28 februari 2010

Fishing village in green Spain




In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device.
Movie and television cameras pan by turning horizontally on a vertical axis, but the effect may be enhanced by adding other techniques, such as rails to move the whole camera platform. Slow panning is also combined with zooming in or out on a single subject, leaving the subject in the same portion of the frame, to emphasize or de-emphasize the subject respectively.

In video technology, the use of a camera to scan a subject horizontally is called panning.

The term panning is derived from panorama a word originally coined in 1787 by Robert Barker for the 18th century version of these applications, a machine that unrolled or unfolded a long horizontal painting to give the impression the scene was passing by.


27 februari 2010

The Elephant .........man!!


The Elephant Man is a 1980 drama film based on the story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London. The film was directed by David Lynch The screenplay was adapted by Lynch, Christopher De Vore, and Eric Bergren from the books The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) by Sir Frederick Treves and The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity by Ashley Montagu. It was shot in black-and-white.

The Elephant Man was recognized as a critical and commercial success, and received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture in 1981.

Some critics have dismissed The Elephant Man as an exercise in emotional manipulation, however I believe this completely misses the point. All films are manipulative to some degree, but it is a manipulation in which we as an audience engage by consent. The Elephant Man will stand the final test and it will be appreciated fully by future audiences, in much the same way as Citizen Kane had to wait for some decades until audiences were able to fully comprehend its greatness.





23 februari 2010

Roman aqueducts & waterworks



Although particularly associated with the Romans, aqueducts were devised much earlier in the Near East and Indian subcontinent, where peoples such as the Egyptians and Harappans built sophisticated irrigation systems. Roman-style aqueducts were used as early as the 7th century BC, when the Assyrians built an 80 km long limestone aqueduct, 10 m high and 300 m wide, to carry water across a valley to their capital city, Nineveh.

filmtips:
Manual re-editing

Purchased film content is downloaded onto an editing work station hard drive and third-party editors manually re-edit the video and audio tracks, removing objectionable content. Some manual re-edits are done by fans



12 februari 2010

Artwork in a Spanish monastery


Using Natural Lighting


Shooting in full noon-day sun is not recommended as it casts harsh shadows on a person's face. You're better off shooting in full shade and optionally bouncing extra light into the scene with reflectors. Similarly, shooting in partial shade with intense sunlight will create a very high contrast scene. Shooting out of the shade can be great in the morning or evening, just remember that your lighting will be in flux and eventually too dark or too light. Overcast days are great for getting even lighting.


10 februari 2010

Altamira Cave




The Altamira Cave, discovered by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola in 1879, are located in one of the hills that surround the nice valley where Santillana village is placed. Its discovery started big polemics between the archaeologists, because they did not believe that prehistoric men were able to do such perfect paintings. The main gallery, called the polychromes chamber, is also known as the Cappella Sistina of the quaternary art.
In its ceiling there are nearly a hundred of animals and signs, especially bisons in different postures , with other animals as deers, horses, wild boars and


04 februari 2010

Max Havelaar by Multatuli




The colonial control of Indonesia had passed from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to the Dutch government due to the economic failure of the VOC. In order to increase revenue, the Dutch colonial government implemented a series of policies termed the Cultivation System (Dutch: cultuurstelsel), which mandated Indonesian farmers to grow a quota of commercially tradable crops such as tea and coffee, instead of growing staple foods such as rice. At the same time, the colonial government also implemented a tax collection system in which the collecting agents were paid by commission. The combination of these two strategies caused widespread abuse of colonial power, especially on the islands of Java and Sumatra, resulting in abject poverty and widespread starvation among the farmers. Multatuli wrote Max Havelaar in protest against these colonial policies. Despite its terse writing style, it raised the awareness of Europeans living in Europe at the time that the wealth that they enjoyed was the result of suffering in other parts of the world. This awareness eventually formed the motivation for the new Ethical Policy by which the Dutch colonial government attempted to "repay" their debt to their colonial subjects by providing education to some classes of natives, generally members of the elite loyal to the colonial government. A follow-up to the recent video "Multatuli's Amsterdam" also on this site.

03 februari 2010

Carnival: Apotheosis




Filmtips:

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology. The idea of soundscape refers to both the natural acoustic environment, consisting of natural sounds, including animal vocalizations and, for instance, the sounds of weather and other natural elements; and environmental sounds created by humans, through musical composition, sound design, and other ordinary human activities including conversation, work, and sounds of mechanical origin resulting from use of industrial technology. The disruption of these acoustic environments results in noise pollution.

The term "soundscape" can also refer to an audio recording or performance of sounds that create the sensation of experiencing a particular acoustic environment, or compositions created using the "found sounds" of an acoustic environment, either exclusively or in conjunction with musical performances.



 

02 februari 2010

Glas




Bert Haanstra (31 May 1916 23 October 1997) was a famous Dutch film and documentary director and Academy Award winner.

Haanstra was born in the town of Holten and became a professional filmmaker in 1947. In 1958 his documentary Glass, a filmic improvisation made in a glassfactory, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

His price-winning film Glas, not the one above, can be watched on line