
Moviebarcode - Movies compressed to a single frame - boredguy8
http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/
======
boredguy8
I find just seeing the color palette says a lot about a movie. And of course
"Hero"/"Ying Xiong" is amongst the compressed movies:
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3515529474/hero-ying-
xio...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3515529474/hero-ying-xiong-2002)

~~~
zcid
That was definitely the one that stood out the most to me. It's always one of
the first movies that comes to mind when I'm thinking about color in film.

~~~
boredguy8
Agreed, though at times "Hero" is borderline heavy-handed with color. However
it manages to remain beautiful. One thing I've learned, though, from a set-
designer friend, is that nearly _every_ movie is highly attuned to color and
lighting.

If you're looking for other films that use color in interesting ways, check
out the "Three Colors Trilogy" by Kieslowski.

~~~
presidentender
Did you perchance see Star Trek: Nemesis? That was the most heavy-handed use
of color in film I've ever seen.

~~~
psadauskas
If ST:N was the most heavy-handed you've seen, then I guess you haven't seen
Transformers. Or any blockbuster action movie made in the last 5 years.

[http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-
ho...](http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-
please-stop.html)

Edit: I'm slow, this was linked in the comments below.

~~~
boredguy8
We're talking about color as a storytelling element, not as a mechanism to get
a visual pop.

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ck2
Completely predictable but still fascinating:

[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3514313860/the-
matrix-19...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3514313860/the-matrix-1999)

~~~
kbd
That's actually the first movie I went looking for.

~~~
ck2
I had to stop and try to remember what the white lines were about.

Twelve years ago, wow, sigh.

~~~
slowpoison
It helps that they come after the red (pill).

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frading
This suits PleasantVille perfectly.
[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/photo/1280/3542457911/1/tumbl...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/photo/1280/3542457911/1/tumblr_lh6x12tYR81qhtovi)

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teilo
You mean, not every movie uses a Teal/Orange palette?

[http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-
ho...](http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-
please-stop.html)

~~~
jcromartie
You can see the trend, though. Most big movies since the 2000s seem to fit
this.

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limmeau
Interesting to see, but I still prefer the temporal compression applied in
<http://iwdrm.tumblr.com/> .

~~~
Cushman
It's amazing how a couple of well-chosen frames can capture the spirit of an
entire film.

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sandofsky
A few years ago, I wrote a freeware app that did something similar, based on
Brendan Dawes' "Cinema Redux".

<http://threewordtitle.com/thumber/>

~~~
revdinosaur
Hey, this is really great. I love these apps which turn existing video into
new forms of media. If you haven't seen it already, you should check out Cory
Arcangel's "Colors PE."

<http://colors-personal-edition.coryarcangel.com/>

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jwomers
It would be awesome to know the exact details on how these are made. Is it a
histogram basis with thresholds to choose which colour is shown, or simply the
entire frame compressed to a couple of pixels thick, and then just include
some percentage (like 1%) of frames. These are great, you really can tell a
lot about a movie, like how long mostly unchanging scenes last, and the
overall colour palettes used. Great stuff!

~~~
aperiodic
I'm pretty sure it's some straightforward cropping/resizing of some subset of
the frames in the movie. The barcode for Slumdog Millionaire[1] presents some
pretty compelling evidence that this is the case.

That barcode has a persistent pattern in its lower part: every once and a
while, there's the same four light blue lines straddling three sets of light
grey lines. That movie is about a contestant on the Indian version of "Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire". For reference, I found a screencap of the show on
Wikimedia[2]. You'll notice that the location and pattern of the lines in the
barcode correspond with the location and form of the question boxes in the
show. The light blue lines are the outlines of the boxes, and the light grey
ones are the text. I don't have a copy of the movie with me, but I suspect
that if you linearly interpolate between horizontal position in the barcode
and temporal position in the movie, then the scenes where the question boxes
are on the screen will correspond with the locations in the barcode where the
pattern appears.

As to whether the frame is cropped or resized to be 1-pixel wide, my guess is
that they are resized. My reasoning is that if the frame were cropped, then
you might not always see the light grey lines along with the light blue lines
in the barcode, since you might take a slice of the frame that falls along
spaces between words in the questions and answers. Since the appearance of the
question box pattern is pretty much uniform, it's probable that the entire
frame is resized, so each pixel in each slice corresponds to the "average"
color value of pixels at that height in the sampled frame (I say "average"
because I don't really know how downscaling algorithms work).

[1]:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh9wkoPf5s1qh...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lh9wkoPf5s1qhtovio1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1299620414&Signature=wrHldiPKdgbmFPIqOuA6dpOOdHE%3D)
[2]:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Ken_Basi...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Ken_Basin.JPG/250px-
Ken_Basin.JPG)

~~~
gridspy
You see the same sort of artifact with kill bill, which often has titles at
the bottom of the screen.

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torme
Does anyone have info on exactly what was done to make these? Is it just
taking frames and stretching them vertically?

~~~
boredguy8
The authors of the blog don't say, but here's one approach:
<http://wordpress.mrreid.org/moviebarcode/>

A discussion using mplayer for faster output is also attached at
[http://projects.metafilter.com/2996/Make-your-own-Movie-
Barc...](http://projects.metafilter.com/2996/Make-your-own-Movie-Barcodes)

------
bane
Looking at the archive, the ones that jumped out the most at me were

Bambi <http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3658592877/bambi-1942>

Hero [http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3515529474/hero-ying-
xio...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3515529474/hero-ying-xiong-2002)

Tron (1982) <http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3500707114/tron-1982>

Surprisingly The wizard of Oz was less interesting than I would have thought.
Though the scenes in the Emerald city (bookending the assault on the Witch's
castle) do jump out.

[http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3512965847/the-wizard-
of...](http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3512965847/the-wizard-of-oz-1939)

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invisible
I'd like to see a movie like Sin City and House of the Flying Daggers :).
Really neat idea, but tumblr might not be the best way to display the
information.

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taken11
<http://0xdb.org> and <http://pad.ma/> use similar timelines for all there
videos. the code create the timelines can be found at
<http://code.0x2620.org/oxtimeline>

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kmfrk
Another way to browse the site is by the /archive/:
<http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/archive>.

Come to think of it, I might use some of these as my wallpaper.

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jhamburger
A fun addition to this would be tagging memorable scenes from the movie.

~~~
jokermatt999
In some cases, the colors actually do that quite well.

For example, look at The Fifth Element. You see that patch of white between
the beginning and the middle? That's the scene where Leelo is brought back, I
believe. It's the only scene in the movie that I can think of where there's a
significant amount of white (although it's possibly Corbin's apartment...). It
struck me how recognizable it was before I saw your post, actually.

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mbenjaminsmith
I like it. What about:

1\. Grouping by director / DP 2\. Color analysis (by genre, decade, etc)

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harshpotatoes
Lots of blues, oranges, and green. I suppose there is either a bias for
filmmakers to prefer these colors, or something in the algorithm 'prefers'
these colors?

~~~
pedrokost
This is why I don't really find the images of much use, but they are still
fascinating. I think the images completely fail to show the spirit of a movie,
all they are good for is for _reviving_ the partially lost feeling of a
watched movie. I think they are a great example of computer art.

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elvirs
I dont know for why, but it really impresses me and gives me a feeling that
what i am seeing is just amazing.

i guess i am starting to get art now :)

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juiceandjuice
Bummer, I want to see Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

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krmmalik
I was looking for Kung-Fu Hustle, but cant seem to find it(?). I suspect it'll
have a lot of pink in the beginning

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niels_olson
Another "reminds me of...": amarok moodbar

<http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Moodbar>

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/niels_olson/504888318/>

Can you pass movies through higher-dimensional fourier transform?

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pgbovine
can anyone find 2001? that trippy space color light show near the end could be
cool

~~~
GrantS
Interestingly, those shots were filmed using a technique called slit scan
photography. Though not quite what you were asking for, someone has reversed
that process in order to reveal the original images used to create the effect:
<http://seriss.com/people/erco/2001/>

~~~
lkozma
Someone also noticed that Pink Floyd's Echoes is nicely synchronized with the
scene. AFAIR, both parties claimed it was a coincidence.

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dhess
This is great! It deserves to be hosted on a dedicated service, though:
something with search, at least, and preferably with a link to the software
used so that submissions could be crowdsourced.

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powrtoch
This is cool and all, but are there any uses for it?

~~~
GrantS
This could be useful if placed along a timeline in an interface for seeking to
a specific scene in a movie or video.

Representations like this are also sometimes used for automatic shot boundary
detection (vertical edges in this type of image = an edit to a different
camera shot) in video content retrieval systems.

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runinit
Reminds me of the plugin for Amarok, moodbar.

<http://amarok.kde.org/wiki/Moodbar>

------
spot
Kurt Ralske has done a lot of good work in this space: <http://retnull.com/>

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ChrisArchitect
everyone going on about this check out Cinema Redux - movies distilled into
one image, from 2004! Done with Processing!
<http://processing.org/exhibition/works/redux/index.html>

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zentechen
Is it possible to associate each strip with a number, like the real barcode?

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GeekZeke
An interesting, abstract twist on cinema redux.

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bwindels
I would love to see what Sin City looks like.

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toddwahnish
it reminds me of some of ad reinhardt's earlier artwork.

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innes
You can see how the teal and amber palette has become more and more popular in
recent years.

