Permanent Flux

Idea - The Development of Film Architecture

Storyboard

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 1:22 PM 0 comments

Widescreen & Film

Widescreen

As stated before widescreen became popular in the fifties. However, it was proceeded by various attempts in the past, even in the nineteenth century as we have seen before, followed by:

1900 - 75mm Wide Film of Lumière
1900 - 70mm Cinéorama of Raoul Grimoin-Sanson
1914 - 70mm Panoramica (of Filoteo Alberini)
1926 - 63,5mm Natural Vision, R.K.O.
1929 - 70mm Grandeur of Twentieth Century Fox
1930 - 56mm Magnafilm Paramount
1930 - 70mm Realife, M.G.M.
1930 - 65mm Vitascope Warner Bros.

All these ventures did not last for much longer than a year. In the fifties another series of attempts were made to introduce large film sizes for widescreen. To name a few:

1954 - 65mm Todd-AO click for picture of camera
1955 - 55,625mm Cinemascope-55
1956 - 65mm Super Panavision

Frame of 'Oklahoma' in Todd-AO - 65mm wide negative printed onto 70mm color positive.

70 mm film
In the seventies followed IMAX (1970), OMNIMAX (1973), Cinema 180 and others with horizontal position of frames on 65mm negative film. Special theatres were built to accomodate the projectors and ultra wide screen. Specially built projectors were needed because the film could not be pulled through anymore by claw. In the Imax system it is transported by a wave motion. Thanks to the air pressure gate precision, projection on a 180º 100 ft. width screen has become possible.

From the foregoing it is clear that standardization was dictated by the economical power of one or more manufacturers. One result was the universal acceptance and growth of the medium for amusement, information and in some cases as an art form.

Collecting off-gauge movie equipment and films
For the collector hard to find off-gauge equipment/films are a true hunting-ground. In particular the sizes that were never heard of anymore. One may still profit from the relatively low prices as compared with photographica. 8, 16 and 35mm equipment/films are often offered for sale, but it becomes more difficult with 9,5, 17,5, 22, 28mm and all the other sizes mentioned.

From 3 to 75mm
One hundred years of cinema has yielded almost one hundred film gauges from 3mm to 75mm. The smallest of 3mm was developed in 1960 by Eric Berndt for NASA to be used in space flights. It had a centre frameline perforation. The largest was employed by Lumière in 1900 for large screen presentations at the Paris Exposition.

Most of these film sizes have been relegated to oblivion, much to the detriment of its inventors/manufacturers. Each size has its own history.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 8:34 AM 0 comments

Film - 100 years

We owe the format to a great extent to Edison - in fact 35mm was called the Edison size before.


In May 1889 Thomas Edison had ordered a Kodak camera from the Eastman Company and was apparently fascinated by the 70mm roll of film used. Thereupon W.K.L.Dickson of his laboratory ordered a roll of film of 1 3/8"(ca. 35 mm) width from Eastman. This was half the film size used in Eastman Kodak cameras. It was to be used in a new type of Kinetoscope for moving images on a strip of celluloid film, which could be viewed by one person at the time.

Lumière film

The Lumière brothers introduced in March 1895 their Cinématographe for 35mm film, which was also used at their first public show of 28 December of that year. Their strip of film had only one round hole per image, whereas Edison used four rectangular perforations per frame.

Even at that time there was already a variety of widths:

54mm (2 1/8") (Friese-Greene in 1887)
54mm paperfilm (2 1/8") (Le Prince, 1888),
54mm (Skladanowsky, 1895 ), see also Skladanowsky filmclip Skladanowski film
60mm(Prestwich, Demeney, 1893-96)
Demeny Phonoscope 1893
Gaumont-Demeny Chronophotographe, 1896
38mm (Casimir Sivan/E.Dalphin, Geneva, 1896);
Lee & Turner colour film, 1901
63mm (Veriscope, 1897).
65mm (Hughes Moto-Photoscope, 1897)Also for 3" wide film
68mm (Biograph 1897 camera)
70mm unperforated experimental film, Birt Acres 1894

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 8:17 AM 0 comments

Changes in my life time

When I very first received this brief I didn’t really have an initial idea, and I kind of struggled with this idea of ‘permanent flux’. However the more I thought about it the more I realised it isn’t as challenging as once thought.

I initially thought of general things that where flux, with the weather being the most obvious as it constantly (permanently) changes from day to day and even hour to hour. This however was too literal really and probably thought of by everyone else. So I carried on trying to think of change, even jus in my life and it is amazing what around u is actually changing.

Even in my life time I have seen stuff come and go. For example the mini disk, this is the major one for me as I used to use it and believed that it was going to be the future, it was small, virtually unbreakable and reliable but the CD was just too strong, or people don’t like change!? I suppose other examples of products that come and go can be the Playstation and n64 for example but the mini disk is the only real product that I have seen come and go.

Something’s I have seen come but have yet to go yet or have witnessed the end of a product (mostly technology as it is moving so fast).

Come:

Widescreen
Channel 5
Free View
The Internet
Mini Disk
I pod
High-Definition (in the home)
Digital Cameras/TV/Music (mp3)
First Space Tourist

Gone:

Cassette Tapes (very nearly)
Music Tapes

Not only have I witnessed changes on a technological level but also where I live and where I used to play as a child has changed in a very short space of time. Where I used to play as a kid on a day to day basis was a field. I had many very happy memories there from playing ‘man hunt’ to having bonfires there on bonfire night; I suppose you could say most of my playing childhood was based around this field. Now the field has been changed into a new development with houses ranging well above £300,000. If I’m ever explaining this to anybody, I always think it is such an old person thing to say. ‘When I was a lad, it was all fields’. I feel that it should have taken a long time for such a big part of my life to change, however it is changing so unbelievably fast, its hard to notice. Even where we used to go on holiday in Wales has changed since I was a lad. I have seen Anglesey get more developed and more Scouser’s go there as it’s a cracking holiday destination under two hours away with crystal clear sea water, believe it or not. Not only has the popularity increased because more people are discovering it but it is also due to leisure boat users. Since the speed limit was introduced at Windermere in the Lake District, water skiers have had to find other places to use there boats, Anglesey being one of them places for its outstanding natural beauty. Even things that I don’t think about very often but see every now and again surprise me. For example as a family we would sometimes go down to the river Mersey for a day out, maybe on a Sunday and have a walk around the docks. Recently I went with my girlfriend and it has totally changed, they have developed new buildings there and converted all of the old maritime buildings, turning them into multi-million pound flat over looking the Mersey. Not only that, since the new city of culture aspect has arisen, they are having a stadium built on the water front which will be used, I believe to have concerts in there and should most defiantly be ready by 08. This has had an impact too as it was possible to park up the car and watch the sea, right on the front. However the new stadium has done away with that and stands out as a mass of man made metal spoiling the view and its accessibility.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 9:38 AM 0 comments

100 Years

This Video represents one womans view of 100 years in the world. Watching the video just shows how much has gone on at various stages throughout the 20th centry. althought the chronology isnt correct it still shows some fantastic iamges from the past 100years, most of which have probably been forgotten.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:40 AM 0 comments

Permanent Flux

This animation is a brief example of Permanent Flux. It uses the idea of the weather to convey the brief as it is always in a state of change. from one minute to the next the temperature, wind speed, visibility and moisture are constantly at a rate of change. Even the rate they change at is in permant flux too...

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:14 AM 0 comments

The Internet - 15 Years

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5243862.stm

The link above takes you on a 15 year journey through the history of the internet. From Aug 1991 to the present day the internet has been a fasinating and resourcful place. Not only that, it is constantly changing, growing and being updated every second of every day.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:11 AM 0 comments

Kevin Kelly on Science - 100 yr prediciton

1) There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.

2) This will be a century of biology. It is the domain with the most scientists, the most new results, the most economic value, the most ethical importance, and the most to learn.

3) Computers will keep leading to new ways of science. Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year. The data volume is growing to such levels of "zillionics" that we can expect science to compile vast combinatorial libraries, to run combinatorial sweeps through possibility space (as Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata), and to run multiple competing hypotheses in a matrix. Deep real time simulations and hypothesis search will drive data collection in the real world.

4) New ways of knowing will emerge. "Wikiscience" is leading to perpetually refined papers with a thousand authors. Distributed instrumentation and experiment, thanks to miniscule transaction cost, will yield smart-mob, hive-mind science operating "fast, cheap, & out of control." Negative results will have positive value (there is already a "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine"). Triple-blind experiments will emerge through massive non-invasive statistical data collection--- no one, not the subjects or the experimenters, will realize an experiment was going on until later. (In the Q&A, one questioner predicted the coming of the zero-author paper, generated wholly by computers.)

5) Science will create new levels of meaning. The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory. It is approaching the level of the human brain and is doubling every year, while the brain is not. It is all becoming effectively one machine. And we are the machine.

"Science is the way we surprise God," said Kelly. "That's what we're here for." Our moral obligation is to generate possibilities, to discover the infinite ways, however complex and high-dimension, to play the infinite game. It will take all possible species of intelligence in order for the universe to understand itself. Science, in this way, is holy. It is a divine trip.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:11 AM 0 comments

Temperature Change - Past 100 Years

The following diagram shows observed temperature changes during the twentieth century measured at various monitoring stations around the world. Climate models can reproduce observed global average temperatures quite well, indicating a good but as yet incomplete understanding of the processes resulting in these changes.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:11 AM 0 comments

Melissa Maerz, in her farewell article in City Pages:

An interesting quote:

"The truth is, you can't choose your own endings. If there's one thing I've learned from reviewing albums, it's that actual time doesn't work like a pop song. There's no intro or outro to anything, just an endless procession of minutes that segue into other minutes..."

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:11 AM 0 comments

One Man and his Changes

The man in this photo, could have fought in the Civil. The changes he witnessed in his lifetime included the change from manpower and horsepower to mechanical engines fuelled by oil and steam. He saw transportation evolve from horse-drawn wagons to vehicles powered by gasoline, and the beginnings of air travel. He never saw computers or rocket ships. More than likely he harvested wood for home heating, raised his own vegetables, meat, and dairy products. He most probably never enjoyed the convenience of electricity.

He would have voted for or against the thirteenth through possibly the nineteenth amendments.

The twentieth century produced more innovation and change than all of the other years in recorded history together.

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 7:11 AM 0 comments

Permanent Flux

Permanent: continuing or enduring without marked change in status or condition or place; "permanent secretary to the president"; "permanent address"; "literature of permanent value"

Flux: a constant(change).

posted by Martin Crosbie @ 10:48 AM 0 comments