Waking Life

Waking Life
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Richard Linklater
Written by	Richard Linklater
Produced by	Tommy Pallotta Jonah Smith Anne Walker-McBay Palmer West
Starring	Wiley Wiggins Lorelei Linklater Trevor Jack Brooks Timothy "Speed" Levitch Alex Jones
Cinematography	Richard Linklater Tommy Pallotta
Edited by	Sandra Adair
Music by	Glover Gill
Distributed by	Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release dates	January 23, 2001
Running time	99 min.
Language	English

Waking Life is a digitally enhanced live action rotoscoped film, directed by Richard Linklater and made in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame. This technique is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, which was invented in the 1920s.

The title is a reference to George Santayana's maxim that "[s]anity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled."

Plot

Waking Life is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. The film follows its protagonist as he initially observes and later participates in philosophical discussions that weave together issues like reality, free will, our relationships with others, and the meaning of life. Along the way the film touches on other topics including existentialism, situationist politics, posthumanity, the film theory of André Bazin, and on lucid dreaming itself.

Production

Adding to the dream-like effect, the film used an innovative animation technique based on rotoscoping. Animators overlaid live action footage (shot by Linklater) with animation that roughly approximates the images actually filmed. A variety of artists were employed, so the feel of the movie continually changes. The result is a surreal, shifting dreamscape.

The animators used inexpensive "off-the-shelf" Apple Macintosh computers. The film was mostly produced using Rotoshop, a custom-made rotoscoping program that creates blends between keyframe vector shapes (the name is a play on the popular bitmap graphics editing software called Photoshop, which also makes use of virtual "layers"), and created specifically for the production by Bob Sabiston.

Awards

Nominated for numerous awards, mainly for its technical achievements, Waking Life won the National Society of Film Critics award for "Best Experimental Film," the New York Film Critics Circle award for "Best Animated Film," and the "CinemAvvenire" award at the Venice Film Festival for "Best Film." It was also nominated for the Golden Lion, the festival's main award. On February 11, 2009, film critic Roger Ebert included the film on his ongoing list of "Great Movies".

Soundtrack

File:Waking Life Soundtrack.JPG

Soundtrack cover

The Waking Life OST was performed and written by Glover Gill and the Tosca Tango Orchestra, except for one piece written by Frédéric Chopin, and was relatively successful. Featuring the nuevo tango style, it bills itself "the 21st Century Tango." Influence for the compositions stem from the Argentine "father of new tango" Ástor Piazzolla. The actual tango scores are revised renditions of Ástor Piazzolla's works.

DVD

The film was released on DVD in North America on May 7, 2002. Special features included several commentaries, documentaries, interviews and deleted scenes, as well as the short film Snack and Drink. A bare-bones DVD with no special features was released on Region 2 on February 24, 2003.

See also

• David Sosa
• Dream argument
• Dream art
• Eamonn Healy
• Existentialism
• Lucid dreaming
• Oneironaut
• Simulated reality
• Robert Solomon
• Wiley Wiggins
• Speed Levitch

External links

• Waking Life at IMDb
• Waking Life at Rotten Tomatoes
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