An ancient crane on the Rhine

In filmmaking and video production, a crane shot is a shot taken by a camera on a crane or jib. The most obvious uses are to view the actors from above or to move up and away from them, a common way of ending a movie. Camera cranes go back to the dawn of movie-making, and were frequently used in silent films to enhance the epic nature of large sets and massive crowds.

The major supplier of cranes in Hollywood throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was the Chapman Company supplanted by dozens of similar manufacturers around the world. The typical design provided seats for both the director and the camera operator, and sometimes a third seat for the cinematographer as well. Large weights on the back of the crane provided a perfect balance to compensate for the weight of the people riding the crane. The crane operator and camera operator had to precisely coordinate their moves so that focus, pan, and camera position all started and stopped at the same time, requiring great skill and rehearsal.

Some filmmakers like to have the camera on a boom arm just to make it easier to move around between ordinary set-ups. Most cranes accommodate both the camera and an operator, but some can be operated by remote control. They are usually, but not always, found in what are supposed to be emotional or suspenseful scenes.

During the last few years, camera cranes have been miniaturized and costs have dropped so dramatically that most aspiring film makers have access to these tools. What was once a "Hollywood" effect is now available for under $400.

 

Modern (film)history

Amateur usage of Super 8 has been largely replaced by video, but the format is often used by professionals in music videos, TV commercials, and special sequences for television and feature film projects, as well as by many visual artists. For a professional cinematographer, Super 8 is another tool to use alongside larger formats. Some seek to imitate the look of old home movies, or create a stylishly grainy look.

Studio studies

William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. These are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These palimpsest-like drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art.

A Dutchman in Rome

There are three large film festivals in the Netherlands:

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is a film festival for independent, innovative and experimental cinema and visual arts. The international festival is held since 1972 in Rotterdam. During the festival the Tiger Awards are awarded to starting filmmakers.
The Nederlands Film Festival (NFF) has been the annual film festival for Dutch film productions since 1981. The seven-day festival is held in the end of September and early October in Utrecht. Dutch films from the previous year are shown, and the Golden Calves are awarded to the best films, best actors and best other crew members judged by an independent and professional jury.
The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is one of the world's largest documentary festivals.

Beautiful Rhine

Germany has a long tradition of cooperation with the European based film industry, which started as early as during the 1960s. Since 1990 the number of international projects financed and co-produced by German filmmakers has expanded.

The new millennium since 2000 has seen a general resurgence of the German film industry, with bigger-budget films and good returns at the German box office. Internationally though German productions are widely unknown and unsuccessful. Since its golden age in the 1920s the German film industry has never regained the technical excellence, the star system appeal, or the popular narratives suitable for a global audience.

The Deutsche Filmakademie was founded in 2003 in Berlin and aims to provide native filmmakers a forum for discussion and a way to promote the reputation of German cinema through publications, presentations, discussions and regular promotion of the subject in the schools.

Heidelberg Hauptstrasse

While motion picture films have been around for more than a century, film is still a relative newcomer in the pantheon of fine arts. In the 1950s, when television became widely available, industry analysts predicted the demise of local movie theaters. Despite competition from television's increasing technological sophistication over the 1960s and 1970s such as the development of color television and large screens, motion picture cinemas continued. In fact with the rise of television's predominance, film began to become more respected as an artistic medium by contrast due the low general opinion of the quality of average television content. In the 1980s, when the widespread availability of inexpensive videocassette recorders enabled people to select films for home viewing, industry analysts again wrongly predicted the death of the local cinemas.

Smugglers

Nostalgia (or sometimes called "Nostalgic") is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of νόστος (nóstos), meaning "homecoming", a Homeric word, and ἄλγος (álgos), meaning "pain" or "ache", and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.

 

Pompei at that time

Virtual Reality, which can be referred to as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated life, replicates an environment that simulates physical presence in places in the real world or imagined worlds. Virtual reality can recreate sensory experiences, which include virtual taste, sight, smell, sound, and touch.

Most up to date virtual reality environments are displayed either on a computer screen or with special stereoscopic displays, and some simulations include additional sensory information and emphasise real sound through speakers or headphones targeted towards VR users. Some advanced, haptic, systems now include tactile information, generally known as force feedback in medical, gaming and military applications.

Amsterdam canal water

Amsterdam City Swim

September 6th, 2015, the canal cruise boats and other vessels make way for more than 1,600 swimmers at the annual Amsterdam City Swim.

Earlier routes have started at the Marine building passing Het Scheepvaartmuseum (Ship Museum) and then down the Nieuwe Herengracht canal. Swimmers go left up the Amstel River towards the Royal Theatre Carre (Carre Theater) and finishing on the Keizersgracht canal where it crosses the Reguliersgracht canal.

Swimmers are sponsored to raise funds for Motor Neurone disease (known as ALS in the Netherlands).

 

Tourrettes

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test.

The term "fair use" originated in the United States.  A similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright.

The lift

Shock value in television and movies

Shock value is a common way to show people graphically how dangerous a situation is, by depicting the death of a minor character, or the serious injury or near death of a character.

This can also involve the occurrence or performance of disturbing or horrifying phenomena or actions to draw the attention of viewers, or to force them to consider the events depicted at a personal level. Examples would include a scene of a military hospital with patients with horrible or disgusting wounds, a shot of a battlefield covered in corpses, or the depiction of emotional abuse

Horror is a film genre seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's primal fears. Horror films often deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown

 

The flying dutchman

Mirrors in the sky: Demystifying the legend of the Flying Dutchman

Ever since the 17th century, sailors have been haunted by the story of the Flying Dutchman, an airborne ghost-ship that can never put in to port and is forced to endlessly sail the world’s oceans. While the sight of a ship floating above the horizon could unsettle any seafarer, meteorologists can explain it as the result of a Fata Morgana – a dramatic ‘superior mirage’ caused by the air below the line of sight being significantly colder than that above it.
Fata Morgana not only produce mirror images, but can magnify objects that lie beyond the horizon. Ships can therefore be below the horizon but their reflected light is distorted to such an extent that they appear to be ‘sailing’ in the sky. This is the likely explanation of the Flying Dutchman.

 

VENTOUX

Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test.

The term "fair use" originated in the United States. A similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright.

 

 

Vianden.lu

As the television world makes the transition from the traditional 4:3 format to 16:9 wide-screen, many people ask "Why? What's Wrong with 4:3? Should I convert to widescreen?".

These are valid questions for both programme makers at one end and viewers at the other end.

Producers and broadcasters need to decide whether to make the difficult and expensive transition to widescreen.
Viewers need to decide whether to upgrade their 4:3 TV set to widescreen.

We will attempt to answer this question from both points of view. However we should point out that in the long run there is one simple fact which overrides all other arguments: Widescreen is the new standard and everyone will eventually be using it whether they like it or not. Whilst some people will hold on to 4:3 as long as they can, the future of widescreen is inevitable. The real question is not "Should I go widescreen?" but "Should I go widescreen now, or should I wait?".

 

Dutchie

Images for the Future

In the project, Images for the Future, four organizations save an important part of the audiovisual heritage of the Netherlands through conservation and digitization. The digitized material will be made available to education and to the public as broadly as possible.

super 8 mm movie 1977

I
n film, an insert is a shot of part of a scene as filmed from a different angle and/or focal length from the master shot. Inserts cover action already covered in the master shot, but emphasize a different aspect of that action due to the different framing. An insert differs from a cutaway as cutaways cover action not covered in the master shot.

There are more exact terms to use when the new, inserted shot is another view of actors: close-up, head shot, knee shot, two shot. So the term "insert" is often confined to views of objects—and body parts, other than the head. Thus: CLOSE-UP of the gunfighter, INSERT of his hand quivering above the holster, TWO SHOT of his friends watching anxiously, INSERT of the clock ticking.

Often inserts of this sort are done separately from the main action, by a second-unit director using stand-ins.

Inserts and cutaways can both be vexatious for directors, as care must be taken to preserve continuity by keeping the objects in the same relative position as in the main take, and having the lighting be the same.

A taste of dutch movie

Although Haanstra continued to make internationally acclaimed documentaries, the "school" more or less faded out by the late sixties. By this time, the first generation of Dutch filmmakers who graduated from the Dutch Film Academy began to make a name for themselves. The most famous director of this era is undoubtedly Fons Rademakers, who received domestic and international critical claim with a number of films between 1959 and 1963. . Slowly, fiction films become more and more popular in The Netherlands.

A more lasting success for Dutch film came in the 1970s, mostly under the influence of one man: Paul Verhoeven. Verhoeven's five films of the decade - Business Is Business (Wat zien ik?, 1971), Turkish Delight (Turks Fruit, 1973), Katie Tippel (Keetje Tippel, 1975), Soldier of Orange (Soldaat van Oranje, 1977) and Spetters (1980) - were box-office hits; they are still in the top-twenty most successful Dutch films ever. Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange were successful abroad as well and eventually led to Verhoeven's Hollywood career. In 2006 Verhoeven returned to his own language and made Black Book (Zwartboek).

Other successful directors from this era are Wim Verstappen and Pim de la Parra, whose movies were more commercial than those of their colleagues in the 1960s.
A decline in cinema admission set in after the 1970s. Director Dick Maas, making studio-style action-thrillers such as De Lift (1983) and Amsterdamned (1988), was about the only filmmaker having mainstream success in this period.

Gorges du Tarn

Other names for film:
Movies
Motion pictures
Pictures
Celluloid

Flicks
Photoplays
Picture shows
The cinema
The silver screen

Operations Manna

70 years ago The Netherlands were freed form the nazi's. The last winter of norttern Holland were terrible and the Dutch were starving. In April 1944 fooddroppings were organised by the allies.
This beautiful black and white film was shot bij amateurs.