qualia

Before film was actually shot in color, it was shot in black and white and colored in manually. Then, Kinemacolor came along c.1908 as the first commercially successful color motion picture process. Though it did not survive and new processes have been developed over the many years, I think the result of the kinemacolor process is very beautiful. Above is a video produced by BBC that claims a discovery by film historians of the oldest color film, which actually dated 1902. It shows some nice examples of kinemacolor.

By the way, my computer is trying to spell check zoetrope.

Telling visual stories traces back to a time before the cinema when puppets were crafted and used to put on shadow plays. This is one of the puppets I brought home with me after visiting Indonesia, my mom's home country, this past summer. Wayang are still very popular in Java, where they continue to perform traditional shows for audiences. It is one of the shows we did not watch, though, because my mom said it is a boring show. Still, I find something fascinating about the puppets.

Apparently this is the original Kuleshov experiment, much like the video about Sergei's face. He retains the same expression throughout the video, but after separate flashes of a bowl of soup, a baby in a casket and a fancy lady his expression seems to change. It's as if the audience watching the man can now interpret his thoughts and know what he is feeling. Viewers are in fact projecting their own emotional reactions onto the man. This technique is often used in film editing.

"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is one of my favorite movies if not the favorite. It has a good story and is edited brilliantly in order to best portray exactly what the whole story is about. One of the techniques carried throughout the film is the use of flashbacks to create temporal relations and disrupt chronology. It's one of those movies that just gets you at the end, and then you have to re-watch it, and then it's even better the second time.

Rhythm is found in stationary objects, moving objects and editing.

Niecephore Niepce can be credited for taking the first permanent photograph in 1827. It is titled "View From the Window at Le Gras" and is said to be an eight hour exposure on a pewter plate covered with bitumen, an asphalt similar to tar. It currently sits on display in the Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. The black and white image is the depiction of the photograph after extensive retouching by photographer and historian Helmut Gernsheim.

I remember these flip books from when I was a child in the 90s--I used to love them so much! I thought they were so neat and would create my own short doodle animations in the corners of notebooks or around page numbers. There were also stickers you could buy at the book fairs at school that you would stick at the bottom of pages, one by one. I remember  having some that would animate a cute cartoon monkey.

This is the first ever recorded cartoon, by Emile Cohl in 1908. Film historians consider "Fantasmagorie" to be one of the earliest examples of traditional animation. Cohl was a French caricaturist, cartoonist and animator. He made Fantasmagorie out of approximately 700 black line drawings on paper which he printed in negative, resulting in the chalkboard drawing look.

Some of the earliest forms of caricature drawings were made by Leonardo Da Vinci, referred to as 'grotesques'. They are of a collection of drawings Da Vinci created as he studied physiognomy, or the characteristics of the human face. He would exaggerate and distort features in order to depict variations of ideal 'ugliness'. The list above is similar to the process Da Vinci would use in creating his models, though there are so many more possibilities--looks like a fun drawing exercise to draw inspiration from.

[Digital] When my professor showed us this video in class, he asked during every shot, "Is it real or fake?" A few classmates shouted out their guesses and after a while I think everyone became kind of lost at which scenes were real or not. At one point, I almost shouted "they're all fake" because something about the world being depicted in the video seems too perfect and ethereal. However, the challenge of "real or fake" led me to hold on to the possibility that is was, in fact, real. Well turns out it is all fake. Totally computer crafted.

[Pre-Gutenberg] The Egyptian Book of the Dead is so interesting. I mean, the ancient Egyptians were so interesting, period. When I think of human life a couple thousand years ago, what pops into my head is something more simple and primitive; but the ancient Egyptians were definitely not that. They seem to have been of a very exquisite culture with their own very developed system of doing things. And to think they had to write (or draw) each Book of the Dead by hand. Amazing.

This video was posted five days ago has gone viral--it already has over 1.9 million views nearing two million! I'm sure that was the creator's intent, and he/she has surely succeeded. I saw it because a friend of mine showed me when it appeared on her Facebook news feed, and then the next day one of my Facebook friends posted it as well. This one is more astonishing than the other Photoshop transformation that I posted.

This compilation of movie title sequences really allows you to grasp the style of Saul Bass and appreciate his artistry. I never knew he had designed so many sequences; his logo designs were more familiar to me because that's what we mainly focused on when I first heard his name in a graphic design course. Overall, he was great designer with a strong conceptual mind and visual eye.

I really enjoy the work of Saul Bass. He knows how to 'Keep It Simple' yet also effectively communicate his message in a creative and visually pleasing way. I haven't seen the film Walk on the Wild Side but this title sequence lures me into wanting to watch it. And if this sequence uses semiotics in any way like many of the others Bass designed, then I would guess the film is something about a lone, mysterious soul on a voyage or hunt for something. Perhaps for its (I'm wanting to say his) own innocence, or perhaps a separate, innocent soul comes into his path and creates conflict, which he then separates from and continues on his journey. Maybe it is a love story?

Picasso's large-scale painting titled Guernica is a great example of how important image analysis can be in order to fully understand an image and ingrain it into your memory. Upon personal perspective alone it is quite interesting to look at and I'm sure even more so in person; but, what makes this such a profound and memorable piece is how the analysis from the other of the six perspectives reveal so much more about the context of the painting, which then allows you to understand why it exists in the first place. The other five perspectives are historical, technical, ethical, cultural and critical perspective.

Jane Elliot's "Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes" experiment is genius. She took a simple exercise and applied it to her third grade classroom to try and explain to her students the complex natures of prejudice and stereotyping. While we watched this documentary in class, I was shocked to see how quickly the students' attitudes changed and felt so sad for the students experiencing the oppression that I found myself choking on a lump in my throat. Such a great experiment and such a great short documentary. I was compelled to watch some of the filming of their reunion as well.