THE EMULS

Emuls - Project Introduction

  The Emuls project is an ambitious authorial audiovisual endeavor that attempts, among other things, to disrupt the established notion of animated film, both in terms of its realization and its narrative and composition. However, it is by no means an abstract experiment, but a carefully thought-out concept designed and implemented by a single person.

  The author is deeply convinced that today, thanks to technology, it is possible to approach an audiovisual work in the same way as a writer approaches a novel and thus "create" everything himself as a so-called "one man show", which brings a new type of quality in expressive and opinion consistency, which has so far been seen only in literature, in visual art and later penetrated into music.

  This conviction is not a manifestation of the author's inflated ego or his own belief that he will do everything absolutely best, but just a new way to deal purely authorially and authentically with some material also in an audiovisual work.

Project Concept

  The basic concept of the project stems from a fairly simple thesis. Social networks, which today create, in addition to social bubbles and phenomena associated with them, also a significant amount of data. These data, often significantly marked by algorithms, self-presentation motivation or perhaps anonymity (whether assumed or real), carry a lot of interesting material about human behavior.

   With the advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the need for data on which so-called artificial intelligence will learn has also arisen. A significant part of them is publicly available, just take them and use them. What would probably happen if a more advanced AI suddenly autonomously decided to make an allegorical simulation of the human world, where each character will represent one "archetype" flowing from these data/social bubbles?

  This situation, i.e., software emulation of our world realized by artificial intelligence, is the basis of the entire project. What all this starting point offers and what topics can be grasped and processed using it is certainly not necessary to explain to an intelligent person.

Environment:

   Everything takes place in one valley, the nature of which remains hidden for a long time. The valley is divided into two parts. Urban and rural. In the urban part, the houses of individual inhabitants are distributed around the central square. The square is made up of four main buildings, which represent four fundamental social phenomena.

   The town hall, remotely reminiscent of a castle, stands the furthest west (on the left in the picture), which is the center of political and repressive power, which also serves as a court and the seat of the mayor of the whole valley. Opposite the town hall is a theater building representing all culture, where intellectuals, café loafers and dreamers from among artists meet. There is also a building of trade and bank representing the economy and a stadium, which represents all sports.

  In the valley, among other things, we find a hermitage, a weirdo's house, a cave or a water area, which connects the urban part with the rural one, where there is a monumental temple representing religious power, a picnic gazebo, a "mysterious" forest, various viewpoints, mystical sacred places with totems or a factory, which together with a vita nursery represents all production in the valley and with it the associated "working class", as one of the important social phenomena, which cannot be missing in the project.

Characters:

Each character has its carefully selected unique character, social ties, its goals and motivations. Thus, it represents a certain social group. Among the Emuls are both snobbish businessmen, esomaniac manipulators, fanatical athletes, babbling intellectuals, radically idealistic artists, misers, as well as simple workers, officials, scientists or politicians. There is a struggle for influence, power, interpretation of conditions, management of public affairs and position, just like in human society (on social networks).

For example, in the building of trade and bank on the square, there is quite unsurprisingly a certain businessman and banker. The owner of the shop, Emul Kojn, is a convinced anarcho-capitalist. He is a miser, a complete individualist and a total loner out of necessity. He has no friends and is only interested in profit and so he just buys society. On the other hand, his neighbor banker Monet is a generous, educated and cultivated Emul with an interest in art and science, so he socializes and supports the local art group "Clairvoyants" and his best friend is Emula Anana, a quiet, principled, educated and creative scientist.

   Emuls are a special creature and feed only on vita, which is something between a plant and an animal, which grows and grazes on a farm behind the city. Their legend says that they have been living in this valley since time immemorial and that long ago everything was wild. Emuls at that time moved around the valley randomly and soullessly, occasionally bumped into each other, turned elsewhere and continued. Fortunately, they occasionally came across vita, which was also wild at that time. This allowed them to survive in some way until the time when the legendary Emul Eman arose, who one sunny day stopped and shouted at the whole valley. "We are alive! What if we stopped walking and built a city?" And as they said, so they did.

   Today they have a beautiful city and a rural farm with a village behind the hill, where they grow, (or breed, hard to say), vita. Emul Eman has his statue in the park (it is often the target of attacks by vandals and advocates of clean public space), which was of course created by a member of the art group Clairvoyants and paid for by banker Monet. Emuls are diurnal creatures. They sleep strictly at night. It's not quite their choice, because as soon as it gets dark, they have only a few minutes to get home properly. If they celebrate, for example, the Day of Naturalness, which is a holiday in honor of Emul Eman, they have to prepare very carefully for staying up late.

   This is done by a special modification of vita, which must be carefully tapped with a flat stick made for this purpose so that vita releases some kind of mysterious hormone that allows them to stay awake longer. If this is not done correctly, Emul is able to stiffen and fall asleep without warning at any moment, even during a conversation, walking, sports or anything else. However, not everyone can do such a modification. Only Emula Emilka can do it properly.

Summary of the Concept

   The entire valley and its inhabitants provide a sufficiently rich basic framework for a social allegory that allows various satirical situations to play out in side episodes alongside the main storyline, caricaturing various social topics, using archetypes for the behavior of various social groups, including their more or less valid stereotypical ideas. In addition to this basic framework, the world of Emuls has its own rich history and interesting specifics that humorously complement the story and support the viewer's imagination.

   Emuls will not speak semantically understandably. Of course, we will hear, for example, a political speech or other verbal expression even though it seems that a significant part of their communication takes place in infrasound or ultrasound. From what we hear, we can tell whether the content of the message is positive or negative. Positive communication contains, in addition to emotional coloring, fundamentally more vowels than negative, where consonants noticeably dominate and the only vowel is "e". This creates another interesting and meaningful communication level in addition to emotional coloring.

  This brings us to another fundamental element of the Emuls project. In addition to the author's intention to entertain, an unusual form of narration is chosen, where the discoverer of the Emuls world, together with his friend, comment on less obvious situations or motivations of characters during the entire course of the film, and they do not always agree on their interpretation. Remotely, it can remind of the popular streams on YouTube or Twitch, where the streamer humorously comments on what is happening on the screen, which he sees for the first time and hundreds or even thousands of people watch it with him.

   Here, there will even be two such "commentators". One as a connoisseur of conditions and the other as an eternal doubter and humorous glossator with an irresistible need to ask about everything and contradict everything. Above all this, there is still the main narrator (type omniscient). This should provide the film as a whole not only with a natural complementary flow and give space for funny details from the Emuls world, which would otherwise not get into the film, but also offer controversy and thus non-violently and completely naturally force the viewer to lean towards this or that opinion or interpretation, or create his own opinion.

   The film, however, in no case aims to push the boundaries of postmodernity by senseless and endless relativization of everything. The truth, however, is that the project does not put obstacles to devote itself to this topic, including its last phase in the form of cultural wars. After all, it is a current live topic.

   This concept thus provides an inexhaustible amount of processing possibilities and topics themselves. It is also based on a fairly striking, hardly mistakable visual and straightforward minimalist design of characters (by this is meant the artistic and functional side of characters), which, despite their obvious limits, allow to convincingly play out all basic emotions.

  The project thus has enormous potential and I believe that among other things it can bring a fresh wind into Czech animation both with its concept and form and especially the way of realization. Although all the producers I showed it to liked it, the film industry is understandably extremely rigid and commercial producers are mostly afraid to leave the established tracks both in the construction of the story and in the way of its realization.

Preview sample

Allow a few words about the following video. It's not a classic trailer, but just a kind of showcase of the environment and a few characters for the needs of introducing the project to co-producers and people who are interested in the project and are considering its support. I warn in advance that, for example, the sound quality corresponds to the purpose of the video.

Who is the author?

  The author of the project is Pavel Lopolo Jirák (www.3d.cz), who has been involved in audiovisuals for more than 30 years. During his long professional career, he has worked in many areas and professions. As a director, he worked for Škoda Auto or ČSOB, as a cameraman on the author's film by Bedřich Glaser (court animator Jan Švankmajer - Something from Alice, Lesson Faust, etc.) where he was also a co-producer, as an editor again at the famous series Pat and Mat, etc. He himself is the author of several documentaries, where he also wrote music, such as the Expedition Libya, which received a nomination at the international festival of outdoor films.

  He also dealt with more professional topics and in cooperation with VZP shot and produced the film Inattentive about people with ADHD, again including music. Listing all projects and professions would take a long time, because they range from stereoscopic projections for planetariums (including spatial sound), through virtual reality or technical consultations (serial ČT Kosmo) to trick shots and more complex compositions in commercials.

  His main field is 3D animation all the time. Most recently, he worked for Mixit, for which he created several animations, the most successful of which has more than two million views and was announced among the top five most successful ads on Youtube in 2022.

  Finally, a few words from the author himself.

"The Emulové project has been maturing in me for several years until one day I decided to try to finally realize it. I would very much like to try to create something more permanent, something with an overlap and I believe that also something more valuable than advertising. The ideal way to avoid understandable pressure and rigid approach of producers and distributors to the proven form and create a truly independent author's act is in addition to grants, patrons or enlightened producers also support through crowdfunding.

The situation around the film strongly reminds me of the reign of music publishers who also thought that it is not possible to do it without them. Should I add caps and other trinkets to the emuls so that the viewer can understand them at first good, let them stick into each other, fall to the ground and create another crazy alternative to minions, or should I stubbornly but humbly try to create a more complicated and sophisticated thing, which is harder to finance, requires more complicated distribution and is rather for fans and real lovers of animated film? Hopefully there won't be so few of them in the world that we can't finance it together.""

Contact

If the project has caught your interest, and you want to learn more or even financially support it, please don't hesitate to write to the email emul@emulove.cz.

I want to support the project.

I greatly appreciate your decision to contribute your own money to support this project. To make it as enjoyable as possible for you, you will find QR code and donate button. Please include your name or nickname in the message, under which you would like to be credited in the credits.

Every contributor who donates over 5,000 Czech koruna, unless they wish to remain anonymous, will be listed in the category corresponding to the amount of their contribution.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

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