Saturday, August 19, 2006

I have a crazy idea (just like everyone else with a blog)

I have an idea, that I want to put out on the internet. I hope placing it out here in the ether will allow it to grow and expand in momentum. It's only a dream in my head right now, but with enough time and energy I think all of us can come together to make it happen.
Here it is.

I am a fan of Douglas Adams' Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I saw the movie, and while satisfied, I had hoped for so much more. I think if enough people came together we could do better job of making the movie (but maybe that's just the madly democratic optimist in me). There are already many projects on the internet that were created via the collaboration of the internet multitude -my love of Wikipedia has already been discussed on this blog. I propose that we, the HHGG fans, come together to create the animated movie. The acting, sound FX, and script are already out there, if we simply create animation to match the original radio show. We would just need to use some agreed upon animation platform to create the visuals.

As I see it the technology to create animation of some form on a computer is common enough. If we divide the work among many, many people we can create one full fledged feature film. The largest difficulty I forsee on the technical aspect would be finding a means to store all of the information. I have a few ideas mostly revolving around the fact that so many people (myself included) use only a fraction of their hard drive's memory. The scientists at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) developed a program where volunteers allow their computers to be used to analyze radio signals for signs of alien intelligence. Other distributed computing programs are working on similar projects, but I can't say anything for certain as to whether something like this could be used in making the new HHGG movie.

Of much greater importance, I realize this may violate copyrights so I invite the proper authorities to tell me to cease and decist before I take this so far. I do want to make it perfectly clear that I would never envision this being distributed for money or actually intigrating pirated materials in the production. This would be used strictly by those involved in the creation of the the movie, with the full acknowledgemnt at any and every point possible that this is based off of the ideas of another person. I imagine a dedicated and disciplined group of people could simple cooperate to create a visual format to accompany the currently existing audio format. At worst I only want to create something akin to the fan fiction and fan art, that has so far spread wildly on the web without any interference. We must be absolutely clear that the work created is the intellectual property of a mind far greater than any of ours. So long as we don't create anything pornographic or plainly libelous about the series or the creators, then I don't know of there would be any precedent upon which we could be prosecuted.

That's my idea, the first democratically created movie. At the very least it may give people something to do with the time between their birth and death other than wear digital watches.