Im Memoriam : Manuel

Manuel is a fictional character from the BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers. Played by Andrew Sachs, he is one of the most iconic characters in British comedy history. He reappeared for a small sketch with John Cleese in We Are Most Amused in November 2008.

Manuel himself appeared on the audio adaptations of Fawlty Towers as a linking narrator, explaining things from his point of view, when the series was released in audio format. The first two episodes released did not feature him at all, as the dialogue was edited and short burst of piano music would indicate a change of scene. However, when the whole series was re-released, they were re-edited with Manuel's linking commentary.

Loving Vincent

The art form of film is different from painting. Painting is one particular moment in time, frozen. Film is fluid, seeming to move through space and time. So first we had a Painting Design team spent one-year re-imagining Vincent’s painting into the medium of film. These paintings along with the storyboard and Computer Generated Layout Animatic formed the basis on which to plan our live action shoot.

All the characters in Loving Vincent are performed by real actors either on specially constructed sets, designed to look like Vincent’s paintings, or against Green Screens with the Loving Vincent Design Paintings composited in through a live view system on the set.

The live action material was then combined with Computer Animation for elements such as birds, horses, clouds and blowing leaves and composited together with the Design Paintings to create the Reference Material for the Painting Animation.

 

A Pretty Dutch Town

Dordrecht filmed from the Wijnhaven and Voorstraatshaven canal, which flows into the river Maas. In the background is the Grote Kerk visible and (sailing) boats along the shore. This film from 1910 is coloured by stencilling.

Film from the collection of Cinema Museum (London), restored by EYE Filmmuseum.

Evidence: the film

EVIDENCE
Evidence is an 8 minute 35mm film authored by Godfrey Reggio, during his term as director of Fabrica - a new school founded by Benetton - and a student collaborator, Angela Melitopulos. the film was shot in Rome during March 1995 and edited by Miroslav Janek, a collaborator of Fabrica, with music by composer Philip Glass.

Evidence looks into the eyes of children watching television - in this case Walt Disney’s "Dumbo". Though engaged in a daily routine, they appear drugged, retarded, like the patients of a mental hospital. Evidence is about the behavior of children watching television - an activity whose physiological aspects have been overlooked in the current controversy surrounding television.

Video as Evidence

Video captured by citizens and activists can be instrumental in drawing attention to human rights abuses, calling for investigations and advocating for change. But many filmers want their videos to do more: they want their footage to expose abuse and help bring about justice. However, the quality of citizen video and other content rarely passes the higher bar needed to function as evidence in a court of law.

The Video as Evidence Field Guide provides basic and advanced practices activists can use to increase the likelihood that their footage can serve as evidence in criminal and civil justice processes, for advocacy, and by the media. It also aims to help activists and lawyers better collaborate on capturing and collecting valuable video evidence.
Download the guide for free at http://vae.witness.org/

Usage of metadata

French avant garde

The avant-garde are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox, with respect to art, culture, and society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer.

The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism.

Early stop motion

Stop motion (hyphenated stop-motion when used as an adjective) is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a fast sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or "clay-mation". Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation.

Colored stencil film

Each frame of an extra print of the black-and-white film to be colored was rear-projected onto a sheet of

frosted glass, as in rotoscoping. An operator used a blunt stylus to trace the outlines of areas of the projected image that were to be tinted one particular color. The stylus was connected to a reducing pantograph that caused a sharp blade to cut corresponding outlines through the actual film frame, creating the stencil for that color in that frame. This had to be done for each individual frame, and as many different stencil films had to be made as there were different colors to be added. Each of the final projection prints was matched up with one of the stencil films and run through a machine that applied the corresponding dye through the stencil. This operation was repeated using each of the different stencils and dyes in turn.

Dutch Cinema Trailer - The Curious World of Hieronymus Bosch

Marketing a film
When a new film is made, it has to be advertised like any other new product, to let people know it exists and to encourage them to go to the cinema to see it.
The advertising of a film is known as film promotion or film marketing and the people who are responsible for this are the distribution company, so–called because they distribute (give out) the films to the cinemas and distribute the promotional material around the country.

The way in which a film is promoted can have a huge effect on whether or not it is successful. Films are expensive to make and if the public do not buy tickets at the box office to see the film, a lot of money will be lost.