Competitive boxsetting– where you spend days shackled to Netflix, an actual physical boxset, whatever Lovefilm is called these days or some other less legit form of TV cough streaming cough, in a bid to watch an entire series before anyone else can – is about to get even more ridiculous.
Now, instead of having to go through days of not washing, cancelling arrangements and going alcohol-free and curfew-heavy on a night out so you can get home before midnight to watch more episodes until 4am, you can watch an entire TV series in just 20 minutes.
Scientists, not too troubled with the greater necessities of entertainment culture – such as an algorithm to avoid standing behind tall men at gigs or a foolproof way of not having to go for a wee halfway through a three-hour film at a cinema that serves Coke in paper cups the circumference of motorway roundabouts – have developed a way of condensing hours of TV footage into under half an hour.
Skimo, or Skim the Video technology, as it’s being called, works on the formula which dictates that directors will make the more interesting and important scenes of TV shows brighter, taking just those bits and getting rid of the rest to give you bite-sized versions of a show.
‘While every director has their own way of doing things, just like every writer, they also have to follow a uniform pattern,’ Vasu Srinivasan, the firm’s founder, told MailOnline. ‘Otherwise it would be too distracting to the viewer. Crucial scenes are given more focus, are often brighter, have more detail or shots and it is this that the Skimo engine picks up. Most long-play films and television episodes will have six or less crucial scenes and by crunching them together we can produce a summary.’
That’s the science. And how do they hope it’ll change our lives? ‘Our hope and dream is that one day Skimo will become part of the language, like watching a trailer or film commentary. The great thing is it works for any type of film or programme in any language.’
The makers of the technology are in talks with NBC, the Discovery Channel and Spanish group Telemundo, with a mind to make the service available through interactive TV. And if it does really well, people will be able to buy a box, like a DVD recorder, through which they can condense TV programmes.
But will this really work? If you watched a series without its darkest scenes, then you’re going to miss quite an incredible action sequence from True Detective, some of the grossest sex scenes in Girls, the most harrowing ofOrange Is The New Blackand the goriest ofGame of Thrones.
Plus, anyone who persevered with Lost will attest the whole intention of some of these series is the meanderings of the journey, not the main storyline, or the ending, and fans of Orange Is The New Black will know it’s all about the little references, the foreshadowing and the cultural references which provide light relief to the emotional character development.
And even if Skimo is there to provide teasers for the full-form series, who wants to see the spoilers for the ending of a show before they’ve even got to the equivalent of an ad-break in real-life time? Plus, if the app does work, is this really what we need?
Apparently so, as zeitgeist boxsets turn us all into fans. First, they get buzz among a select few, then begin to pick up kudos among others until they’re so ubiquitous, you find yourself dreaming about the characters, or asking people if they’ve watched the series, even if you’ve never seen any of it for yourself.
You might even know the whole bloody storyline thanks to social media spoilers, trailers and people wearing T-shirts emblazoned with in-jokes. All the while, you don’t feel too bereft of the show, as your storytelling becomes impressive to accommodate more elaborate ways of defending yourself when people implore that you ‘MUST’ watch a certain boxset.
Sure, the Skimo might provide a quickfire way of giving yourself the need-to-know on a boxset that everyone around you is obsessed with, but at the same time, shouldn’t it be totally OK to not spend hundreds of hours of your life – or even half an hour of it – watching TV at everyone else’s say-so?
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.