort of thing. Right is the red sculpture 0:51:48.800 --> 0:51:51.400 and Apple the snake? Self explanatory? 0:51:52.120 --> 0:51:56.160 Okay, I didn't think about that. The next one is great. 0:51:56.200 --> 0:51:59.080 It's called Pyramid. I love this one. It's got some 0:51:59.280 --> 0:52:03.360 interesting kind of flute sounds. It sounds almost kind of 0:52:03.400 --> 0:52:06.239 South American or something. And then it's got like a 0:52:06.320 --> 0:52:11.759 dog chasing butterflies, these strange marionette gods dancing on top 0:52:11.800 --> 0:52:14.680 of a pyramid with a yellow flaming sky. This is 0:52:14.719 --> 0:52:17.800 the one that's got a lady with like leopard print 0:52:17.880 --> 0:52:20.759 on her flesh. At one point, she says, we are 0:52:20.960 --> 0:52:21.960 of the butterfly. 0:52:22.800 --> 0:52:25.759 Yeah, I mean that's inherently trippy and cryptic. But the 0:52:25.840 --> 0:52:29.279 dancing gods or statues or whatever they are, these were monstrous, 0:52:30.360 --> 0:52:34.400 but in the sense too that like they're moving in 0:52:34.600 --> 0:52:39.400 a way that maybe trying to pattern like human dance movements, 0:52:39.400 --> 0:52:42.279 but it just feels very clunky and inhuman. But I 0:52:42.280 --> 0:52:44.160 don't know that kind of works. If these are gods, 0:52:44.480 --> 0:52:48.040 why not. They're not of our world, And generally I 0:52:48.120 --> 0:52:52.480 like the other worldliness of this section, you know, strange pyramids, 0:52:52.840 --> 0:52:58.239 weird gods, talking leopard ladies. I'm all for it. You know. 0:52:58.360 --> 0:53:01.120 I've got a real beef with be on the mind side, though, 0:53:01.160 --> 0:53:03.399 which is that up to this point there have been 0:53:03.680 --> 0:53:08.520 not nearly enough human bodies with horse heads. They're about 0:53:08.560 --> 0:53:11.400 to do me right here. So Theater of Magic is 0:53:11.440 --> 0:53:14.399 the next segment. It's got everything you want. It's got 0:53:14.480 --> 0:53:17.759 mirrors with masks flying around inside them. It's got a 0:53:17.800 --> 0:53:20.680 theater lobby staircase. So it's like that animation at the 0:53:20.719 --> 0:53:22.920 movie Theater where you go out of the It shows 0:53:22.960 --> 0:53:24.960 you going out of the theater and out the staircase 0:53:25.000 --> 0:53:28.560 down the staircase to the lobby to get some refreshments. Here, 0:53:28.600 --> 0:53:31.360 it's the opposite. You're going up the staircase in the lobby. 0:53:32.160 --> 0:53:34.680 And then we see a marble statue of a man 0:53:34.840 --> 0:53:37.920 playing an obo at a marble lion, which comes to 0:53:38.080 --> 0:53:41.680 life on an alien planet, jumps over a flaming brazier, 0:53:41.880 --> 0:53:44.400 goes into a maze, and then we see a volcano 0:53:44.520 --> 0:53:48.080 explode and this turns into a metallic woman with a 0:53:48.120 --> 0:53:48.719 horse head. 0:53:50.560 --> 0:53:53.200 Oh yeah, I love I love this. I love the creatures, 0:53:53.320 --> 0:53:57.719 the weird landscapes, the virtual reality zooms, the labyrinth, that 0:53:57.920 --> 0:54:01.240 volcano spewing dianetics everywhere, great stuff. 0:54:01.680 --> 0:54:04.960 Yeah yeah, Oh, and this is the one that's got 0:54:05.000 --> 0:54:07.520 the eyeball metronomes. At one point, we're just on a 0:54:07.560 --> 0:54:11.520 planet surface and they're metronomes ticking everywhere, and they've got 0:54:11.520 --> 0:54:15.040 eyeballs at the top of the ticker whatever you call that, 0:54:15.200 --> 0:54:18.120 the I don't know what it's called, the part that 0:54:18.200 --> 0:54:21.080 ticks on a metronome. It's like Easter Island, but with 0:54:21.120 --> 0:54:25.640 eyeball metronomes. And then we see a Golden War galley 0:54:25.760 --> 0:54:29.040 rowing into space. Hey, connecting to recent episodes, this is 0:54:29.280 --> 0:54:31.080 was this a triream. I don't think so. It just 0:54:31.080 --> 0:54:32.560 looks like one level of ores. 0:54:32.600 --> 0:54:35.960 To me, this looked like, yeah, we have elements of 0:54:36.040 --> 0:54:40.239 sort of fantasy Viking here. We Yeah, this is take 0:54:40.280 --> 0:54:42.520 it for what it is. It's a crazy space galley 0:54:42.920 --> 0:54:43.880 and it is amazing. 0:54:44.160 --> 0:54:46.480 Yeah, and so we also in this one gets some 0:54:46.800 --> 0:54:50.440 mixing of live action shots of locations and models, like 0:54:50.480 --> 0:54:53.840 a room and a house with CGI and then a 0:54:53.960 --> 0:54:58.000 landscape with green clouds and lightning. I recall this one 0:54:58.080 --> 0:54:59.200 kind of ends abruptly. 0:55:00.200 --> 0:55:03.239 Yeah, yeah, some of them do. Like, Okay, we've said 0:55:03.280 --> 0:55:04.960 all we can say about this, move on to the 0:55:05.000 --> 0:55:05.359 next one. 0:55:05.440 --> 0:55:08.680 That sort of thing. Okay, very last segment. This one 0:55:08.719 --> 0:55:12.000 starts with space imagery. It depicts a quasar, like a 0:55:12.080 --> 0:55:16.000 rotating black hole, surrounded by this big disc of orange dust, 0:55:16.400 --> 0:55:19.520 the jets coming out the poles. We see a sea 0:55:19.560 --> 0:55:22.680 scape and there is a mermaid with one of those 0:55:22.719 --> 0:55:26.480 seashell bras and she I noticed this about the mermaid. 0:55:26.560 --> 0:55:30.799 She's got hinges like her tail, like hinges her fishtail does, 0:55:31.200 --> 0:55:33.239 which made me think she's supposed to be not an 0:55:33.440 --> 0:55:36.840 organic mermaid but a toy come to life. 0:55:37.040 --> 0:55:37.399 I guess. 0:55:37.480 --> 0:55:41.440 So. Yeah, but in any case, she flies into the sky, 0:55:42.080 --> 0:55:45.520 and then we get a trio of naked male figures 0:55:45.560 --> 0:55:49.520 without faces, so the interior of the skull is just smooth, 0:55:50.040 --> 0:55:54.319 and they start folding upon themselves and into each other, 0:55:54.360 --> 0:55:59.279 and it becomes just this kaleidoscopic exercise of folding and 0:55:59.360 --> 0:56:02.680 mixing and blending these naked male forms altogether. 0:56:03.239 --> 0:56:06.120 Yeah, this one's pretty cool. You could imagine this playing 0:56:06.120 --> 0:56:08.839 on the big screen behind you know, your favorite prog 0:56:08.920 --> 0:56:09.880 rock band or something. 0:56:10.160 --> 0:56:12.520 Yeah, and then we go to credits, which there are 0:56:12.560 --> 0:56:13.080 a lot of. 0:56:13.320 --> 0:56:15.719 Yeah, it's like a solid ten minutes of credits. Like 0:56:16.280 --> 0:56:19.440 I was expecting at least five more minutes of computer 0:56:19.680 --> 0:56:23.799 animated mayhem, but no, just ten minutes of credits. But 0:56:24.239 --> 0:56:26.760 that also means ten more minutes of Yon Homer music 0:56:27.200 --> 0:56:29.760 and it's pretty good. And you know, to their credit 0:56:29.920 --> 0:56:34.280 they do shout out seemingly everybody involved in the creation 0:56:34.400 --> 0:56:37.680 of these images, so you know, well worth a look. 0:56:46.320 --> 0:56:49.120 All right, So we've done a basic outline of the 0:56:49.160 --> 0:56:52.040 content of Beyond the Mind's Eye. But I was so 0:56:52.120 --> 0:56:54.960 curious about why this movie feels, so I don't know, 0:56:55.080 --> 0:56:58.799 potent with meaning and historical significance, and so I thought 0:56:58.840 --> 0:57:01.520 we might analyze a little bit here or see what 0:57:01.520 --> 0:57:05.520 we can come up with at least, And one way 0:57:05.560 --> 0:57:08.800 of thinking about it that was sticking in my mind 0:57:08.880 --> 0:57:12.640 is that, you know, I'm pretty strongly persuaded by medium 0:57:12.719 --> 0:57:15.480 is the message kind of analysis. In other words, I 0:57:15.480 --> 0:57:19.440 think a lot of times the practical functional characteristics of 0:57:19.520 --> 0:57:23.760 a medium of information delivery often influence are thinking about 0:57:23.800 --> 0:57:28.040 the world more powerfully than the content of the information delivered. 0:57:28.680 --> 0:57:32.040 So a classic example of this kind of thinking, I've 0:57:32.080 --> 0:57:33.960 mentioned this on the show before is the kind of 0:57:34.000 --> 0:57:38.680 Neil Postman idea that the invention of television had a 0:57:38.840 --> 0:57:43.280 powerful influence on culture because the format of TV puts 0:57:43.320 --> 0:57:48.480 a primary emphasis on the entertainment value of information. So 0:57:48.600 --> 0:57:52.280 what's important is the ability of something to grab and 0:57:52.400 --> 0:57:56.480 hold on to your visual attention, So that when printed 0:57:56.560 --> 0:58:00.520 news shifted to TV news, you also get a shift 0:58:00.560 --> 0:58:03.840 in our fundamental concept of news worthiness that what was 0:58:03.920 --> 0:58:08.800 newsworthy became more likely to be synonymous with what's most 0:58:09.000 --> 0:58:12.720 entertaining or attention holding, et cetera. So, thinking with that 0:58:12.800 --> 0:58:15.880 kind of analysis, I started to wonder, what, if anything, 0:58:16.360 --> 0:58:19.840 are the distinct messages that are hidden in the medium 0:58:20.080 --> 0:58:24.320 of computer animation as distinct from the medium of live 0:58:24.360 --> 0:58:28.520 action film or from traditional animation. One of the things 0:58:28.560 --> 0:58:32.000 that absolutely stood out to me about it is that 0:58:32.080 --> 0:58:37.240 there is an incredibly strong theme of absorption running throughout. 0:58:38.000 --> 0:58:40.880 It is hard to watch Beyond the mind's eye and 0:58:40.960 --> 0:58:44.800 not come away thinking that your essence will somehow be 0:58:45.160 --> 0:58:50.000 absorbed and subsumed into a kind of metallic goop out 0:58:50.040 --> 0:58:53.280 of which infinite other forms will be assembled and then 0:58:53.360 --> 0:58:58.320 liquidated once again. So you are not necessarily discreet. You 0:58:58.360 --> 0:59:02.360 are a quantity of mold material, which can be both 0:59:02.400 --> 0:59:05.120 frightening and exciting. The kind of friendly version of this 0:59:05.280 --> 0:59:09.680 idea is oneness with the universe, but the more the 0:59:09.680 --> 0:59:12.160 more threatening version is just that kind of like you 0:59:12.200 --> 0:59:16.720 are raw material that something or someone could turn into anything. 0:59:17.400 --> 0:59:20.840 This reminds me of stuff we've discussed in the show 0:59:20.840 --> 0:59:25.560 before concerning the ideas of Jaron Lanier that you know 0:59:25.640 --> 0:59:27.600 when it comes to social media, and that is that 0:59:27.680 --> 0:59:30.160 you are not the user. You are the product. You're 0:59:30.200 --> 0:59:33.840 a part of this grand thing, but you were You're 0:59:33.840 --> 0:59:36.120 not playing the role in it that you thought you were. 0:59:37.400 --> 0:59:41.800 So so yeah, it's certainly worth thinking about. But I 0:59:41.800 --> 0:59:45.680 agree there is a tangible desire that is evident in 0:59:45.680 --> 0:59:49.240 this film that like, you want to be absorbed by 0:59:49.240 --> 0:59:52.640 a comforting digital world. You know, a strong sense of 0:59:52.640 --> 0:59:57.040 technological optimism along those lines where about where computer culture 0:59:57.080 --> 0:59:59.880 is headed, where it can take you, and it does 1:00:00.000 --> 1:00:03.720 don't entertain the possibility that CGI technology will eat us, 1:00:03.920 --> 1:00:06.600 even though again that's definitely a part of the lawnmower 1:00:06.600 --> 1:00:10.520 Man sequences that were cut out for Beyond the Mind's Eye. 1:00:10.800 --> 1:00:13.560 Yeah, well, there's a fine line between being absorbed and 1:00:13.600 --> 1:00:18.120 being eaten, I guess. I mean just the absorption themes 1:00:18.120 --> 1:00:21.480 are more they feel more wholesome and inviting. It's just 1:00:21.520 --> 1:00:23.120 kind of like, yeah, you're going to become a part 1:00:23.120 --> 1:00:26.080 of it all, and then all of that will become 1:00:26.160 --> 1:00:27.160 many other things. 1:00:27.480 --> 1:00:30.040 Well, it's interesting that like kind of ties into some 1:00:30.080 --> 1:00:32.640 aspects of the psychedelic experience, which of course, you know 1:00:32.640 --> 1:00:36.080 differs from the person to person. But you know, this 1:00:36.240 --> 1:00:39.120 idea of interconnectedness, realizing that you're all part of like 1:00:39.200 --> 1:00:43.760 one people, one planet. You know that all these interpersonal 1:00:43.760 --> 1:00:46.640 connections are the most valuable things in your life, and 1:00:46.920 --> 1:00:49.560 there's this idea Okay, well, maybe the future is going 1:00:49.600 --> 1:00:52.760 to be a technological version of that and it sort 1:00:52.800 --> 1:00:55.520 of is, but it also sort of isn't, or it 1:00:55.560 --> 1:00:58.120 can be that with a more negative air to it, 1:00:59.600 --> 1:01:02.840 you know, it's I guess the reality of something is 1:01:02.880 --> 1:01:08.920 always like maybe not a complete divorce from the initial optimism, 1:01:09.000 --> 1:01:10.680 but there are other dimensions to it as well. 1:01:10.920 --> 1:01:14.480 Yeah, I can absolutely see that. Man. One thing I 1:01:14.560 --> 1:01:17.000 really think about that stands out in all this early 1:01:17.080 --> 1:01:23.240 CGI is the strong communicated idea that the essence of 1:01:23.440 --> 1:01:28.600 all reality is essentially geometric, that the underlying structure of 1:01:28.680 --> 1:01:32.800 planets and trees and human beings and music and love 1:01:33.040 --> 1:01:38.840 and starlight is polyhedrons. And I don't know exactly like 1:01:39.080 --> 1:01:42.120 if you sort of take on that feeling, how that 1:01:42.240 --> 1:01:45.520 catches out into values or other beliefs about the world. 1:01:45.920 --> 1:01:48.640 But it is hard to deny that that is a 1:01:48.680 --> 1:01:53.240 feeling created by watching this stuff. Everything turns into a 1:01:53.320 --> 1:01:58.080 series of intersecting angles and lines, and that can create 1:01:58.120 --> 1:02:00.800 a very elegant feeling, the kind of a kind of 1:02:00.840 --> 1:02:04.640 mathematical beauty and a sense of symmetry in all that, 1:02:04.800 --> 1:02:08.080 Like the idea that the world is reducible to geometry, 1:02:08.200 --> 1:02:11.360 can be a beautiful and romantic way to think about things. 1:02:11.360 --> 1:02:14.400 And it's also like the functional power of math kind 1:02:14.400 --> 1:02:17.160 of leads you to think that, Like, I don't know, 1:02:17.280 --> 1:02:19.960 just thinking of everything as as geometry and math to 1:02:20.000 --> 1:02:24.120 be manipulated means that like almost anything is possible in reality. 1:02:25.080 --> 1:02:27.800 But yeah, I'm not sure exactly where all that goes. 1:02:27.880 --> 1:02:32.640 But there's a geometric brain mindset that really gets into 1:02:32.640 --> 1:02:34.320 you from watching all of this animation. 1:02:35.000 --> 1:02:37.480 Yeah, I mean it's like everything is coming out of 1:02:37.520 --> 1:02:40.160 an order, an order that is understood that is literally 1:02:40.200 --> 1:02:44.200 programmed by human beings, Like almost like we're recreating reality, 1:02:44.200 --> 1:02:47.480 but it's a reality that makes sense and is understandable 1:02:47.520 --> 1:02:49.480 and we have full control over. 1:02:50.000 --> 1:02:50.240 Yeah. 1:02:50.360 --> 1:02:53.680 Yeah, which I guess that's one of the advantages of 1:02:53.680 --> 1:02:56.520 one of the attractions of various like virtual worlds, right, 1:02:56.600 --> 1:02:59.960 it is like a limited version of the real world 1:03:00.000 --> 1:03:03.280 world that we have more control over and we know 1:03:03.360 --> 1:03:04.000 the limits of. 1:03:05.040 --> 1:03:09.080 Yeah, speaking of our level of control. Another thing I 1:03:09.120 --> 1:03:12.520 was thinking about with beyond the mind's eye and zooming 1:03:12.600 --> 1:03:15.880 out to the broader issue of CGI as a medium. 1:03:15.920 --> 1:03:19.000 What is the message of the CGI medium. I was 1:03:19.040 --> 1:03:23.280 really thinking about the idea of a moving perspective. So 1:03:23.680 --> 1:03:28.640 in live action and traditional animation, we sometimes have a 1:03:28.720 --> 1:03:32.560 camera or a perspective that moves through the space that 1:03:32.600 --> 1:03:35.800 we're looking at. But more often, i'd say at least 1:03:35.800 --> 1:03:38.240 half the time, you have a static camera or a 1:03:38.440 --> 1:03:43.840 static perspective with moving subjects. So usually when you're watching 1:03:43.920 --> 1:03:47.360 other types of media, you are holding still and the 1:03:47.400 --> 1:03:50.320 subject of the shot is what's in motion. Again, that's changes. 1:03:50.360 --> 1:03:52.240 You know, there are dolly shots, and there are moving 1:03:52.280 --> 1:03:54.720 cameras in film and all that. It happens sometimes, but 1:03:54.840 --> 1:03:58.560 more often you're used to being in one place and 1:03:58.640 --> 1:04:03.280 watching the subject move. When I think about early computer animation, 1:04:04.320 --> 1:04:07.160 it seems to me that the quote camera, though of 1:04:07.160 --> 1:04:09.120 course there is no camera, it's just the you know, 1:04:09.200 --> 1:04:11.840 the selected viewpoint within the three D space. As the 1:04:11.880 --> 1:04:16.120 frames are rendered, it feels like that camera almost never 1:04:16.280 --> 1:04:19.520 stops moving, and in beyond the mind's eye, it's almost 1:04:19.600 --> 1:04:23.680 constantly in motion. And that motion means we are, without 1:04:23.720 --> 1:04:28.040 our say so, being just pulled into scenes and images, 1:04:28.120 --> 1:04:31.560 as with a tractor beam. So the very first animated 1:04:31.560 --> 1:04:34.400 segment of this movie has the viewer plunging through a 1:04:34.440 --> 1:04:37.840 tunnel of lights, and you know, remember what the head 1:04:37.880 --> 1:04:40.680 tells you at the beginning, Actually, it says you are 1:04:40.760 --> 1:04:44.680 now entering a world inside the essence of your imagination, 1:04:45.240 --> 1:04:49.120 look within your dreams. They can take you beyond the 1:04:49.160 --> 1:04:52.440 mind's eye. So I think it's it's not a coincidence 1:04:52.880 --> 1:04:55.680 that this early CGI showcase would use this kind of 1:04:55.800 --> 1:04:59.840 language of being literally taken somewhere. By looking, you are 1:04:59.840 --> 1:05:02.040 a agreeing to be taken somewhere. 1:05:02.840 --> 1:05:05.240 Yeah. Yeah, enter into the world a dream. I mean 1:05:05.240 --> 1:05:06.960 that lines up with what I was saying earlier about 1:05:07.680 --> 1:05:13.560 more recent AI generated images, that they seem like the 1:05:13.560 --> 1:05:15.960 product of dream. They seem like a dream that you 1:05:16.040 --> 1:05:19.360 have partially forgotten, and that's part of the appeal of it, 1:05:19.400 --> 1:05:21.640 And that's I feel like that's definitely the case here 1:05:22.040 --> 1:05:25.880 in the early nineties with this footage in particular. Also, 1:05:26.000 --> 1:05:28.600 again it fits with the subject matter. It's not really 1:05:28.680 --> 1:05:32.920 there's not really a narrative. It's very abstract. The meaning 1:05:33.000 --> 1:05:38.120 is entirely open to your interpretation for the most part. Yeah, 1:05:37.440 --> 1:05:40.800 it's it's a trip, as Roger Ebert. 1:05:40.480 --> 1:05:44.840 Said, Yeah, exactly, And the constant motion of the viewpoint 1:05:44.920 --> 1:05:47.400 of the perspective or the camera makes it feel like 1:05:47.440 --> 1:05:50.680 it's literally a trip. You are constantly being sucked into 1:05:50.800 --> 1:05:54.200 new places and physically made to look at new things 1:05:54.200 --> 1:05:56.439 as opposed to being where you are and having things 1:05:56.480 --> 1:05:58.880 happen in front of you. Now, what does that kind 1:05:58.920 --> 1:06:02.040 of message cash out? I don't know. I feel like 1:06:02.080 --> 1:06:05.600 it kind of it kind of ties into another line 1:06:05.640 --> 1:06:08.120 and a song in there, the too Far Take it Easy, 1:06:08.200 --> 1:06:10.880 It's all right. It's almost like, you know, this new 1:06:10.920 --> 1:06:14.280 world of technology is going to take you places without 1:06:14.360 --> 1:06:18.280 asking you. It's it's going to overwhelm you and just 1:06:18.360 --> 1:06:21.280 take you there. And now you're looking at this and 1:06:21.320 --> 1:06:23.800 you might not even comprehend or be able to control 1:06:23.920 --> 1:06:27.520 what it is you're seeing now, But just relax and surrender. 1:06:27.720 --> 1:06:28.480 It'll be okay. 1:06:30.600 --> 1:06:34.480 Say yes to the lawnmower Man. Yeah, it weirdly has 1:06:34.520 --> 1:06:38.240 me wanting to rewatch the lawnmower Man or lawnmower Man Too, 1:06:38.360 --> 1:06:41.280 Job's War or whatever other title it had. 1:06:41.640 --> 1:06:43.160 You know, I haven't seen them in a long time. 1:06:43.200 --> 1:06:45.400 I would want to watch them for the animated scenes, 1:06:45.440 --> 1:06:48.600 But what I recall is that the human plot and 1:06:48.640 --> 1:06:52.320 all that is just kind of unpleasant. Yeah, likely, so 1:06:52.720 --> 1:06:57.280 likely so, but who knows, It's been a while. Nobody 1:06:57.320 --> 1:06:59.720 eats yard clippings though, like that was the crew One 1:06:59.720 --> 1:07:02.440 of the crew things about the original king store. Well, 1:07:02.480 --> 1:07:05.240 if the animator merges your form into that of a sheep, 1:07:05.280 --> 1:07:08.560 you might you know, this is liable to happen to 1:07:08.560 --> 1:07:10.680 all of us because our again, our forms are not 1:07:10.840 --> 1:07:14.320 fixed where we can morphit any moment. Oh, and that 1:07:14.400 --> 1:07:16.600 sort of ties into just one last thing I wanted 1:07:16.600 --> 1:07:20.800 to mention. I thought was interesting about trends in early CGI. 1:07:21.640 --> 1:07:25.400 Did you also notice a visual theme that things are 1:07:25.480 --> 1:07:29.000 the same at every scale, That there's like all this 1:07:29.240 --> 1:07:32.920 zooming in and out and going out into space and 1:07:32.960 --> 1:07:36.040 seeing planets and stars and quasars and galaxies and all that, 1:07:36.080 --> 1:07:39.280 and then you zoom in and see microscopic mechanisms and 1:07:39.360 --> 1:07:43.280 cells in a bloodstream, and circuit boards, circuit boards represented 1:07:43.320 --> 1:07:47.160 as cities with skyscrapers and stuff, And so there's this. 1:07:47.880 --> 1:07:51.240 It seemed to me there's this repeated theme throughout a 1:07:51.240 --> 1:07:53.880 lot of early CGI, and it's here in this movie too, 1:07:54.200 --> 1:07:58.280 of a kind of scale agnosticism, that what exists at 1:07:58.320 --> 1:08:02.520 one level of resolution and is reproduced at greater levels 1:08:02.520 --> 1:08:04.560 of resolution. So the more you zoom in or the 1:08:04.560 --> 1:08:07.920 more you zoom out, you just keep seeing the same patterns. 1:08:08.600 --> 1:08:11.800 Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, as we inevitably like 1:08:11.960 --> 1:08:16.879 zoom in and out of these imagined micro and macro worlds. 1:08:17.200 --> 1:08:19.360 The message of that is you got to put computers 1:08:19.360 --> 1:08:21.560 inside your body. It's time to be a cyborg. 1:08:22.760 --> 1:08:24.920 Yeah, I guess. I mean that's part of the that's 1:08:24.960 --> 1:08:26.840 kind of wrapped up in the optimism too, like we'll 1:08:26.880 --> 1:08:33.480 become machines, will become this synthesis of biology and technology, 1:08:33.520 --> 1:08:37.680 and it's just gonna make everything smoother and cooler and shinier. 1:08:38.160 --> 1:08:40.519 I can't wait to be t one thousand coup. 1:08:41.000 --> 1:08:45.160 Yeah, everything is crow all right. Well, there you have 1:08:45.200 --> 1:08:48.280 it beyond the mind's eye. I don't know if I'm 1:08:48.320 --> 1:08:52.600 gonna keep exploring the other films in this franchise. It 1:08:52.640 --> 1:08:55.800 seems like somebody should put out a big, thick blu 1:08:55.880 --> 1:08:58.200 ray set like of all of them. Surely that's in 1:08:58.240 --> 1:08:58.719 the works. 1:08:59.080 --> 1:09:01.280 Why has nobody done that? Yeah? Absolutely. 1:09:01.840 --> 1:09:04.479 I read that some of the extras on one of 1:09:04.680 --> 1:09:07.920 the physical releases of this included a sequence where we 1:09:08.040 --> 1:09:11.120 get to see a young Hummer band in which all 1:09:11.160 --> 1:09:15.240 four members of the band are Yon Hummer. So there 1:09:15.240 --> 1:09:16.960 are some extras like that I'd like to see as well. 1:09:16.960 --> 1:09:17.600 I couldn't find a. 1:09:17.560 --> 1:09:19.520 Stream of that anywhere that's beautiful. 1:09:19.920 --> 1:09:23.360 All right. As of publication time, we have not yet 1:09:23.400 --> 1:09:25.360 heard back from the director. If we do hear back 1:09:25.360 --> 1:09:28.599 from the director, please tune in to the next listener 1:09:28.640 --> 1:09:33.960 Mail episode and we will share his answers to our questions. 1:09:34.640 --> 1:09:36.200 All Right, we're gonna go ahead and close out this 1:09:36.240 --> 1:09:39.360 episode of Weird House Cinema. This one's been fine. We'd 1:09:39.400 --> 1:09:42.160 love to hear from everyone out there. Were you too 1:09:42.360 --> 1:09:46.760 a child of the nineties? Do you remember the commercials 1:09:46.760 --> 1:09:50.479 for this on TV or in print? Did you rent 1:09:50.880 --> 1:09:54.360 or purchase Beyond the Mind's Eye? And how much did 1:09:54.360 --> 1:09:57.360 it blow your mind? We want to hear your thoughts 1:09:57.400 --> 1:09:59.320 on it, and what has it been like to revisit it? 1:10:00.600 --> 1:10:02.600 What are your what are your thoughts on some of 1:10:02.840 --> 1:10:06.559 our various ideas that we presented in this episode. Let's 1:10:06.600 --> 1:10:08.960 see if you uh. We'll just remind you here that 1:10:09.280 --> 1:10:12.840 Weird House Cinema. These are Friday in the Stuff to 1:10:12.840 --> 1:10:15.200 Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and 1:10:15.240 --> 1:10:18.439 culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but 1:10:18.680 --> 1:10:21.000 on Fridays we set all that aside for the time being. 1:10:21.360 --> 1:10:22.840 If you want to see a complete list of all 1:10:22.840 --> 1:10:25.080 the films we've covered on Weird House Cinema over the years. 1:10:25.080 --> 1:10:26.920 Go to letterbox dot com. It's L E T T 1:10:27.000 --> 1:10:29.839 E R B O x D dot com. Our profile 1:10:30.040 --> 1:10:33.040 is weird House and you will find the list. Sometimes 1:10:33.120 --> 1:10:36.400 there'll be a sneak peek ahead at what's coming out 1:10:36.640 --> 1:10:37.639 the following week. 1:10:38.200 --> 1:10:41.840 Huge Things, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. 1:10:42.240 --> 1:10:43.880 If you would like to get in touch with us 1:10:43.920 --> 1:10:46.519 with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest 1:10:46.560 --> 1:10:48.679 a topic for the future, or just to say hello, 1:10:48.880 --> 1:10:51.479 you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow 1:10:51.479 --> 1:10:58.960 Your Mind dot com. 1:10:59.120 --> 1:11:01.640 Stuff to Blow Your Mind and is production of iHeartRadio. 1:11:02.000 --> 1:11:06.000 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 1:11:06.080 --> 1:11:07.839 or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.