Filmmaker Harmony Korine is focused on the future and how advancements in films and gaming technology can find a way to converge.
In a recent interview with GQ, published online Wednesday, the Spring Breakers director opened up about his co-founded creative collective and design studio Edglrd (pronounced “Edgelord”). The studio is currently working on films, video games and movies that are experienced like video games, which he called the “future of entertainment.”
“We’re trying to gamify movies,” Korine said. “What we’re trying to do is to build some mechanism that allows people to interface with the footage and basically remix, or make their own, films.”
The Gummo director also went so far as to say that gaming systems have advanced so much that “you could look at the Call of Duty trailer now, and it looks better than anything that [Steven] Spielberg’s ever done.”
Korine said his interest in the new technology developed over time because he “just lost interest in normal films,” and started looking at what’s next in entertainment. “The way it used to be was that movies would come out, films would come out, games would come out, music would come out, and everyone knew about it,” he explained. “Now, not only do you not know what’s out there, you don’t even know the channels that exist that it’s out there on.”
As an example, the filmmaker expanded on the thermal imaging, animation and AI technology used to create the studio’s first project to be released, Aggro Dr1ft, which features rapper Travis Scott and Jordi Mollà. Korine described the film’s aesthetic as “gamecore.”
“How do you take the whole idea of entertainment, of live-action gaming, and create something new?” he asked. “The obsession here is that there’s something else after where we’ve been — that one thing is dying, and something new is being born right now.”
Asked if he would ever return to working on “real movies,” Korine said, “It’s possible,” but only for one person.
“Terrence Malick wrote a script that he wants me to direct,” he continued. “It’s a really, really beautiful script. And that’s maybe one of the only things that I could imagine pulling me back into like actual, traditional moviemaking. But even then, the hard part now is just the idea of looking through a viewfinder and filming, like, people speaking at a table. All this dialogue always gets in the way. All these things that you don’t really care about. I don’t know. That would be a special case. I always loved him, and his movies were such a big deal for me as a kid, and even still now. But that would maybe be the one thing.”
Aggro Dr1ft is set to have its world premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on Sept. 2.
