The Cult of the Masks

By Caitlin McCaul

Week 8. The time has flown right in.Progress has been made towards my experimental film piece. I'd say 25% of the animation stills are drawn and the planning for the live action shoot days is progressing nicely. A potential problem that I'm thinking might trouble in the future is not getting the animation segments drawn in time. However, my solution is to ramp up the time I spend on them and maybe taking a few days off work depending on how much I have left to draw.In this week's entry, I'd like to discuss two things; how developing a story on a website like Twitch is beneficial and an experimental film called Rhythmus 21 by Hans Richter.

DEVELOPING A STORY THROUGH A LIVE STREAM

In this day and age there are many ways to tell a story. Most people working in the industry would jump straight to film and tv, but the same tools can be utilized in livestreaming.

Why choose the live streaming path in the first place? What draws you to this outlet? Why do you do it?Streamers get asked these questions all the time, with everyone having different answers. Some use streaming as a social outlet, making friends and connection. Others use streaming as an escape from the real world, a safe space where nothing can reach them. Others like watching the live reaction of the chat when they achieve something or pull off an epic fail.
The same can be said for the viewers. I've seen members of a chat have met their best friends or significant others in a streamer's chat room. I've heard a lot people say that a streamer going live has brightened their day and I've laughed at a streamer along with chat when the chat moderators prank the streamer.

Twitch Logo - twitch.tv

So why tell a story through live streaming? What aspects engages so many people?Like live tv, you have options. Would you want to watch the competitive side of livestreaming with e-sports competitions such as Twitch Rivals or Minecraft Championship? Would you prefer watching someone play a horror game such as Five Nights at Freddy's (FNAF) or watching streamers have fun doing something in real life like cooking, creating art or in a hot tub? And yes, hot tub streams are a real thing, peaking in popularity in 2022/23 with streamers such as Amouranth participating in the trend.
It's the question, "What am I going to watch tonight?" that pops into your mind every time you load up Twitch or YouTube or any other livestreaming platform. In the mood for trivia? Here's a streamer playing GeoGuessr. Want something cozy to fall asleep to? Here's a Minecraft streamer that's geeking out over space facts while working on their next build. The options are endless.But where does storytelling fit into this? Well, there's two factors; the streamer and the game being streamed.
Franchises such as Mario, Zelda, Pokemon, FNAF, Fortnite and Elden Ring don't contain the necessary elements to create story driven content. This can be for a number of reasons, such as the game has a campaign, there isn't an option for multiplayer and the game is just too competitive where everyone wants to win. Those environments aren't the ones where a streamer wants to build a world and a character. However, games such as Minecraft, Roblox, VR Chat and Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) possesses elements where creators can easily make story driven content. These games are often open world meaning the player can roam the map doing whatever they want and the games have multiplayer options coded into the base game.

Minecraft (2011) Mojang Studios

And that's where the streamers come into play. Certain streamers prefer to roleplay on different games. For example, Philza, a streamer know for his characters in Minecraft roleplay servers such as Origins SMP and QSMP, doesn't translate his storytelling skills to games like GTA V. It's like telling a sports commentator to star in a romcom.I mainly watch the Minecraft roleplay, where streamers can create deep characters within this blocky game. In this option, a creator creates a Survival Multiplayer (SMP) server within the game and invites other creators to join. The roleplay and storytelling aspects of the server are often decided on before the creators join on stream or are slowly incorporated into the gameplay by a player, which was the case for the DreamSMP.

The Minecraft server that I'll be discussing in detail today is the QSMP (Quackity Survival Multiplayer). The QSMP was created by Alex Quackity and was the multilingual Minecraft server in the world. Initially the server welcomed 20 creators that were from The United States, UK, Mexico and Spain before opening it's doors to creators from Brazil, France, Germany and South Korea. The players communicated by a translation software designed by Quackity Studios which could translate any language.
More information on the global translations can be found here - https://x.com/Quackity/status/1642978818175692802Players could learning about each others' cultures and backgrounds as they are thrown into an overarching story about a dictating government body that doesn't let them leave. Within the main story, players could also create a character, what their background was and how that fits with the main plot.

The plot for the QSMP can get a bit complicated. Yes the overall plot was the players versus the government - however you had subplots and arc of varying length. An example is 'The Egg Event', a plotline which lasted from Day 13 until the last day of the server. This plotline involved the players coming together to take care of the creatures known as the E.G.G.S (Encapsulated Granulated Genome System) which were created by the government and played by the server admins. In total, 15 E.G.G. roles were played in the lifespan of the server.The plot gets even more complicated if you dive deeper into the subplots and the arcs of the server. I recommend checking out the 4 part plot summary created by Quackity Studios linked below. The videos summarises the plot from first 3 months of the server.QSMP Plot Summary - Part 1 - https://youtu.be/KD13fpK25YM?si=KBm5JqWPM2fv3wzC

QSMP Prison Poster - Quackity Studios

Rhythmus 21

Rhythmus 21 is an experimental film made by Hans Richter in 1921. Richer devoted his first year of filmmaking to working on animation films. His abstract and object animation sequences are scattered with non-realistic live-action photography.This is what we see in Rhythmus 21. In an interview with Film Culture, Winter in 1963-64, Richter described his process in developing Rhythm 21, "I did the shooting partially on an animation table, partially in the printing machine by stop motion and forward and backwards printing. The printing machines at that time were not fully automatic and you could use them like a camera."

In a letter to Alfred Barr in 1942, Richter further explained, "I used square (or rectangle) as the simplest way of dividing the square film-screen, after I had discovered that our scrolls were paintings and followed the laws of painting not film. The simple square gave me the opportunity to forget about the complicated matter of our drawings and to concentrate on the orchestration of movement and time." In theory, this technique made it possible to relate the various movements on the screen to each other, in both a formal and temporal sense. This is achieved by accepting the rectangle of the 'movie-canvas' as the form element.

Rhythmus 21 - Hans Richter (1921)

Rhythmus 21 - Hans Richter (1921)

What I liked about this piece is it's minimalistic nature and it's ability to play with the natural focus of the human eye, whether Richter intended this or not. With multiple squares and rectangles in focus on screen, it can be overwhelming for the eye to focus on everything you see on screen. However, the eye is drawn to certain objects, often the ones in motion or in the centre of the screen, which causes any other objects to shift out of focus.This concept is something I'd like toy with for my experimental film, specifically the shots of Team Bolas. The idea of having one of the team members standing out of focus while you have motion behind them. It's definitely something to think about.

Watch Rhythmus 21 here - https://youtu.be/RkceafWtbE?si=dePhBLhVc_69E7K