Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures. They reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment, and a powerful medium for educating—or indoctrinating—citizens. The visual basis of film gives it a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions through the use of dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into other languages.
This is an intro to a documentary that charts the invention and innovation of the hand-held camera. This is a film that - if you give it the time - will surprise, inform and delight you...especially if you're a film-maker (aspiring or otherwise). These days, the mention of a camera being hand-held is something we all take for granted, seeing as we all own a hand-held camera (with varying degrees of picture quality) on - at the very least - our mobile phones, and we've all seen innumerable movies that use the hand-held technique . But by the end of this film, you'll come to realise that without the ingenuity and imagination of these pioneers of film-making we wouldn't be able to pick up our little camcorders and iPhones and whatever other doohickeys we can use these days to film whatever we want, whenever we want.
The Palace is the largest and most prestigious building from the Golden Age, making it one of the Netherlands’ most important monuments. It was originally built, not as a palace, but as Amsterdam’s town hall. Architect Jan van Campen designed a building which would reflect the power and wealth of Amsterdam in the 17th century. In the heart of the building, the grandeur of the Golden Age is still alive in the Citizen’s Hall and marble galleries. Sculptures and paintings by famous artists—such as Rembrandt’s students, Govert Flinck and Ferdinand Bol—tell the story of Amsterdam as the centre of the universe. They remain impressive to this day.
Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time much as live television broadcasts content over the airwaves via a television signal. Live internet streaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is.
Streaming is an alternative to file downloading, a process in which the end-user obtains the entire file for the content before watching or listening to it. Through streaming, an end-user can use their media player to start playing digital video or digital audio content before the entire file has been transmitted. The term "streaming media" can apply to media other than video and audio, such as live closed captioning, ticker tape, and real-time text, which are all considered "streaming text".
Remastering is the process of making a new master for an album, film, or any other creation. It tends to refer to the process of porting a recording from an analog medium to a digital one, but this is not always the case. The process of creating a digital transfer of an analog tape remasters the material in the digital domain, even if no equalization, compression, or other processing is done to the material. Ideally, because of their higher resolution, a CD or DVD (or even higher quality like high-resolution audio or hi-def video) release should come from the best source possible, with the most care taken during its transfer.
Pocket-sized computer describes the post-programmable calculator / pre-smartphone pocket-sized portable-office hardware devices that included the earlier DOS-based palmtops and subsequent Windows-CE handhelds, as well as a few other terms, primarily covering the 1980s through 2007. Sometimes called Pocket-sized computing devices, they were a series of internally different devices, and included Handheld ("Pocket-sized handheld computing device"), and the earlier-introduced Palmtop ("Pocket-sized palmtop computing device") and "pocket-sized palmtop computer." The New York Times used the term "palmtop/handheld." The media called "the first computer that fits in your palm and weighs less than a pound" and its early day competitors a palmtop.
Safety Last, the 1923 film starring Harold Lloyd, features one of the most iconic scenes from the silent film era. Writes Roger Ebert, the scene above is “by general agreement the most famous shot in silent comedy: a man in a straw hat and round horn-rim glasses, hanging from the minute hand of a clock 12 stories above the city street. Strange, that this shot occurs in a film few people have ever seen. Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last (1923), like all of his films, was preserved by the comedian but rarely shown.” All of that might be about to change. Along with a number of other classic works, Safety Last went into the public domain this week.
The horizontal format is far superior to vertical when showing most things in daily life. For instance, scenes that have more than one person involved, or those that include dynamics and motion, are never vertical. They also can't be as effective as they are in a horizontal video.
"Costume" often refers to a particular style of clothing worn to portray the wearer as a character or type of character at a social event in a theatrical performance on the stage or in film or television. In combination with other aspects of stagecraft, theatrical costumes can help actors portray characters' and their contexts as well as communicate information about the historical period/era, geographic location and time of day, season or weather of the theatrical performance. Some stylized theatrical costumes, such as Harlequin and Pantaloon in the Commedia dell'arte, exaggerate an aspect of a character.
A sports film is a film genre that uses sport as the theme of the film. It is a production in which a sport, sporting event, athlete (and their sport), or follower of sport (and the sport they follow) are prominently featured, and which depend on sport to a significant degree for their plot motivation or resolution. Despite this, sport is ultimately rarely the central concern of such films and sport performs primarily an allegorical role. Furthermore, sports fans are not necessarily the target demographic in such movies, but sports fans tend to have a large following or respect for such movies. In the sports genre, characters play sports. Thematically, the story is often one of “Our Team” versus “Their Team”; one team will always try to win, and another team will show the world that they deserve recognition or redemption, though the story does not always have to involve a team. The story could also be about an individual athlete or the story could focus on an individual playing on a team.
The tradition of illuminated manuscripts lasted for over a thousand years. The books were created by individuals or teams for uses as wide-ranging as private prayer aids, service books in churches, textbooks, and protective talismans to take into battle. Across all this variation, those tricky little drawings in the margins are a unique window into the minds of medieval artists. A rabbit attempts to play a church organ, while a knight fights a giant snail and a naked man blows a trumpet with his rear end. These bizarre images, painted with squirrel-hair brushes on vellum or parchment by monks, nuns and urban craftspeople, populate the margins of the most prized books from the Middle Ages. Michelle Brown explores the rich history and tradition of illuminated manuscripts.
America under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader. It also became more delusional. No number from Trump’s years in power will be more lastingly destructive than his 25,000 false or misleading statements.
Super-spread by social media and cable news, they contaminated the minds of tens of millions of people. Trump’s lies will linger for years, poisoning the atmosphere like radioactive dust.
In the infancy of motion pictures, the cinematographer was usually also the director and the person physically handling the camera. As the art form and technology evolved, a separation between director and camera operator emerged. With the advent of artificial lighting and faster (more light-sensitive) film stocks, in addition to technological advancements in optics, the technical aspects of cinematography necessitated a specialist in that area. Cinematography was key during the silent movie era; with no sound apart from background music and no dialogue, the films depended on lighting, acting, and set.
Instagram was originally distinguished by only allowing content to be framed in a square (1:1) aspect ratio with 640 pixels to match the display width of the iPhone at the time. In 2015, these restrictions were eased with an increase to 1080 pixels. The service also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, and a Stories feature—similar to its main opposition Snapchat—which allows users to post photos and videos to a sequential feed, with each post accessible by others for 24 hours each.
Hard and soft light are different types of lighting that are commonly used in photography and filmmaking. Soft light is light that tends to "wrap" around objects, projecting diffused shadows with soft edges. Soft light comes from a light source that is large relative to the subject, whereas hard light from one that is small relative to the subject. The hardness or softness of light depends mostly on the following two factors: The distance between the light source and the subject: The closer the light source and subject are to each other, the softer the light becomes. The apparent size of the light source: The larger the light source appears, the softer the light becomes. The softness of a light can also be determined by the angle between the illuminated surface and the direction of the light source. The steeper this angle is, the softer the light
Multimedia is a form of communication that combines different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single presentation, in contrast to traditional mass media, such as printed material or audio recordings. Popular examples of multimedia include video podcasts, audio slideshows, animated shows, and movies. Multimedia can be recorded for playback on computers, laptops, smartphones, and other electronic devices, either on demand or in real time (streaming). In the early years of multimedia, the term "rich media" was synonymous with interactive multimedia. Over time, hypermedia extensions brought multimedia to the World Wide Web.
In photography and cinematography, available light (also called ambient light or practical light) refers to any source of light that is not explicitly supplied by the photographer for the purpose of taking pictures. The term usually refers to sources of light that are already available naturally (e.g. the Sun, the Moon, lightning) or artificial light already being used (e.g. to light a room). It generally excludes flashes, although arguably flash lighting provided by other photographers shooting simultaneously in the same space could be considered available light. Light sources that affect the scene and are included in the actual frame are called practical light sources, or simply practicals. Use of available light is an important factor in candid photography in order not to disturb the subjects.
Haring from KLOMP! Animation on Vimeo.
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoon, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, these have been published in newspapers and magazines, with daily horizontal strips printed in black-and-white in newspapers, while Sunday papers offered longer sequences in special color comics sections. With the advent of the internet, online comic strips began to appear as webcomics. Strips are written and drawn by a comics artist, known as a cartoonist. As the word "comic" implies, strips are frequently humorous
The Battle of the Scheldt in World War II was a series of military operations led by the First Canadian Army, with Canadian, Polish and British units attached, to open up the shipping route to Antwerp so that its port could be used to supply the Allies in north-west Europe. Under acting command of the First Canadian's Lieutenant-General Guy Simonds, the battle took place in northern Belgium and southwestern Netherlands from October 2 to November 8, 1944. The well-established Wehrmacht defenders staged an effective delaying action, during which the Germans flooded land areas in the Scheldt estuary, slowing the Allied advance. After five weeks of difficult fighting, the Canadian First Army, at a cost of 12,873 Allied casualties (half of them Canadian), was successful in clearing the Scheldt after numerous amphibious assaults, obstacle crossings, and costly assaults over open ground. The Battle of the Scheldt has been described by historians as unnecessarily difficult, as it could have been cleared earlier and more easily had the Allies given it a higher priority than Operation Market Garden.
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding a feature film, but there were also dedicated newsreel theaters in many major cities in the 1930s and ’40s,and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theaterette where newsreels were screened continuously throughout the day. By the end of the 1960s television news broadcasts had supplanted the format. Newsreels are considered significant historical documents, since they are often the only audiovisual record of certain cultural events.
Underwater photography can also be categorised as an art form and a method for recording data. Successful underwater imaging is usually done with specialized equipment and techniques. However, it offers exciting and rare photographic opportunities. Animals such as fish and marine mammals are common subjects, but photographers also pursue shipwrecks, submerged cave systems, underwater "landscapes", invertebrates, seaweeds, geological features, and portraits of fellow dive
Periscope offers live broadcasts with a twist—the ability to replay them at any time. Every video comes to life with a league of integrated social features: while watching streams, you’ll also see people join, leave hearts, comment in real time, and more. The app makes it super-simple to set your privacy settings too, so you’ll always know who you’re broadcasting to—whether it’s a small group of friends or the whole world.
Every child learns about the historic efforts of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. to stop systemic racism in a society that continually treated Black people as inferior. But what they don’t often learn is how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, led by J. Edgar Hoover, was ordered to provide surveillance of King in order to get enough evidence to destroy him and the movement that he was leading. The new documentary MLK/FBI uncovers rarely seen facets of the FBI’s investigation into Martin Luther King Jr., and the first trailer has arrived online.
The Cinema of Italy comprises the films made within Italy or by Italian directors. The first Italian director is considered to be Vittorio Calcina [it], a collaborator of the Lumière Brothers, who filmed Pope Leo XIII in 1896. Since its beginning, Italian cinema has influenced film movements worldwide. As of 2018, Italian films have won 14 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (the most of any country) as well as 12 Palmes d'Or (the second-most of any country), one Academy Award for Best Picture and many Golden Lions and Golden Bears.
The term "family film" is essentially an American expression while ”children's film" is considered to be a European expression. However, the difference between the two terms can be seen in casting methods adopted by American and European films respectively. In American family films, the search for a child protagonist involves casting children that meet a specific criterion or standard for physical appearance. In contrast, European children's films look to cast children who appear "ordinary".Because of these differences, American family films are more easily marketable toward domestic and international viewing audiences while European children's films are better received domestically with limited appeal to international audiences.
Experimental film, experimental cinema, or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms and alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
While some experimental films have been distributed through mainstream channels or even made within commercial studios, the vast majority have been produced on very low budgets with a minimal crew or a single person and are either self-financed or supported through small grants.
Experimental filmmakers generally begin as amateurs, and some used experimental films as a springboard into commercial film making or transitioned into academic positions. The aim of experimental filmmaking is usually to render the personal vision of an artist, or to promote interest in new technology rather than to entertain or to generate revenue, as is the case with commercial films.
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Improvisation is the activity of making or doing something not planned beforehand, using whatever can be found. Improvisation in the performing arts is a very spontaneous performance without specific or scripted preparation. The skills of improvisation can apply to many different faculties, across all artistic, scientific, physical, cognitive, academic, and non-academic disciplines; see Applied improvisation. Improvisation also exists outside the arts. Improvisation in engineering is to solve a problem with the tools and materials immediately at hand. Improvised weapons are often used by guerrillas, insurgents and criminals.
To perform digital colorization, a digitized copy of the best black and white film print available is used. With the aid of computer software, technicians associate a range of gray levels to each object and indicate to the computer any movement of the objects within a shot. The software is also capable of sensing variations in the light level from frame-to-frame and correcting it if necessary. The technician selects a color for each object based on common "memory" colors—such as blue sky, white clouds, flesh tones and green grass—and on any information about colors used in the movie. If color publicity stills or props are available to examine, authentic colors may be applied. In the absence of any better information, technicians may choose colors that fit the gray level and are consistent with what a director might have wanted for the scene. The software associates a variation of the basic color with each gray level in the object, while keeping intensity levels the same as in the monochrome original. The software then follows each object from frame to frame, applying the same color until the object leaves the frame. As new objects come into the frame, the technician must associate colors to each new object in the same way as described above
An amateur photographer is one who practices photography as a hobby/passion and not necessarily for profit. The quality of some amateur work is comparable to that of many professionals and may be highly specialized or eclectic in choice of subjects. Amateur photography is often pre-eminent in photographic subjects which have little prospect of commercial use or reward. Amateur photography grew during the late 19th century due to the popularization of the hand-held camera. Nowadays it has spread widely through social media and is carried out throughout different platforms and equipment, switching to the use of cell phone. Good pictures can now be taken with a cell phone which is a key tool for making photography more accessible to everyone.
The NDSM Werf (NDSM Wharf) in Amsterdam – a former shipyard on the northern banks of the River IJ – is now a breeding ground for cultural and entrepreneurial experiments and innovations. This enormous area consist of the NDSM hall, the Docklands hall and two historic slipways, housing several artists’ studios. The spacious, industrial character of the NDSM Werf lends itself perfectly for all kinds of (outdoor) events, such as exhibitions and festivals. The focus for the businesses working on the wharf, is on culture, media and sustainability.
The concept of early cinema, “moving pictures,” is a direct evolution of the concept of a moving panorama. The first use of the scrolling background concept early on in film was rear projection. This technique, for example, was used when stationary actors were filming in a car that wasn’t actually moving, but instead had a projection of changing locales behind on the rear window to create the illusion that the car was moving, a trope often used in Hitchcock movies. Today, we have much more realistic computer technology to create this illusion of movement, but the image of a stationary object or actor in front of a changing background harkens back to the moving panorama scroll. Moving projections of clouds or passing objects on cycloramas at the back of a stage sometimes seen in modern live theater productions also utilize the illusion of seamless movement behind a stationary object that was popularized by the moving panorama of the nineteenth century.
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but also include comedy, and, in turn, is divided into many sub-genres, such as mystery, suspense or noir. The Prison film is a type of crime film that focuses on the difficult living conditions with prisons as well as occasionally focusing on inmates adjusting to life outside of prison. The films tend to only show graphic films where crime run rampant in prison.
A fishing weir, fish weir, fishgarth or kiddle is an obstruction placed in tidal waters, or wholly or partially across a river, to direct the passage of, or trap fish. A weir may be used to trap marine fish in the intertidal zone as the tide recedes, fish such as salmon as they attempt to swim upstream to breed in a river, or eels as they migrate downstream. Alternatively, fish weirs can be used to channel fish to a particular location, such as to a fish ladder. Weirs were traditionally built from wood or stones. The use of fishing weirs as fish traps probably dates back prior to the emergence of modern humans, and have since been used by many societies across the world.
With the advent of digital editing in non-linear editing systems, film editors and their assistants have become responsible for many areas of filmmaking that used to be the responsibility of others. For instance, in past years, picture editors dealt only with just that—picture. Sound, music, and (more recently) visual effects editors dealt with the practicalities of other aspects of the editing process, usually under the direction of the picture editor and director. However, digital systems have increasingly put these responsibilities on the picture editor. It is common, especially on lower budget films, for the editor to sometimes cut in temporary music, mock up visual effects and add temporary sound effects or other sound replacements. These temporary elements are usually replaced with more refined final elements produced by the sound, music and visual effects teams hired to complete the picture.
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Contexts By contexts we mean the artistic, economic, cultural, social, historical and current contexts in which the film is made and viewed. What is the concept, idea, message, vision and intention of the maker? Is the intended purpose commercial, artistic, engaging? What is the background of the maker? For which audience was the film made?
The language of film Film language is - in addition to spoken and written language - the way in which we communicate with each other in the 21st century. Film education is aimed at getting students in primary and secondary education to "speak the language of film fluently". This is very important, because film has a major influence on how we see ourselves and the world. In addition, film is a great way to tell your story and share it with the world.
A feature film, or feature-length film, is a film (also called a motion picture or movie) with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole film to fill a program. The term feature film originally referred to the main, full-length film in a cinema program that also included a short film and often a newsreel. The notion of how long a feature film should be has varied according to time and place. According to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute,[1] a feature film runs for more than 40 minutes, while the Screen Actors Guild asserts that a feature's running time is 75 minutes or longer.
The multiple-camera setup, multiple-camera mode of production, multi-camera or simply multicam is a method of filmmaking and video production. Several cameras - either film or professional video cameras - are employed on the set and simultaneously record or broadcast a scene. It is often contrasted with a single-camera setup, which uses one camera.
Early documentary films, originally called "actuality films", lasted one minute or less. Over time, documentaries have evolved to become longer in length, and to include more categories; some examples being: educational, observational, and docufiction. Documentaries are very informative and are often used within schools, as a resource to teach various principles. Social-media platforms (such as YouTube) have provided an avenue for the growth of the documentary-film genre. These platforms have increased the distribution area and ease-of-accessibility; thereby enhancing the ability to educate a larger volume of viewers, and broadening the reach of persons who receive that information
Cinematography can not only depict a moving subject but can use a camera, which represents the audience's viewpoint or perspective, that moves during the course of filming. This movement plays a considerable role in the emotional language of film images and the audience's emotional reaction to the action. Techniques range from the most basic movements of panning (horizontal shift in viewpoint from a fixed position; like turning your head side-to-side) and tilting (vertical shift in viewpoint from a fixed position; like tipping your head back to look at the sky or down to look at the ground) to dollying (placing the camera on a moving platform to move it closer or farther from the subject), tracking (placing the camera on a moving platform to move it to the left or right), craning (moving the camera in a vertical position; being able to lift it off the ground as well as swing it side-to-side from a fixed base position), and combinations of the above.
Film materials should be stored in interior rooms away from exterior walls and places that do not have extreme temperature fluctuations. Furthermore, film materials should not be stored near sources of heat (sunlight, radiators, heaters), water (bathrooms, sprinklers), or near chemical or exhaust fumes. Storage environments should be regularly monitored to check temperature and humidity controls, HVAC systems, and pest-free. Quantities of nitrate film in excess of 25 pounds are subject to storage and handling standards prescribed by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).
Seriously deteriorated negatives of any type should be isolated from those in good condition.
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a printed literary work, or a painting). Scholarly interest in creativity is found in a number of disciplines, primarily psychology, business studies, and cognitive science, but also education, the humanities, technology, engineering, philosophy (particularly philosophy of science), theology, sociology, linguistics, the arts, economics, and mathematics, covering the relations between creativity and general intelligence, personality type, mental and neural processes, mental health, or artificial intelligence; the potential for fostering creativity through education and training; the fostering of creativity for national economic benefit, and the application of creative resources to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning.
16 mm This was a popular format for audio-visual use in schools and as a high-end home entertainment system before the advent of broadcast television. In broadcast television news, 16 mm film was used before the advent of electronic news-gathering. The most popular home content were comedic shorts (typically less than 20 minutes in length in the original release) and bundles of cartoons previously seen in movie theaters. 16 mm enjoys widespread use today as a format for short films, independent features and music videos, being a relatively economical alternative to 35 mm. 16 mm film was a popular format used for the production of TV shows well into the HDTV era.
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts also involve aspects of visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative art.
Docufiction (or docu-fiction), often confused with docudrama, is the cinematographic combination of documentary and fiction, this term often meaning narrative film. More precisely, it is a documentary mixed with fictional elements, in real time, filmed when the events take place, and in which the main character or characters—often portrayed by non-professional or amateur actors—are essentially playing themselves, or slightly fictionalized versions of themselves, in a fictionalized scenario. In this sense, docufiction may overlap to an extent with some aspects of the mockumentary format, but the terms are not synonymous.
