Deployment Strategy: programmer O/S

markcheng

markcheng

Well-known member
thought i'd share this effect I made last week for this past weekend's shoot.

My movie, Deployment Strategy, centers around a rogue computer programmer and there are several shots in the film of his laptop as he installs a malicious software. I wanted to make his operating system look a bit more futuristic since this is a sci fi flick, so I created this webpage that fits the laptop's screen resolution. In IE, you can view a page in full screen mode to hide all the browser's buttons. When viewing this page in that manner, it looks like a new OS. I made the Progress screen in flash 8, so you'd need to have it...

if you have a screeen rez of 1024x768, you'll be able to duplicate the effect that we filmed. hope you like ;)

http://www.markcheng.com/samples/programmergui/index.htm

mc
 
Looks pretty good to me. Is this supposed to be a "realistic sci-fi" (ie, near future or could be present times), or is it for something more far-fetched/hard sci-fi (way in the future, really advanced technology). If it's the latter, I'd say it looks about right. Although I would make it look a little different than Windows (the taskbar down at the bottom). I think times would have changed enough that it would have evolved from the standard taskbar/start button thing.

If it's supposed to be more realistic sci-fi, then I would say this screen doesn't work very well. I'm always opposed to movies that take place during present times (or even a little in the future) and have a crazy fancy looking computer interface. The movie "Swordfish" is an example where it looked slick, but was wholly unfaithful to what computer interfaces actually look like.

When in doubt, I'm sure the old command-line prompt (ie, DOS), will be around as long as computers are around. It has that cool low-tech feel, and would be cheap to do, IMHO.
 
As an occasional UI designer, I'd (sorry!) totally disagree with Welton. This interface might be OK for very near future, and indeed I've seen very similar ones 5 years ago as simple Windows/Linux X11 skins. Not saying that's bad, just that we're talking "very near future" at best.

Details? The CPU usage AT LEASt should be live as well! And the time, etc. You have a few dated apps (e.g., Office Frontpage 2003) to be aware of. You may want to completely remove real names (Microsoft, etc.) to save yourself problems in the future.

So, for near-future: nice job, but anonymize it!
 
thanks for the feedback guys! yeah i was getting a little crazy with trying to make it "real" and doing all the proper renaming apps and stuff, but then when you see the final product (i'll post it when it's done), you'll see how little screen time it actually has, so I had to just draw the line and say, ok it's good enough move on!!!! post-production seems to last forever!!! :crybaby:
 
hey guys, thanks again for feedback and for watching it :)

I thought I'd post a sample of how the interface footage was filmed and dropped into the film, here's a quick clip: check it in wmv format

please note: no soundtrack or sound effects or sound mixing yet (those are later stages of my post-production process ;)

mc
 
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Looks cool. Anyone ever wonder why the computers in films can sound so dang cool with all the little beeps and whiz sounds? Sigh... I want my flying car.
 
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