The Face of Computing
Discover the world of user interface design in movies
“WE THINK OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY AND WHAT MAKES SENSE IN TERMS OF VISUAL HIERARCHY” Alan Torres, Netflix (Energing Creative)
Two characters in a scifi movie are arguing in hushed tones over a computer screen depicting data about the invading alien force, the fleet of next-gen fighter planes in the air or the insertion of a new sequence into a DNA strand to create a super soldier.
“Right there,” the gruff commanding officer says, pointing animatedly at the screen. “No,” says the devil-may-care hero who plays by his own rules, pointing elsewhere, “over here we’ll extract more of the reverse quantum polarity quotient.”
We cut to a close-up of the sleek, flat, silver-backed computer monitor they’re arguing over and see… a blank screen.
Without user interface (UI) designers – the people who work in a specialised subset of the VFX field – that’s how it would look when the good guys figure out the time travel/weapons recalibration/ cross-species splicing that solves the narrative problem.
UIS for the screen are an unsung art. Historically they were done using animation or the visuals native to actual computers by special effects people or editors (Steven Spielberg was never terribly interested in title sequences, usually leaving them to his longtime editor Michael Kahn).
In the CGI era they’re usually animated by the same VFX vendors that construct the scenes of Thanos’s attack on the Avengers HQ, Godzilla laying waste to a city or the realistic animal characters and backdrops of The Lion King.
If you can see yourself designing the heads-up display in a futuristic warplane or the live schematics for an epic battle, there’s certainly plenty of work around. But how do you forge a path?