South by Southwest Source > South by Southwest Source > Archives > 2007 > March > 10
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Capsule review: David Wain’s ‘The Ten’
I got into the swing of SXSW Film with two movies today. My first film of the festival was the absurd new comedy ‘The Ten’ from Stella and The State alum David Wain. Festival producer Matt Dentler explained in his introduction at the Paramount screening that while ”The Ten” may have been a midnight screening at Sundance this winter, it is the type of film that can play any time during SXSW - morning, noon or night.
As the film’s narrator Paul Rudd tells the audience from the outset, the movie is a series of 10 vignettes based on the Ten Commandments. From America’s fascination with idolizing celebrities as false idols, to a prison inmate coveting a fellow inmate’s ”wife,” the stories were not only completely absurd, but also very meta, with tongue-in-cheek irony and self-referential humor sprinkled throughout. Some of the bits achieved much better results than others. I particularly liked a scene in which a delusional Wynona Ryder falls in love with a ventriloquist’s dummy, and another sequence in which a 35 year-old virgin travels to Mexico and loses her virginity to Jesus. Yes, the Jesus. I also enjoyed seeing all of the members of The State, along with a slew of cameos that did not feel too gratuitous, although Jessica Alba’s appearance made me scratch my head.
In between the acts, Rudd’s narrator character engaged the audience with his own moral play, a device that helped break up the pieces nicely. While some of the bits lagged or missed their marks, the movie did not drag as a whole because of the use of the vignettes. Much like long-form improvisation or sketch comedy, if one bit seemed to fail slightly, you could take solace in the fact that another was right around the corner. A few elements and characters reappeared in each story, giving the movie as a whole a bit of a through line. The audience seemed delighted with the absurdist pastiche from the seasoned post-modern sketch comedy veteran.
I guess I will be trite and go ahead and give grades for the films I see this Fest; so, I’ll give ”The Ten” a B. It made me laugh; although there were a few times it just seemed to be trying a little too hard.
As for the venue, I don’t know if it is because the wonderful and friendly ushers at the Paramount are all septuagenarians, but it is always freezing in that place. Like, you could hang meat cold, and I’ve had more leg space on a flight from Dallas to Abilene. Just sayin’.
Additional note: For all of you fans of The State, Wain said production of a DVD of the late great show is in the works.
Random celebrity sighting: members of OK Go, who apparently took in a matinee before opening for Snow Patrol tonight at Stubb’s.
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Austin’s Street Fighter Champion
Hsien Chang may be one of the few people who came to SXSW and made money. Chang is the winner of the Street Fighter tournament at Screenburn Arcade, pocketing a cool $1,000. The tournament is sponsored by Toyota Yaris and is completely free to enter. The quiet 24-year-old brought his own toaster-size joystick and beat out hundreds of other players. He also won a slot at the world Street Fighter championship in Las Vegas. Change became a minor celebrity after winning about 4 p.m. Saturday, surrounded by dozens of young men who wanted to know how he did it. It takes practice, Chang said. He’s been playing since he was about 12, he said, but perfected the Street Fighting art at local hangout Einstein’s Arcade while he was a UT student. He practiced the one-on-one fighting game hours a week with his friends. I asked him if he had any advice for young gamers who want to enter tournaments. ”Don’t do it,” Chang said. ”It takes up too much time.” He now works at IBM in Austin.
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You CAN play video games for a living
The Frag Dolls are a group of girl gamers paid by game company Ubisoft to, yes, play games for a living. I met several of these ladies at SXSW’s (free!) ScreenBurn Arcade. In between photos with their many, er, male fans, Frag Dollers Amy Brady and Brooke Hattabaugh talked about getting more girls interested in video games. While playing “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon 2” at SXSW, Brady, dressed in a pink and black tight-fitting Frag Dolls T-shirt, said she joined the seven-girl team after responding to an ad on Craigslist. The idea is to get girls interested in gaming, Brady said, although they’ve acquired quite a few male fans along the way. The compete on all-girl teams. “I still get harassed by guys sometimes, and there are those stereotypes still out there,” Brady said. She said online men will ask her to “go cook in the kitchen,” and taunting her about her game skills. But she said the Frag Dolls won a global tournament for “Rainbow Six” last year, beating an all-male team. “They didn’t like to lose to girls,” Brady said. Hattabaugh said she has seen the number of women gamers rise since she was hired by Ubisoft about three years ago. “I used to think, when I was a kid, that it would be so cool if I could play games for a living,” Hattabaugh said. “When I was in college, I just wasted my time away playing video games.” Now Hattabaugh says she gets paid to lie in bed at home and practice playing games. “We’re told from guys sometimes, oh you guys are only paid to do this because you’re women,” Hattabaugh said. “And that’s true, we know we’re hired partly because of how we look. But it’s not like you have to be booth babe material, we’re all different.” She said the reaction from girls and guys has mostly been positive. “The guys tell me, I wish my girlfriend or wife was more like you,” Hattabaugh said, laughing. After 10 minutes of chatting, I was told I needed to leave so the girls could do their job. A line of a dozen men had formed. And they all wanted to try to beat the Frag Dolls.
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Liveblogging Kathy Sierra opening remarks at Interactive
Notes from her talk:
— The people in the room for the talk make the stuff that makes it unnecessary to be at the talk in person. But yet we’re all here — why? We still like to be with other humans. To make applications more lovable, we have to add “human-ness.”
— That could be helping users get together offline (user groups, “camps” for different interests, low-cost events) or helping interactions with software feel more human.
— Computers can’t read our expressions like humans can. The computer can’t tell if we’re confused by our facial expression and then respond.
— “Our apps. have Asperger’s,” Sierra said. Asperger’s is a disorder on the autism spectrum. “Aspies” are often intelligent but rigid and have trouble with emotional interactions.
— Helping users learn to your use tools quickly will inspire their passion.
— So how can an application know when a person is confused? FAQs and online help aren’t taking care of this. “Help” files assume we’re a lot less stressed and more happy than we are. We’re freaking out, and the Help file doesn’t respond to this.
— The “Canyon of Pain” is the gap between what’s in the Help file and what we need. We can’t say “I don’t know what it’s called, but it does this, and I need it” to a computer, but we can to a human.
— If someone looks confused, we would ask them questions to try to help. So we need a dialogue with the user.
— “Frequently asked questions” aren’t really that frequently asked by real users. We need to give them more options. Goal: Get the user to the right context and then give him an understandable set of questions that don’t assume prior knowledge. Reach the user at the level where she is at that moment. Start by letting the user choose statements like “I’m lost” or “Why did this happen?” to help them get started.
—The bottom line is to give the user a way to express herself to the system in a more human-interactive way.
— What other emotions could the computer “recognize”? Maybe users could click on a face that mirrors their emotions.
— There could also be other ways of the system giving help. Right now, the FAQ might be your only shot. If you don’t understand the FAQ, the answers aren’t available expressed any other way.
— Talk like a human! FAQs often aren’t worded in a natural, conversational way. The tiniest changes in wording can make a big difference. Our brains pay more attention to conversational language.
— We treat people who buy our products worse than the people who haven’t yet. Ads and brochures are slick and beautiful; manuals are dull.
— “The key to passionate users is actually just helping them learn.” Think about the impact of your work and how you can change a user’s experience. If you can help a user into the “flow” state, you’re giving them great happiness. You’re changing the world one user at a time.
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Interactive: Scenes from Screenburn
We just took a swing through the ScreenBurn Arcade, where highlights included seeing people play “Guitar Hero” on a TV in the trunk of a tricked-out Toyota Yaris.
Another cool, guitar-related highlight: A demo of “Jam Sessions” by Ubisoft for the Nintendo DS. It’s hard to explain, but essentially you strum a guitar using the Touch Screen. “Jam Sessions” is called a game, but it’s very different from “Guitar Hero,” and seems more geared to musicians. It’s touted as giving you the chance to play guitar anywhere, anytime you want — so if the inspiration to write a song hits while you’re riding the bus, you can pull out your DS, put on your headphones and create away.
“Jam Sessions” will be out in June.
If you’re attending Interactive and have a budding young gamer in your life, you can register to send him or her to Austin Community College’s Gamecamp, which will teach kids about the video game industry.
One difference we’re noticing from the last time we were at Interactive a couple of years ago is the strong presence of Twitter. If you go look at the timeline on the home page, you’ll see several updates from Austin.
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