Toonder studios

Marten Toonder may well go down in history as the most important Dutch author of comics. Undoubtedly, there is no comic artist who has put his mark on the Dutch comics scene like Toonder. His creations have been published in dailies and periodicals all over the world. His most famous series was 'Tom Poes en Heer Bommel' ('Tom Puss and Mr. Bumble'), which ran virtually non-stop for nearly 45 years. Toonder has received a great many awards and honorary distinctions for both his illustrating skills and the quality of his literary output.

He co-founded Geesink-Toonder Produkties in Amsterdam, with Joop Geesink, producing comics and animated films for companies like the Dutch Railways and Philips. The company also commenced working on a feature film starring 'Tom Puss', financed by the German film company Degeto. Although the film was never finished, it proved an opportunity to secure several artists from forced labour in Germany. The collaboration with Geesink lasted until 1943, when Geesink began to devote himself to puppet animation.

Renewed state museum

The Rijksmuseum (English: State Museum) is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.
The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague in 1800 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis. The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and was originally opened in 1885, but was closed for renovation from 2003 to 2013. On 13 April 2013, the main building was reopened by Queen Beatrix after the ten year renovation which cost € 375 million.
The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history, from their total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200–2000, among which are some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer. The museum also has a small Asian collection which is on display in the Asian Pavilion.

Snow-white Amsterdam

With the arrival of commercially viable charge-coupled device (CCD) technology in the 1980s, first the pickup video-tubes were replaced with this kind of sensor. Later, higher scale integration electronics was applied (mainly by Sony), simplifying and even removing the intermediate optics, thereby reducing the size of home video cameras and eventually leading to the development of full camcorders. Current webcams and mobile phones with cameras are the most miniaturized commercial forms of such technology.

Elements of Mardi Gras

Creative Commons just reached an exciting milestone. As of this week, there are four million Creative Commons–licensed videos on YouTube. That’s over forty years’ worth of footage to remix and reuse, all licensed under CC BY, the most permissive CC license.


One thing that makes this mass of CC-licensed content really exciting is that all four million of those videos can be imported into YouTube’s online video editor. By letting people remix and adapt videos without having sophisticated editing software or expertise, YouTube and CC are making it easier for anyone to build on the work of others. And that’s pretty cool.

Archives for film and video

The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history. The Archives were founded by Rick Prelinger in 1981] in order to preserve what he calls "ephemeral" films: films sponsored by corporations and organizations, educational films, and amateur and home movie
The stated goal of the Prelinger Archives is to "collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere."



The archives of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision of EYE in Amsterdam, and of the National Archive in The Hague contain the visual history of the past 100 years. Films, documentaries, radiobroadcast, and television programmes comprise more than 700.000 hours worth of material.
The main goal of the project is realising maximum accessibility to the audiovisual material for the targeted user groups (educational institutions, the general public, and the creative sector). To reach this goal, Images for the Future is developing and offering innovative services and applications.

Famous Townhall

Duderstadt 180m, in the district Goettingen in southern Lower Saxony. Panoramic over the rooves of the town.


Construction of the Rathaus (city council building) began in 1302, with additional wings and components added until 1674. It was completely restored in the 1980s and most recently in 2002. At particular hours, a carillon plays from one of the towers as a bust of the "Anreis" (also: "Anreischke") comes out and nods.

Making of raining frogs and fish

Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital film-making tools a greater distinction between special effects and visual effects has been recognized, with "visual effects" referring to digital post-production and "special effects" referring to on-set mechanical effects and in-camera optical effects.

Optical effects (also called photographic effects), are techniques in which images or film frames are created photographically, either "in-camera" using multiple exposure, mattes, or the Schüfftan process, or in post-production processes using an optical printer. An optical effect might be used to place actors or sets against a different background.

Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects), are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, pyrotechnics and Atmospheric Effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds etc. Making a car appear to drive by itself, or blowing up a building are examples of mechanical effects. Mechanical effects are often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be built with break-away doors or walls to enhance a fight scene, or prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a monster.

Restoration

The film restoration, movement is an ongoing project among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images which they contain. In the widest sense, preservation nowadays assures that a movie will continue to exist, as close to its original form as possible.
For many years the term “preservation” used to be a synonym of “duplication” only. The preservationist’s goal was to create a durable copy without significant loss of quality. Film preservation now holds the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, and access. The archivist seeks to protect the film and share the content with the public.

Goslar: marketplace

One can think of digital storytelling as the modern extension of the ancient art of storytelling, now interwoven with digitized still and moving images and sound. Thanks to new media and digital technologies, individuals can approach storytelling from unique perspectives. Many people use elaborate non-traditional story forms, such as non-linear.

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Forget Form. There is No Form.
So what is a screenplay, or what might it be?
A screenplay is an exploration. It’s about the thing you don’t know. It’s a step into the abyss. It necessarily starts somewhere, anywhere; there is a starting point but the rest is undetermined. It is a secret, even from you. There’s no template for a screenplay, or there shouldn’t be. There are at least as many screenplay possibilities as there are people who write them. We’ve been conned into thinking there is a pre-established form. Like any big business, the film business believes in mass production. It’s cheaper and more efficient as a business model.