John Johnston’s post yesterday about Videogrep really piqued my imagination.

Videogrep is a python script that searches through dialog in videos and then cuts together a new video based on what it finds. Basically, it’s a command-line “supercut” generator.

In other words, if I can get this thing wired up, I can create a supercut video of every mention of “the game” throughout all of season 1. How sick is that? This is my new goal in life. The script will search through the subtitles (.srt files) and link them with timestamps of the video to immediately cut the scene and link it with every other scene that has a mention of “the game.” John included some examples to give you an idea of how this might work.

A good one is every mention of “know” in Blade Runner—I love this:

And here’s an example of every time “jungle” is mentioned in Apocalypse Now:

And John even threw in an example from episode 1 of season 1 of The Wire featuring every mention of “Barsksdale.”

It begs the question, apropos of this week’s focus, are such automated, script-based videos an example of digital storytelling? On top of that, what term would you search across a single episode, or even the entire first season?