Tron: A Review.

15th December, 2018.

No, really: I’m semi-serious in this post’s introduction video.

Has anyone got any free or blue dye, some old, preferable clean, spare bedsheets, and some sort of upright frame I and nail seem bright blue or bright green bedsheets, to?

The reason I ask … ?

Whilst I was job-hunting, earlier, I had YouTube on: when this video came up.





Explaining how to  use a free app to give your videos a twist: by using compositing.

A technique that’s occasionally called Green Screen, or Colour Separation Overlay, or CSO, or Chromakey.

Basically?   You film something in front of a green or blue screen.

Then, in post-production, the green — or blue — parts of the video, are replaced with something else: usually an image, but occasionally, moving backgrounds.

That tutorial interested me: it’s a technique that was used on Dr Who back in the 1970s, on Star Wars, Max Headroom, your average news studio, and Star Trek.

And it’s something I felt I could use for some of the videos on Nik Nak’s Old Peculiar.

While Photo Booth’s nice, its background effects aren’t perfect.



You’ll have probably noticed the bleed over effect in the intro?   That’s from Photo Booth.

So hearing about a piece of software apparently powerful enough to let me improve on that?

That caught my attention.

Then, of course, inspiration hit me.

I could download something would only take up the limited room on my hard drive …

Or I could maybe poke around through the user manual on the various bits of software on my Mac.

It seems I can — given a green or blue screen — do basic compositing with my current version of iMovie.

It has to be said, thirty years ago?   I’d’ve needed a TV studio to make composite video.



Now all I need is some bedsheets.

~≈§≈~

Right now?

That possibly matters a lot less than … several other things.

Frankly, I started planning this post earlier tonight.

I’d seen Brainstorm, many years ago: and associated it with both WarGames and the original Tron.

I’d watched WarGames, last night.

Tonight?

I thought I should catch Tron … 

~≈§≈~

Tron sees Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) trying to hack into the mainframes operated by ENCOM, his old employers: searching desperately for proof that the video games he’d designed had bee stolen by Ed Dillinger (David Warner), the head of ENCOM.

Meanwhile?

Programmer Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) and his girlfriend Lora (Cindy Morgan) are both worried.

They, and other senior co-workers, have had their access to the company computer system withdrawn: and are concerned about how important files of these appear to have gone missing.

It’s only when Flynn, Alan and Lora start talking that they realise something in the mainframe itself is stealing their work.

And that all three need to sneak into the lab to fin that proof.

None realising that Lora’s work is going to prove pivotal.

Industrial lasers, one connected to powerful mainframes and under the control of a Master Control Programme looking to take over the world?

Well … they’re an incident waiting to happen, aren’t they … ?

~≈§≈~

Now … 

Good … ?   Bad … ?   Indifferent?

I’m inclined to say yes, to be honest!

At least … I’m inclined to say yes to ‘Good.’

OK: granted this isn’t — necessarily — the most technically accurate of science fiction films.

No one can get sucked into a mainframe like that.

I personally think connect a living human brain to a computer is going to look more — at some point in the future — more like the Matrix movies: seeing a human mind connected to a complex network of computers, with the body held in a sensory deprivation tank, connected to feeding tubes and catheters.

Even if they could I’m not sure the fairytale world Tron shows us is how human mind would be dealing with that world: again, something more Matrix like might — might — be the thing.

On the other hand?

On the other hand, and when I originally saw the film in ’82?

Was a visually appealing feast of a film: and almost exactly how I felt — thirty six years ago — a digital world humans could inhabit should look like.

Complete with light bikes, giant space invaders and programmes happily worshipping their makers.

It was then, a fun, fantastic, and beautiful looking piece: that’s aged very well, still looking gorgeous, today.

Frankly?

Watching Tron again, or watching Tron for the first time, today?

You’re in for a treat.

Tron
★★★★