Mosaic

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pzadvance
Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2011 7:24 pm
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#2 Post by pzadvance » Fri Sep 25, 2015 8:25 pm


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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#3 Post by The Narrator Returns » Thu Sep 01, 2016 12:15 am

Of all places, an interview with the guy who played Buzz in Home Alone finally clarified what exactly Mosaic is.
It is a format and a technology that we’ve never seen before. It’s an interactive, fully-immersed film experience, in the sense that the audience will be able to see a story told from beginning to end but they can choose how they want to see it and which character to follow.

It’ll be on HBO Now. Through the website they’ll be able to follow whoever they choose to see and the story changes drastically between whose perspective you wish to see it through. It’s going to be incredible.

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domino harvey
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#4 Post by domino harvey » Thu Sep 01, 2016 12:25 am

Interesting, kind of a larger-scale version of the Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby

flyonthewall2983
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#5 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Sep 01, 2016 1:01 am

Or this

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Steven Soderbergh

#6 Post by knives » Thu Sep 01, 2016 1:22 am

I was thinking that film von Trier and a bunch of his friends did about a decade back across several television stations. It also might be a bit informed by Twixt.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Steven Soderbergh

#7 Post by movielocke » Thu Sep 01, 2016 4:14 am

The Narrator Returns wrote:
Of all places, an interview with the guy who played Buzz in Home Alone finally clarified what exactly Mosaic is.
It is a format and a technology that we’ve never seen before. It’s an interactive, fully-immersed film experience, in the sense that the audience will be able to see a story told from beginning to end but they can choose how they want to see it and which character to follow.

It’ll be on HBO Now. Through the website they’ll be able to follow whoever they choose to see and the story changes drastically between whose perspective you wish to see it through. It’s going to be incredible.
i once worked on a choose your own adventure short film designed for DVD that would use seamless branching to select story options, it is tricky to script, but a novel experience for the consumer once. Realistically, you can't offer very many "choose a or b" events in the experience and you try to overlap some of the third tier choices to result in the same fourth tier story lines so that as the story is drawing to a close it is shrinking the possible outcomes in the story grid and only a handful of ending points are needed.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#8 Post by The Narrator Returns » Thu Aug 10, 2017 9:33 pm

Soderbergh says here that Mosaic will be coming out in November.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#9 Post by The Narrator Returns » Fri Aug 18, 2017 5:05 pm

And now Soderbergh finally clarifies Mosaic a little; an interactive app version will be released in the fall (presumably, like he said, in November), then a different, shorter version (apparently with material not used for the app version) will air as a six-hour TV series on HBO in January.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#10 Post by The Narrator Returns » Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:42 pm



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pzadvance
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#12 Post by pzadvance » Sun Dec 10, 2017 12:56 am

Anyone else gotten into Mosaic?

After coming to terms with watching it on my phone, I really started enjoying it. My OCD didn't really allow me to follow one independent strand all the way through without feeling the need to double back and watch everything I hadn't selected, but I guess that's exactly what this format allows for, so there's no real wrong way through it all. Still, I'm not totally sure why this needed to be an iOS app instead of just, like, a website?

But regardless, I found it to be a hugely gripping, engrossing crime story that absolutely justified its branching narrative structure and I'm so glad HBO took a gambit on releasing it this way. Soderbergh and screenwriter Ed Solomon even slightly tweak the style of each segment to the specific characters - an amateur detective character gets a noir-y VO, a mentally unhinged character starts hearing voices, etc. And Soderbergh seems as effortlessly in command of the pacing and visuals here as he was in The Knick. As happy as I am to see him return to feature films, I'm really loving his approach to longform narrative and I hope we get another Mosaic in some form or other. Very curious to see how the upcoming, re-edited linear version on HBO plays out!

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diamonds
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2016 2:35 pm

Re: Steven Soderbergh

#13 Post by diamonds » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:04 pm

About how long did it take you to finish Mosaic pzadvance? Initially I was just going to wait for the linear miniseries to air, but this interview with Soderbergh really piqued my curiosity about the branching version. I'm just curious how much of a time commitment it would be. I assume it's comparable to the 6 hour series?

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chiendent
Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2016 12:32 pm

Re: Steven Soderbergh

#14 Post by chiendent » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:12 pm

It depends what you mean by "finish." Some of the branches are longer than others but most paths shouldn't take more than a few hours (definitely less than 6). It took me a few days of on-and-off watching to finish up the segments I hadn't seen but even then it's not that huge of a time commitment.

I'm looking forward to revisiting it when the HBO version airs and seeing what his cut is like. I need to spend some time and write down some in-depth thoughts but I enjoyed it a lot. pzadvance is spot-on about how effortlessly in command Soderbergh is here. Plus there's a scene where Garrett Hedlund (who is fantastic in this role) and the guy who plays Barrow in The Knick talk about their favorite Mobius comics and talk shit on the Incal so it's worth it for that alone!

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pzadvance
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#15 Post by pzadvance » Mon Jan 15, 2018 4:46 pm

diamonds wrote:About how long did it take you to finish Mosaic pzadvance? Initially I was just going to wait for the linear miniseries to air, but this interview with Soderbergh really piqued my curiosity about the branching version. I'm just curious how much of a time commitment it would be. I assume it's comparable to the 6 hour series?
I watched an "episode" or two most nights before going to bed and finished in a couple weeks, but I think I read somewhere there's about 7.5 hours of material in the app all told, so not too far off from the upcoming HBO series. I'm most curious about the repeated indications that the HBO version will include footage not used in the app!

Personally, I'd recommend diving into the app and seeing how you react to it. If you aren't turned off by the phone-sized screen, it's quite a unique experience.

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chiendent
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#16 Post by chiendent » Mon Jan 15, 2018 5:04 pm

I used the Apple TV app so I could watch on a larger screen and it was very smooth, they did a great job with the app in terms of remembering where you were and easily accessing the extra clips and documents that pop up every now and then. A nice touch is that there are shortened URLs displayed for the documents so I was able to read them on my computer.

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whaleallright
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#17 Post by whaleallright » Wed Jan 17, 2018 6:15 am

Do you need a smartphone to watch the "branching" version or can it be viewed that way on, say, a laptop?

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chiendent
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#18 Post by chiendent » Wed Jan 17, 2018 12:55 pm

I don't think there's a web version, just apps for Android and iOS.

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Red Screamer
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#19 Post by Red Screamer » Wed Jan 17, 2018 4:21 pm

I watched the app version (for anyone interested, I followed Joel's story all the way through, then Eric's, then went back and forth between Petra/Nate/the others).

The name Olivia Lake might be a reference to Mosaic as a digital successor to Lady in the Lake, with its experiment not in Choose Your Own Adventure, but in point of view. One of Soderbergh's major themes both formally and narratively is the organization, reassembly, and control of information, which plays a major role here and is the basis for the groundbreaking(?) form it takes. Several ensemble scenes are repeated in different episodes, with different camera angles and contexts, each time with a slightly changed meaning or impact, and the full effect is only reached by seeing them all. A great example of this is the short interlude showing the trial of Eric Neale. In each version of the scene he looks at someone in the courtroom behind him, but depending on which thread you're following, who he's looking at and why has completely transformed (hello, Kuleshov effect). This kind of plurality is usually only possible in novels. But then again, part of the novelty and excitement of Mosiac is in the way its experience is exclusive to cellphones. You might say the inclusion of an emotional email chain or a voicemail from one character to another is gimmicky, but the strangeness and immediacy of experiencing these on my phone, as if I were actually involved, completely won me over.

A huge part of what makes this work is the exceptional cast (in particular, Garrett Hedlund and Jennifer Ferrin), full of colorful actors who give life to their (mostly stock) characters and make the prospect of watching each of their perspectives for an expended period enticing. I love the moment towards the end of Magic Mike where Channing Tatum sputters incoherently at length, genuinely vulnerable in a way few Hollywood movies allow their stars to be. And there are a few of those kinds of moments here, where actors giving expertly controlled performances fall apart and become totally unactorly and clumsy, which can be truly uncomfortable to watch.

As much as I liked this, I'm excited to see where filmmakers can take this format in the future, going further with the possibilities hinted at here, from having two simultaneous endings to withholding reverse shots for later/parallel episodes to the short video disruptions being used for more than exposition, and I'd be curious to see where and how it would work beyond the obvious starting point of crime fiction.

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chiendent
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#20 Post by chiendent » Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:09 pm

Just got an email saying the desktop version is now live, if anyone was waiting for a non-app version.

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pzadvance
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#21 Post by pzadvance » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:45 am

So, if anyone's watching the HBO streaming version, can you enlighten me as to what this is all about? Seems like a totally unexpected bit of additional material. Did the first episode also have something like this?

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Steven Soderbergh

#22 Post by The Narrator Returns » Thu Jan 25, 2018 3:19 am

It's part of a faux-true crime series called Heart of Homicide, which recaps the central murder/disappearance in a perfectly overwrought imitation of 48 Hours Mystery (with lines like "the key of D... for deception"). It functions as kind of a replacement for the extra-media material on the app (like a news site you can visit with articles about the characters), and it's very amusing on the whole.

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chiendent
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Re: Mosaic

#23 Post by chiendent » Thu Jan 25, 2018 1:13 pm

There's a screen before the second episode saying that there's bonus content after the episode so I'm curious if there'll be more of if it's just a one-off (nothing for the first and third episodes aside from the standard recaps/previews). But yeah, it's a cute parody. No idea how/why Neil Gaiman got in there though.

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All the Best People
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Re: Mosaic

#24 Post by All the Best People » Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:12 pm

I complete the HBO version last night, and then downloaded the app. One episode into the HBO version, I thought it was well done but wasn't sure how involving it would be, but it picked up as the characters emerged.

I haven't watched any of the app material, but there seems to be at the end of it a significant sequence that has no parallel in the series. Has anyone watched both enough to know if this is common throughout?

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domino harvey
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Re: Mosaic

#25 Post by domino harvey » Wed Apr 25, 2018 8:37 pm


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