A World of Pure Imagination

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > A World of Pure Imagination

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

I don't see the problem... They're very clear that this is NOT based on the copyrighted film!

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 04:53

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:16

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

SulfurMonoxideCute posted:

It's the flagrant false advertising that gets me. I want to see these fuckers sued, and try and defend this poo poo in court, and lose. That would be beautiful.

Like the case in Canada of a chatbot lying about company policy. The company was taken to court trying to claim that they weren't responsible for what the chatbot says and don't need to honour it, and they lost.

The critical difference is that the airline has the money to pay out when caught on its BS, while the rando scammer does not.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 05:54

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13131605/willy-wonka-scam-embarrassed-actress-memorise-ai-script-not-paid.html

It's even more funny now that all of the stories from the staff are trickling out. The actors were all horrified and saddened as they are memorizing 15 page AI scripts and handing out single jelly beans to crying children

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 07:32

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

quote:

It was horrendously embarrassing. We didn't want to walk out just because I feel like that would make it even worse. 'When we arrived we were handed a script to learn in 12 hours or something like that.

'We arrived for a dress rehearsal on the Friday evening, and were handed a script for the Saturday and Sunday - it wasn't planned out at all.

'There was meant to be a live performance of Willy Wonka taking the children through the factory. The script - I showed it to my partner - and we think it was AI generated.

'There were parts in the script where we thought oh that sounds really good, because there were supposed to be interactive elements. There was a bit in the script where it was like if you touch the grass it will start laughing, and you thought oh so it's got sensors in it, that will be really cool.

'There were supposed to be bubble machines, there were supposed to be projectors, there was supposed to be so much more that was promised.'

quote:

At one point they told us just get rid of the script, there�s no show anymore, just have people walk through, and I think that�s when it kind of fell off a cliff.

'We were kind of in the actual set itself [�] and then when you got to the end of that there was a kind of seating area and so I think that�s when people had gone through the set and passed us - that�s when they kind of thought, oh, is that it? And that�s when I think it hit a lot of families who were like oh okay this isn�t what we signed up for at all.

'The bouncy castle even I think it could only fit like twelve children on it, and there were hundreds of children there.

'I think they were charging people for food - the sweets that they were promised.

'They ran out of sweets. We were told actually in the script we were given that the Oompa Loompas were supposed to be given like big baskets of sweets to like hand out. But when we got there we were like okay what sweets - we can�t just have people come in and like just look at us.

'We were just told to improvise - improvise a story or just grab some Pick N Mix. So we were actually given like little paper bags of Pick N Mix to hand out. It wasn�t right. We tried our best, I think all of the actors did the best and what we could, but obviously there�s only so much you can do l.'

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 07:36

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

N. Senada posted:

The Scots have such a beautiful language

I studied abroad in Glasgow and I couldn't understand a single loving thing those people said. It lead to many awkward social interactions

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 08:04

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Tbf, Wonka's factory is described as a large imposing brick factory with smoke stacks etc

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 17:50

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Also "the elder" is now Wonka canon.

Or is he saying "the unknown", which the script describes as an evil chocolateer nemesis that lives in the walls?

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 17:52

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

ultrafilter posted:

It's "the unknown" spoken with the local accent.

The glaswegians are out of control

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 17:59

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

https://x.com/shockproofbeats/status/1762850543074976101?s=20

Thesaurus fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Feb 28, 2024

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 19:22

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

The final battle between Willy and the unknown sounds pretty legit, tho

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 19:43

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Disco Pope posted:

She's from Glasgow, not the 1930s.

It's the funniest city in the UK

quote:

Planning a stand-up tour soon, the actor, originally from Hull, said he had moved to Glasgow to follow his dream of becoming a stand-up comedian after googling what is the funniest city in the UK.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2024 06:47

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Mr Teatime posted:

Imagine not being from Glasgow lmao.

I appreciated my time getting drunk there while studying abroad. My roommates and I would get these cheap three (3!!!) liter bottles of mixed booze called "Frosty Jack's" that we'd chug. They were �2.50 per 3 liters and bright blue. It seemed like everyone I met in Glasgow was a hard drinker.

It was always blustery and drizzling

# ¿ Feb 29, 2024 07:04

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

frumpykvetchbot posted:

Yeah. But there's no evidence of any forethought or planning whatsoever. The pitiful small amounts of handout candy, crummy costumes, sparse and few decorations and the preposterous AI written scripts (with audience reactions) just passed directly to the actors without any adaptation or facilitation by an experienced creative director type. Nothing adds up to honest effort. It was just a lazy grift. I wonder if any of those refunds are really happening since the actors didn't get paid.

But just suppose this guy was an industrious entrepreneur and genuinely wanted to create an off-brand "wonka" experience as cheaply as possible, just good enough so that people wouldn't outright scream bloody murder and call the police to get their money back, he could have simply rented some stage trusses, black tarps for light control, some projection screens and a bunch of video projectors and had the event consist of a bunch of AI bullshit slideshows that matched the look of the AI bullshit adverts that drew in the audience in the first place.

Not difficult to do. If he paid one video artist for a couple of days of work, they could have easily created a few tens of minutes worth of trippy chocolate land video loops with Stable Diffusion. Different prompts to suggest different aspects of the "chocolate factory." These could be shown on a handful of screens along a serpentine 10-minute "experience" with dark spaces mainly illuminated by this video art which would at least be colorful looking. People who have seen just one of those stable diffusion video loopback effects wouldn't be impressed but small kids might. Further use some down-facing video projectors hanging from high up to cheaply paint artwork and a decorated path on the concrete warehouse floor, minimizing dependency on physical props.

Along the walk, add a few constructed set pieces built by some prop fabrication workshop - these people make practical backdrops and things for stage and TV productions, and they could make one or two candy dispensing "wonka factory machines" out of some acrylic tubes, wood, cardboard, papier mache and sprinkled with blinking LEDs to look passable in the dim lighting. CAD, CNC and lasercut stuff makes fabrication of even good size props practical and fast for small outfits and also shippable so that they can be transported by pallet and assembled on site in a couple of hours. It would cost some money - I know people in Europe that could and would build stuff like this at a tolerable quality for a few hundred euros, maybe a 1000 VAT included and deliver within a week. The giveaway candy is cheap; Chinese off-brand jellybeans that may be possibly not made of lead and strontium can be bought in hundred-kilogram tubs for cheap on alibaba. The capex for the construction and asset creation would be amortized over the run of the event and easily paid for by a few dozen tickets sold at the 35 pound rate he was charging.

Add add a little bit of interactivity. Near the end, one good set piece with store brand willy and his ompas loompas, but where actors and a script writer had a few weeks to work out a routine and script, and with stage lighting, music, makeup and proper costumes.

If the guy had more than a week to plan this, he could hire also some interaction artists to make at least one of those video walls or floor projections react to little kids running around. You can modify and re-skin any of numerous reactive open-source video projects built with Processing, Open Frameworks, Gen, Unity or other game engines. You use one or several IR cameras to track people in the projection space, and this tracking data interacts with particle effects and simple physics. With this you could for example make some kind of "chocolate river" experience where candies float about and maybe I don't know, it's all bullshit, swim like fish.

Examples of a premium installation done with such techniques by Japanese artist group TeamLab. This is a super popular experience "Futureworld" hosted at a fancy downtown location. It has been on for years and keep drawing an audience, even repeat visitors in spite of consisting mainly of video projection art with few changes and upgrades over the long time it has been running.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2024 06:34

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

The Sausages posted:

Too true

I ain't reading that but I love that it exists

# ¿ Mar 2, 2024 05:12

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Sometimes the only way out of a grift-induced debacle is MORE grifting.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2024 04:52

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Buce posted:

i got a high-priority alert that my special code phrase "space ghetto" has been uttered itt?

If youre caught saying it in Glasgow you'll end up stabbed to death

# ¿ Mar 19, 2024 05:14

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

MrQwerty posted:

The Saurus is extremely not allowed here and incapable of hiding themself

But I am the...saurus?

I didn't know I had an infamous doppelganger, even since 2004

# ¿ Mar 20, 2024 07:32

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Alan Smithee posted:

Thesaurus on the other hand eats floor chocolate

I literally did this today. Are you in my house?

# ¿ Mar 21, 2024 04:30

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 22, 2024 13:16

Thesaurus: Oct 3, 2004

Alan Smithee posted:

they're bringing in sad oompa loompa. Nothing I saw about the Unknown

The ironic childless LA crowd is going to be queued up to take selfies with her, and she's going to have to make the same depressed face each time and dole out single jelly beans over and over, but without the irony

# ¿ Apr 13, 2024 02:44

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > A World of Pure Imagination