"Why are movies so compelling? Why did I spend the weekend binge watching an entire season of a TV drama? Fortunately for me, I can prevent myself from getting hooked on many such programs. Yet our addiction to the screen can be so seductive that it requires daily fixes. Over the past 100 years, filmmakers have discovered clever ways of capturing our attention and moving us through a dramatic plot. From a psychological standpoint, if we could uncover the attraction of movies, we may better understand basic features of human nature, such as motivational drive, spatial perception, imagination, and social engagement.
The scientific path to our understanding of movies is best approached by considering how filmmakers guide us through a dramatic plot. In one study, psychologist Tim Smithrecorded eye movement behavior while individuals watched clips of feature films, such Blade Runner and There Will Be Blood. Interestingly, as they watched a movie clip virtually all of the subjects began to fixate on the same spots on the screen at the same time. Smith calls this phenomenon attentional synchrony, and it is as if filmmakers—through acting, set design, movement, sound, and editing—know exactly how to direct our attention. Indeed, Walter Murch, the Academy Award winning film editor and author of In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing, suggested that good filmmakers must be aware of the psychology of the viewer: “What is the audience going to be thinking at any particular moment? Where are they going to be looking? What do you want them to think about? And, of course, what do you want them to feel?” (Murch, 2001, pg 21)." Read Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-brain-the-beholder/201510/movies-in-mind-our-addiction-the-screen Film noir is a peculiar genre. A Western is identifiable by people on horseback in the West; a musical involves singing and dancing; a war movie shows war. Even the so-called women’s picture was a movie that featured women prominently. But the directors who worked in film noir didn’t use that term to describe their work. One searches in vain for the term in the interviews with some of the genre’s crucial creators—Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Fritz Lang, Robert Aldrich, and Edgar G. Ulmer—by Peter Bogdanovich in his great collection “Who the Devil Made It.” The first appearance of the term “film noir” in this magazine is from 1971; the first in the New York Times is from 1973.
Read Entire Article: http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/film-noir-elusive-genre-2 f you're looking for the first movie ever made, you can look back to The Horse In Motion, created by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878. Muybridge was asked by Leland Stanford (railroad magnate, California senator, race-horse owner, and eventual founder of Stanford University) to answer a popularly debated question: When a horse trots, do all four hooves leave the ground simultaneously? Muybridge's stop motion film made it clear that they do.
Read Entire Article: http://www.openculture.com/2011/09/the_birth_of_film_11_firsts_in_cinema.html Maggie Lau works in a gold mine. But what she seeks here, more than a kilometer and a half (a mile) below the South African surface, may be more precious than gold. She’s looking for life.
It’s not easy work, lit only by headlamps. At times, it can feel as hot and humid as a sauna. Some spots smell like rotten eggs, due to sulfide gas emanating from holes dug in the rock. Until about 20 years ago, scientists weren’t even sure if life existed deep below Earth’s surface. Then in 1992, Tullis Onstott and his colleagues discovered bacteria growing on the rocks retrieved from some 3 kilometers underground. Those rocks were more than 200 million years old, at least as old as the earliest dinosaurs. And the bacteria they analyzed may have survived from that time, Onstott now says. He’s a geomicrobiologist — a scientist who studies how microbes interact with rocks and minerals. He heads the lab at Princeton University, in New Jersey, where Lau is now a graduate student. Scientists like Lau and Onstott now travel the world over in search of deep life. They go deep underground in mines or caverns. They drill beneath the ocean floor and in oil fields. Some of these places are near-freezing; others are hotter than Death Valley. “The challenge is in the hunt,” says Onstott. “It’s a fantastic journey.” And these hunts are turning up a whole zoo of microscopic creatures. Some of the deeply buried critters feed on toxic chemicals such as arsenic and uranium. One day, other scientists might tap them to clean up toxic waste. Other microbes might produce useful substances, such as new types of germ-killing medicines known as antibiotics. And perhaps most intriguing, these organisms could also help biologists learn about life beyond Earth — true extraterrestrials. Read Article: https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/worlds-deepest-zoo-harbors-clues-extraterrestrial-life A new technology is being developed with an aim of allowing filmmakers to create participative, "choose-your-own-adventure" type motion pictures, and for studios and independent film companies to distribute them to movie theaters, TVs or mobile devices. It will be introduced next month during the AT&T Developer Program’s Shape conference at Warner Bros.
Read Entire Article: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/interactive-moviemaking-technology-be-unveiled-july-hollywood-1014639 An intriguing article about how sleep patterns may be inborn rather than learned behavior.6/23/2017
When your spouse falls asleep early while you're still looking to extend the evening, don't get too annoyed: Your partner may just be yielding to his or her body's innate clock.
One industry that has been expansively affected by technological changes is film. Both mechanical and digital innovations have influenced everything from equipment to distribution, changing how films are made and the manner in which we consume them.
With the medium being just around 120 years old, we take a look at the biggest tech innovations that, through time, changed film for the better. Movie camera – late 1800s The movie camera – a camera that could capture a sequence of photographs onto filmstrip in quick succession – was a late invention of the 1800s, and without it we wouldn’t have the visual medium that we all love to enjoy while in dark rooms chomping on popcorn and answering our cellphones. Trying to date which movie camera was invented first is like trying to determine what the first movie of all time was: futile. For as many people who say Louis Le Prince’s camera in 1888 was first, an equal number will say it was William Friese-Greene’s in 1889. Someone’s bound to argue the Chinese invented it earlier. Despite many technical displays of ‘moving images’ around the time, I would argue that it was the Lumière brothers who took the medium to the masses and influenced early pioneers such as George Méliès, who arguably was the first person to add narrative to moving images. The Lumière brothers held some of the earliest screenings of projected images in 1895, where their film, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, notoriously showed a train entering a station (literally moving towards the screen). Allegedly the audience ran away from the screen because they thought it was real. The stuff of legend. Read Entire Article: https://memeburn.com/2013/02/9-tech-innovations-that-changed-the-film-industry-through-the-ages/ The Golden Age of Hollywood”, the name alone evokes a sense of elegance and timeless entertainment quality that left a definite mark on the History of Film and in American Culture in general. Essentially, the Classical Hollywood period started with the decline of The Silent Film Era in the late 1920’s and by the early 1960’s had finished its legendary run. During this 40-year period, the Five Big Hollywood studios (MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros., Fox and RKO) operated as true factories and profusely released films that have stood the test of time. This list aims to point some of their greatest accomplishments, nonetheless, given the capacity and prolific nature of even smaller studios like Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists, it is by no means a categorical account and should be viewed more as a starting point for those who wish to discover this magical time of stars of enduring beauty and talent and some of the most skilled directors and crews that have ever worked in the Movie Industry. Please note this list is ranked in chronological order. 1. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) German author Erich Maria Remarque’s meaningful novel about the many hardships of War and its few compensations was adapted to the screen by perfectionist director Lewis Milestone. For his irreproachable work, Milestone was awarded the Best Director Oscar and his masterpiece won as Best Picture of 1930 – The first win for Universal Studios.
Given the solemnity of the theme, the film was produced without any music whatsoever. As novelist Remarque put it, All Quiet on the Western Front is a story about “a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.” The pacifist message planted in the book found even more resonance with the help of Cinema’s visual trait. The last scene of the movie, in which a soldier in the World War I trenches, surrounded by death and violence, turns his attention to the simple delicacy of a butterfly is a significant symbol of what separates Film from other art forms. Read more: http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/30-cinematic-masterpieces-made-in-the-golden-age-of-hollywood/#ixzz4kcmNxsOu 7 Advances in Technology that have Revolutionized the Film IndustryThe history of film is full of advances that have changed the seventh art ever since, both in the way it is produced and in the way in which the public has enjoyed it. From the first Lumière brothers projections to modern computer-generated graphic films, the industry has not stopped innovating to make better films. These have been some of the advances in technology that have revolutionized the history of film.
1. The Lumière brothersThe beginning of the seventh art cannot be understood without the contribution of the Lumière brothers. These pioneers, inventors of the cinematograph, recreated the illusion of movement. Their goal was no other than deceiving our eyes. According to the journalist Yolima Andrea Díaz, the film and its advances in technology date back to representations such as the mid-sixteenth century “camera obscura”, the seventeenth century “magic lantern” or Étienne-Jules Marey’s portable chronophotography. But the industry went far beyond those basic techniques that projected images in dark rooms, showed still transparent pictures or moved bands that displayed twelve images per second. The Lumière brothers’ cinematograph was unveiled at a scientific conference held in March 1895, although its official presentation was on December 28 of that same year at the Grand Café Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. In this French corner, and as a surprise to the audience, they projected the arrival of a train at the Ciotat station. The seventh art was officially born. Read Entire Article: https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/7-advances-in-technology-that-have-revolutionized-the-film-industry/ Back in the late 1800s, entertainment on a Friday night was noticeably lower tech than today. But that wasn't so much an obstacle as it was an opportunity, which saw the birth of the cinematic art form.
Over the 120 years or so since those first attempts at creating moving pictures using consecutive still images, films have come a long way, both in terms of storytelling and in terms of technical achievement. So as TechRadar kicks off its inaugural Movie Week, celebrating the majesty of films, it's appropriate to dive into the history books to see just how we got to the point where we can travel to galaxies far, far away or ride motorbikes with velociraptors. Read Entire Article: http://www.techradar.com/news/video/a-brief-history-of-film-1300905 |
Categories
All
|