Bumper to Sunroof

I'm always thrilled when fantasy and sci-fi stories bring in elements that aren't normally a part of our consideration of the future. There are things we love to imagine futuristic versions of: weapons, costumes, computers and entertainment, but many things are off our radar entirely. You don't often see futuristic toilets or children's toys. We're all familiar with space ships and funky flying cars, but rarely does a story spend the time to consider the changes these vehicles would create in traffic.

In the original Star Wars trilogy for example we saw hover crafts and flying scooters, but it wasn't until the prequels that we saw an example of 3-D byways. Star Wars was revolutionary in some ways, but in spite of gravity defying technology the designers obviously had their feet firmly planted. Even in Phantom Menace, the mind blowing pod race (which some consider the only saving grace of the film) was relatively two dimensional. The race was not so different from a car race or a dirt bike race, only a hundred feet in the air. Space battles were fought in all directions but planet side, the designers seemed to have put little consideration into how to use a space less effected by gravity.

The first time we saw a third dimension added to traffic in the Star Wars universe was in Attack of the Clones, when Anikan and Obi Wan get into a speeder chase scene. Here we had a deep city full of traffic with layers upon layers of invisible highways.

I have great respect for the designers of the Prequel movies (if not for the writers) but I find it difficult to give them credit for the clever vision of futuristic traffic presented in Star Wars II. The visual effect of the Star Wars traffic was so similar to the traffic created in another chase scene, out of 5th element, that I have to believe the Star Wars design was at best heavily influenced.

5th Element came out in 1997, Star Wars II came out five years later. More persuasive, while the traffic in Star Wars reads as background, it actually played a role in 5th Element. One of my favorite details in any science fiction movie is the Portable Chinese Restaurant, modeled to look like a boat (and why shouldn't it be?) that stops at Dallas's window. The traffic in 5th element isn't just filler, it's almost a separate character. This is fitting as Dallas is a cab driver.
Some other examples of good traffic scenes can be found in Firefly, the most recent Dr. Who series and probably lots of Anime. In Dr. Who you get to see a never ending traffic jam, where people are living (and dying) while stuck in traffic, and nobody knows that all the exits are closed. Another movie that brought an interesting take on 3-D traffic was Minority Report, in 2002. This vision of the future seems a bit nearer than Star Wars (yeah I know that's technically supposed to be "a long time ago" but it's futuristic, deal with it) or 5th element. The cars don't fly, but the movie utilizes 3-D space with the roadways, which twist around each other in all directions. The traffic itself is far more organized than movement in either 5th element or Star Wars, which could be read as a reflection on the society it represents: highly ordered and over-regulated. Cool looking though.

*Images link to their homes.

Voom

Matt and I got caught in a snow storm or three on the way home from DC last Monday. Aside from the fact that bad weather is always scary when driving (and I was happy Matt was the one behind the wheel) the weather did catch my attention in an unexpected way.

Snow has a distinctive look to it when it's caught in headlights, or street lights. Rain has a similar pattern but snow looks so much more solid (because it is) and real. In a streetlight you might notice that while it doesn't seem to be snowing all that hard anywhere else, in the light it's terribly thick. Headlights are the same when a car is stopped, but the effect changes when a car is in motion. At low speeds the snow merely gets a horizontal, windswept look to it, but when you're on the highway, going fifty or sixty, the snow gives a heightened sense of motion. Perspective becomes simplified, like a comic book, with a vanishing point right in the center of your vision. You can't see much aside from the snow which moves so fast it's line fragments rather than dots, streaking past your car in a cone. In fact the visual is nearly identical to what we see in a sci-fi movie when a spaceship goes into hyperspace.

I doubt that this is coincidental. It's easy to see how an early designer might have been driving through snow while trying to come up with a visual representation of something that's completely beyond our ability to create. This visual: stars moving behind the camera's viewpoint to become streaks of light, is now so a part of our consciousness that we take for granted that it's what traveling at close to the speed of light would look like. Of course we can't know what it would really look like but if you asked someone to describe what is currently impossible, many would readily give you a rendering of snow rushing past a car. Maybe there is no connection, but I think design often works this way, with seemingly unrelated images coming into well known ideas of the future.