The opening crawl of the film gives a large amount of info, most of which is also explained in the film itself.
The Lo-Teks hack into screens all around the planet to communicate the message of resistance to the masses.
The Mnemonic Key that will let Johnny upload the information in his head at the final destination.
Video calls have replaces the phone, but no wireless capabilities to take the screens off of the walls. The image is rough and grainy
The fog machine budget was significant and most dialogue sequences open with a Dutch angle. Gives a foreboding vibe.
A technical overlay combining the neon grids and type of the film’s digital language to the noir style of the live action segments.
Cyberpunk stories take place on the fringes of society, and thus must always have a scene in an abandoned municipal structure.
This is before Seizure warnings were a thing.
The only way to get information out of someone’s head without a Mnemonic device, is to have a highly intelligent dolphin hack your brain.
There’s like three nice people in the movie and most of the time they are in some sort of medical emergency.
The film Johnny Mnemonic (1995) is an adaptation of the science fiction short story of the same name by William Gibson. In the year 2021, a deadly epidemic called NAS (Nerve Attenuation Syndrome) is sweeping the planet. Corporations rule with hired muscle and are opposed only by the underground resistance group known as the Lo-Teks, led by Ice-T. Johnny Mnemonic, played by Keanu Reeves, is the courier hired to transport a large amount of highly sensitive data from Bejing to Newark. After uploading the information into his head for transport, the information locked behind a series of key images taken from the television, the people who hire him are murdered and Johnny is left with no way of getting the file out of his head. He travels to the Free City of Newark, New Jersey in an attempt to find some way to remove the data from his head and stop his brain from melting. The film was written by William Gibson who adapted it from his own short story, and later wrote the SPRAWL book series which takes place in the same universe as Johnny Mnemonic. The film uses cyberpunk, noir, and anime aesthetics to create a dense world that is somehow still sustaining human life. The technology of that world is carved up and welded to organic matter with little regard for the long term health consequences to the person being modified. It all takes place either underground, in dark rooms, or at night; and the fog machine budget must have been substantial. Dialogue is shot with dutch angles and every other scene is some sort of stand-off between different kinds of killers. The film would be incredibly bleak if not for the graphics. In true 1995 fashion, the Internet is shown as a large city landscape that the user can soar around like a theme park ride. It's neon grids and glowing cubes. To "hack" a computer system is to put on a VR headset and solve a series of logic puzzles. Overall the predictions about the future the film makes is really about 50/50 on accuracy.
Johnny Mnemonic is about a messenger, in the cyberpunk dystopian future of 2021, who must survive on the run long enough to get the top secret information out of his head.
5 words:
Cyberpunk, Futuristic, thriller, dark, crime
Blue, black and gray make up the live action scenes, while the digital landscape is neon grids and over-saturated pixels. Bridging that gap of the human mind and the internet only using technology we could conceive of in the early 90s. The fax machine is still relevant, and you can operate it with a VR headset. Video calls make communication easy, but you still have to use a Pay Phone to do it.
The main focus will be combining images of the human brain with electronic grids and circuit boards. This version keeps the over saturated and chaotic visuals that the film uses when showing “the internet”.
A more muted version of the computer brain, the colors of this work better with the Lo-Tek parts of the film.
A 1 to 1 interpretation of the concept. Though the style is not far from some of the simpler graphics in the film.
bright lights and brains
No brain, just the grid. The font is Source Code Variable Extra Light.
a faded circuit board.
Building on the idea of human anatomy contrasting with circuit boards, this is a hand
Eyeball
X-ray
The title sequence will focus on combining human anatomy with computer circuitry. I want to use light tunnels and crash zooms in and out to give the feeling of traveling through cyberspace. The character of Johnny uses a memory implant in his brain to upload and download data from the internet, this is the process I will be trying to show in the titles. Following a download through the different cyber-enhanced body parts in the film.