Most likely a coincidence, but it's something to think about

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Anyone see that new Hot Wheels commercial? I'd swear it takes place somewhere in Bregna/Monica. It's a very fast-paced, futuristic car chase which ends with one of the cars driving off one of the most Aeon Flux-ish walls I've ever seen and crashing into the distance, while the other does an impossible leap to safety. Perhaps Chung directed this?

-- Frostbite (foo@bar.com), March 12, 1999

Answers

Today I managed to tape the commercial and watch it slow motion. I am now convinced that Chung did it.

-- Frostbite (foo@bar.com), March 13, 1999.

This reminds me of a question I wanted to ask. Does it bother anyone else that the action in Aeon Flux is often so fast-paced you can't even see what they're doing? For example, when Aeon leaps through the lattice-work in Leisure, Sybil shows Trevor her acrobatics, or Aeon hops through the lasers in U or D, just to name a few. I always have to press the slo-mo button just to catch what's going on. If I absolutely had to pick a fault in Chung's work that would most likely be it. Does anyone else have this problem?

-- Frostbite (foo@bar.com), March 17, 1999.

Coincidentally, I was thinking that yesterday while watching Night. We all claim that we love learning something new each time we watch the show, but that means that we miss chunks of it all the time. Could you convince someone that they'll think Aeon's great - as long as they watch it 10 times? :-)

-- Philip Mills (philip.mills@cableinet.co.uk), March 18, 1999.

There's also one other small detail I noticed in error- in the first season continuing episode, the 'really big elevator' that Aeon rides to get to the top has two doors, however, when she leaves on the other side away from the boarding Breen soldiers, the exit from the elevator only shows one door and blank space where the other should be. (haha- I've watched this entirely almost enough).

-- Telemental (panaceag@lvcm.com), March 23, 1999.

now i scared

-- angel briggand (poppi@bellsouth.net), March 25, 1999.


Frostbite, Although I am always fascinated by your opinions, I disagree with your views concerning the fast pace of the episodes. Instead of finding this a fault with Chung(indeed!), I think it is one of my favorite example's of Peter Chung's genius. Think about it: he has to compress an incredible amount of story line into 20 minutes (or so). I have thought many times after watching an episode that it seemed like a two hour movie- yet it's much shorter. Even the shorts have this property (more so, as in the promo "Loaded"). I have long had a favorite "ligustic/information theory" reguarding this (and have mentioned briefly in the past)-which is why I'm really glad you brought this up (so I can expound on it again!). There is a high information density per frame which allows more narrative to take place than which is normally accomplished in the same time frame. In other words- in a normal show there might be "X" amount of relevant narrative info per frame (or X/f), however in Chung's "Flux" the ratio is more like (guessing) X^2/f, thus a higher "narrative information density ratio". Narrative information density(NID) equals narrative information units(X) per animation frame(f) or NID=X/f. The trick here is to agree on what counts as effective "X" but for the sake of hypothesis it's irrelevant, because we all mostly agree that we do frame by frame analysis on A.F. And we don't typically do this for Seinfeld, therefore at least ancedotally supporting my hypothesis. Actually, I am going to attempt to quantify an AF episode verses something run-of-the-mill such as a 30 minite sitcom. Interestly also, "things" whether books, TV, movies, whatever that have a high NID tend to sprout forum/discussion based web pages (and more easily seen- newsgropups). I'll bet there is an equation that can be derived and linked to the NID as well. If anyone in the neuro-lingustic sciences would like to co-author a paper on this with me, write me, and we'll put it togehter. By the way, Frostbite, can you grab a video capture of this commercial your talking about? Or maybe some stills? Perhaps someone with a AF page can host them. ______ Robert

-- Robert (rfbeck@internetconnect.net), March 26, 1999.

Pretty deep theory, Rob. But I've never gone to slow motion to find plot information in Aeon Flux. I think you're looking for some word besides 'Narrative' - keep in mind that in season three the dialogue is an equally important narrative component - a companion to the animation. What I have done, though, is freeze-framed some parts with especially interesting design features. This includes a lot of architectural study, but also the characters and the way they move.

Here's a fer'instance:

Okay, in the very beginning of the Purge, I'm sure you'll all remember Aeon shooting the kid's piggy bank to get a coin to open the door. Right? If you watch this shooting frame-by-frame, at the exact beginning of the shot, the background falls away for two frames. Aeon is silhoutted, first against black, then against white, then the background drops back in. You can see a similar effect in the beginning of A Last Time for Everything when Aeon is shooting down the guardtowers' bullets.

Sometimes I wonder if Aeon's deep meaning is curled up in these tiny flickers of fleeting imagery. Are these what imprint themselves on our minds for us to unravel later? But then, that's more or less what's Rob's suggesting, isn't it?

-- Charlie Princeton (cmmartin@princeton.edu), March 26, 1999.


I remember an interview (on the Alexander site) were Chung mentions that in art school he was suddenly exposed to the great filmmakers, among them he mentioned Hitchcock (so I'm assuming he is one of his influences). I seem to remember Hitchcock cramming in bits and pieces of mysterious frames in certain scenes. This is especially apparent in "Psycho", in the various death scenes. In the shower scene we see the female lead being attacked from various angles, each individual shot lasting only a moment at most, and then in the death of the private eye. I may be wrong but in that scene I seem to remember a quick single-frame flash of a cow in the road and then soon after a quick frame of a naked woman wearing a blindfold (?). This always seemed very Chung-like to me, I'm supposing he may have borrowed this ability to cram imagery and information from Hitchcock.

-- Mat Rebholz (matrebholz@yahoo.com), March 26, 1999.

Speaking of that "Aeon shoots the piggy bank" scene, it wasn't until I watched it in slow motion that I realized Trevor's head was on the coin.

-- Frostbite (foo@bar.com), March 26, 1999.

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