dpwolf/blog

This is a simple Mac App which lets you play a movie both forward and backwards simultaneously to  explore the serendipitous relationships between different parts of the film, the framing and editing. There are no controls other than loading, starting and stopping the movie.

It was inspired by a post on Tomorrow Museum which describes a screening of The Shining where the film was projected both forward and backwards on top of one another.

It’s not just for purpose of spectacle that this film was projected this way; it seems that Kubrick filmed (and edited) with an intuitive balance and geometry. Objects in the two layers of projections routinely matched up with each other, characters were positioned in similar places far too often to be chalked up as odd coincidence. The film is a mirror, and to appreciate it one must first determine on what side of the mirror a particular scene is taking place.

The app was built using Quartz Composer and Xcode and requires MacOS 10.6.

It’s been a long time, but I used to make these things all the time when I was working on my Masters project, I called them ‘Vidgets’.

You can download the app here. I’ve also put the source files up on GitHub here.

Let me know what movies you find which work well played back and forth.

Disclaimer: HD movies tend to take a lot of CPU/GPU, especially when playing backwards and may not run smoothly. Also, I made this in an afternoon/evening with minimal testing so it’s not guaranteed to work or to not blow up your computer. Probably best to save what you’re doing before you try it!