Download or read book Silver Screen to Digital written by Carlo Montanaro and published by John Libbey Publishing. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An era has ended. After one hundred and twenty-five years, a change has taken place in cinemas. The thousands of figures formed by silver and coloured pigments can no longer be viewed through transparent film, instead, everything has become digital, compressed, virtual and built into the rapid alternation of millions (hopefully, for quality's sake) of dots, or pixels within a very neat and minuscule grid. But projection is just the last link in a chain that is transforming the most direct language invented by humanity over the centuries. The other links – shooting, editing, special effects, re-elaboration and sound reproduction – have by now undergone radical transformations that have often signified progress. Perhaps, it is worth the trouble, then, having accepted this transformation-revolution once and for all, to understand where we started out from, how cinematographic language was born and how its grammar first and later its syntax evolved thanks to technological development. Without lightweight equipment for sound recording, sensitive emulsions, portable and compact lighting, it would not have been possible, at the end of the 50s, for example, to create identifiable "currents" of experimentation and concept under such titles as free cinema or nouvelle vague, which were largely based on footage from life and no longer reconstructed in the studio. That which filmmakers today can achieve even more effectively thanks to a range of digital technologies, paradoxically, involves working with even more-minimal equipment such as a smartphone in front of green or blue screens, against absolutely virtual backgrounds. In short: no more silver and more and more pixels.
Download or read book Silver Screen to Digital written by Carlo Montanaro and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of transformations in moviemaking technology, from pigments to pixels, celluloid to CGI. An era has ended. After one hundred and twenty-five years, a change has taken place in cinemas. The thousands of figures formed by silver and colored pigments can no longer be viewed through transparent film—instead, everything has become digital, compressed, virtual and built into the rapid alternation of millions (hopefully, for quality’s sake) of dots, or pixels within a very neat and minuscule grid. But projection is just the last link in a chain that is transforming the most direct language invented by humanity over the centuries. The other links—shooting, editing, special effects, re-elaboration and sound reproduction—have by now undergone radical transformations that have often signified progress. Perhaps it is worth the trouble, then, having accepted this transformation-revolution once and for all, to understand where we started out from, how cinematographic language was born, and how its grammar first and later its syntax evolved thanks to technological development. Without lightweight equipment for sound recording, sensitive emulsions, and portable and compact lighting, it would not have been possible, at the end of the fifties, for example, to create identifiable “currents” of experimentation and concept under such titles as free cinema or nouvelle vague, which were largely based on footage from life and no longer reconstructed in the studio. That which filmmakers today can achieve even more effectively thanks to a range of digital technologies, paradoxically, involves working with even more-minimal equipment such as a smartphone in front of green or blue screens, against absolutely virtual backgrounds. In short: no more silver and more and more pixels. This volume journeys through the history of cinema, focusing on the machines and mechanisms that contributed to the magic.
Download or read book Movies written by Philip Kemp and published by Rizzoli Universe Promotional Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prolifically illustrated, this is the perfect introduction to the history of film for students and budding cinephiles alike. This extensive yet accessible book traces the evolution of cinema, from the great silver screen-classics through postwar movements from film noir to nouvelle vague, and up to the present day with the emerging commercial success of 3-D. Thoroughly illustrated with more than 1,000 stills, this book features a definitive assessment of the key writers, directors, and films of every cinematic genre, with an emphasis on influences across time, culture, and geography. Detailed timelines position every featured film and director in time and place in relation to key trends. Even in the age of YouTube where everyone is their own auteur, films remain the defining artworks of our time, and this absorbing, lavishly illustrated book is perfect for anyone who loves movies.
Download or read book Silver Screen Fiend written by Patton Oswalt and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-10-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol or sex: it was film. After moving to L.A., Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton's life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships. Set in the nascent days of L.A.'s alternative comedy scene, Oswalt's memoir chronicles his journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way"--
Download or read book 3D Movie Making written by Bernard Mendiburu and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2009 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood is going 3D, readers learn how to adapt their production skills to this hot new medium so they can be part of the movement.
Download or read book Silver Screen Saucers written by Robbie Graham and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More so than any other medium, cinema has shaped our expectations of potential alien life and visitation. From The Day the Earth Stood Still and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, to Battleship, Prometheus and beyond, our hopes and fears of alien contact have been fuelled by the silver screen. But what messages does Hollywood impart to us about our possible otherworldly neighbours, from where do UFO movies draw their inspiration, and what other factors - cultural or conspiratorial - might influence their production and content? Silver Screen Saucers is a timely and revealing examination of the interplay between Hollywood's UFO movies and the UFO phenomenon itself, from 1950 to present day. The book grants the reader a rare, close-up examination of the DNA that builds our perceptions of the UFO mystery: one strand of this DNA weaves real events, stories and people from the historical record of UFOlogy, while the other spins and twists with the film and TV products they have inspired. With our alien dreams and nightmares now more fully visualized onscreen than ever before, Silver Screen Saucers asks the question: what does it all mean? Are all UFO stories just fever dreams from LA screenwriters, or are they based in something else? Could any of them be real and are they part of a bigger message? From interviews with screenwriters and directors whose visions have been shaped by their lifelong UFO obsessions; to Presidents Carter and Reagan talking aliens with Spielberg at the White House; to CIA and Pentagon manipulation of UFO-themed productions; to movie stars and producers being stalked by real Men in Black, Silver Screen Saucers provides fresh perspective on the frequently debated but little understood subject of UFOs & Hollywood. The book addresses questions such as: Does Hollywood fuel the UFO mythos, or vice versa? In other words, are our beliefs about alien visitation shaped by UFO movies, or are UFO movies shaped by our beliefs about alien visitation? Do Hollywood's UFO movies fictionalize the UFO phenomenon in the public mind, actualize it, or both? If and when humanity makes full and open contact with an unearthly intelligence, would we, as cinemagoers, be able to divorce Hollywood's historical imaginings from the reality with which we are presented? Indeed... Should we? After all, a great deal of Hollywood's UFO movie content has been closely informed by supposedly factual UFOlogical literature, events and debates. Perhaps, then, there is more truth to be found in Hollywood's UFO movies than we might imagine - which raises the question: Just how has so much dense UFOlogical theory (by its very nature 'fringe' and subcultural) managed find its way into Hollywood's populist science fiction narratives? Is Hollywood's incorporation of UFO lore attributable to a "Hollywood UFO conspiracy" designed to acclimate us to a UFO/alien reality, or is it merely the result of a natural cultural process? Silver Screen Saucers is bursting with ideas and information that will excite and intrigue any reader with a passing or serious interest in UFOs and/or science-fiction cinema."
Download or read book Reading the Silver Screen written by Thomas C. Foster and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor comes an indispensable analysis of our most celebrated medium, film. No art form is as instantly and continuously gratifying as film. When the house lights go down and the lion roars, we settle in to be shocked, frightened, elated, moved, and thrilled. We expect magic. While we’re being exhilarated and terrified, our minds are also processing data of all sorts—visual, linguistic, auditory, spatial—to collaborate in the construction of meaning. Thomas C. Foster’s Reading the Silver Screen will show movie buffs, students of film, and even aspiring screenwriters and directors how to transition from merely being viewers to becoming accomplished readers of this great medium. Beginning with the grammar of film, Foster demonstrates how every art form has a grammar, a set of practices and if-then propositions that amount to rules. He goes on to explain how the language of film enables movies to communicate the purpose behind their stories and the messages they are striving to convey to audiences by following and occasionally breaking these rules. Using the investigative approach readers love in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster examines this grammar of film through various classic and current movies both foreign and domestic, with special recourse to the “AFI 100 Years-100 Movies” lists. The categories are idiosyncratic yet revealing. In Reading the Silver Screen, readers will gain the expertise and confidence to glean all they can from the movies they love.
Download or read book Behind the Scenes at the BBFC written by Edward Lamberti and published by British Film Institute. This book was released on 2012-12-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This official history of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) draws on unprecedented access to the BBFC's archives to trace 100 years of film classification, with contributions from leading film critics and historians and case studies of controversial films such as Battleship Potemkin and A Clockwork Orange.
Download or read book Cinematography written by Patrick Keating and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-18 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does a film come to look the way it does? And what influence does the look of a film have on our reaction to it? The role of cinematography, as both a science and an art, is often forgotten in the chatter about acting, directing, and budgets. The successful cinematographer must have a keen creative eye, as well as expert knowledge about the constantly expanding array of new camera, film, and lighting technologies. Without these skills at a director’s disposal, most movies quickly fade from memory. Cinematography focuses on the highlights of this art and provides the first comprehensive overview of how the field has rapidly evolved, from the early silent film era to the digital imagery of today. The essays in this volume introduce us to the visual conventions of the Hollywood style, explaining how these first arose and how they have subsequently been challenged by alternative aesthetics. In order to frame this fascinating history, the contributors employ a series of questions about technology (how did new technology shape cinematography?), authorship (can a cinematographer develop styles and themes over the course of a career?), and classicism (how should cinematographers use new technology in light of past practice?). Taking us from the hand-cranked cameras of the silent era to the digital devices used today, the collection of original essays explores how the art of cinematography has been influenced not only by technological advances, but also by trends in the movie industry, from the rise of big-budget blockbusters to the spread of indie films. The book also reveals the people behind the camera, profiling numerous acclaimed cinematographers from James Wong Howe to Roger Deakins. Lavishly illustrated with over 50 indelible images from landmark films, Cinematography offers a provocative behind-the-scenes look at the profession and a stirring celebration of the art form. Anyone who reads this history will come away with a fresh eye for what appears on the screen because of what happens behind it.
Download or read book Besides the Screen written by V. Crisp and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-01-16 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New media technologies impact cinema well beyond the screen. This volume speculates about the changes in modes of accessing, distributing, storing and promoting moving images and how they might affect cinematographic experience, economy and historiography.
Download or read book Costume Makeup and Hair written by Adrienne L. McLean and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Movie buffs and film scholars alike often overlook the importance of makeup artists, hair stylists, and costumers. With precious few but notable exceptions, creative workers in these fields have received little public recognition, even when their artistry goes on to inspire worldwide fashion trends. From the acclaimed Behind the Silver Screen series, Costume, Makeup, and Hair charts the development of these three crafts in the American film industry from the 1890s to the present. Each chapter examines a different era in film history, revealing how the arts of cinematic costume, makeup, and hair, have continually adapted to new conditions, making the transitions from stage to screen, from monochrome to color, and from analog to digital. Together, the book’s contributors give us a remarkable glimpse into how these crafts foster creative collaboration and improvisation, often fashioning striking looks and ingenious effects out of limited materials. Costume, Makeup, and Hair not only considers these crafts in relation to a wide range of film genres, from sci-fi spectacles to period dramas, but also examines the role they have played in the larger marketplace for fashion and beauty products. Drawing on rare archival materials and lavish color illustrations, this volume provides readers with both a groundbreaking history of film industry labor and an appreciation of cinematic costume, makeup, and hairstyling as distinct art forms.
Download or read book Directing written by Virginia Wright Wexman and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-10 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a film is acclaimed, the director usually gets the lion’s share of the credit. Yet the movie director’s job—especially the collaborations and compromises it involves—remains little understood. The latest volume in the Behind the Silver Screen series, this collection provides the first comprehensive overview of how directing, as both an art and profession, has evolved in tandem with changing film industry practices. Each chapter is written by an expert on a different period of Hollywood, from the silent film era to today’s digital filmmaking, providing in-depth examinations of key trends like the emergence of independent production after World War II and the rise of auteurism in the 1970s. Challenging the myth of the lone director, these studies demonstrate how directors work with a multitude of other talented creative professionals, including actors, writers, producers, editors, and cinematographers. Directing examines a diverse range of classic and contemporary directors, including Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Cecil B. DeMille, Steven Soderbergh, Spike Lee, and Ida Lupino, offering a rich composite picture of how they have negotiated industry constraints, utilized new technologies, and harnessed the creative contributions of their many collaborators throughout a century of Hollywood filmmaking.
Download or read book The Clue on the Silver Screen written by Carolyn Keene and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-04 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Nancy attends the Martha's Vineyard Film Festival, a movie masterpiece is stolen, and her investigation puts her in danger of being cut out of the picture for good.
Download or read book Vintage Tattoo Flash written by Jonathan Shaw and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2016-04-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vintage Tattoo Flash is a one-of-a-kind visual explorationof the history and evolution of tattooing in America. Aluscious, offset-printed, hardcover tome-a beautiful andserious addition to the understanding of one of the world'soldest and most popular art forms. Electric tattooing as we know it today was invented inNew York City at the turn of the 19th century. In the firstdays of American tattooing, tattoos were primarily wornby sailors and soldiers, outlaws and outsiders. The visuallanguage of what came to be known as "traditional tattooing"was developed in those early days on the Boweryand catered to the interests of the clientele. Commonimagery that soon became canon included sailing ships,women, hearts, roses, daggers, eagles, dragons, wolves,panthers, skulls, crosses, and popular cartoon charactersof the era. The first tattooists also figured out that usingbold outlines, complimented by solid color and smoothshading, was the proper technique for creating art on abody that would stand the test of time. In the over 100years since then, techniques and styles have evolved, andthe customer base has expanded, but the core subjectmatter and philosophy developed at the dawn of electrictattooing has persisted as perennial favorites through themodern era. While most tattoos are inherently ephemeral, transportedon skin until the death of the collector, a visual recordexists in the form of tattoo flash: the hand-painted sheetsof designs posted in tattoo shops for customers to selectfrom. Painted and repainted, stolen, traded, bought andsold, these sheets are passed between artists through onechannel or another, often having multiple useful lives in avariety of shops scattered across time and geography. Theutility of these original pieces of painted art has made itso that original examples can still be found in use or up forgrabs if you know where to look. Vintage Tattoo Flash draws from the personal collectionof Jonathan Shaw-renowned outlaw tattooist andauthor-and represents a selection of over 300 pieces offlash from one of the largest private collections in existence.Vintage Tattoo Flash spans the first roughly 75years of American tattooing from the 1900s Bowery, to50s Texas, through the Pike in the 60s and the developmentof the first black and grey, single-needle tattooingin LA in the 70s. The book lovingly reproduces entirelyunpublished sheets of original flash from the likes of BobShaw, Zeke Owen, Tex Rowe, Ted Inman, Ace Harlyn, EdSmith, Paul Rogers, the Moskowitz brothers, and many,many others relatively known and unknown.
Download or read book Expanded Cinema written by Gene Youngblood and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was the first serious treatment of video, computers, and holography as cinematic technologies. Long considered the bible for media artists, Youngblood’s insider account of 1960s counterculture and the birth of cybernetics remains a mainstay reference in today’s hypermediated digital world. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes a new Introduction by the author that offers conceptual tools for understanding the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of our present world. A unique eyewitness account of burgeoning experimental film and the birth of video art in the late 1960s, this far- ranging study traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. Vast in scope, its prescient formulations include “the paleocybernetic age,” “intermedia,” the “artist as design scientist,” the “artist as ecologist,” “synaesthetics and kinesthetics,” and “the technosphere: man/machine symbiosis.” Outstanding works are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists of the period, such as Nam June Paik, Jordan Belson, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek, Les Levine, and Frank Gillette. An inspiring Introduction by the celebrated polymath and designer R. Buckminster Fuller—a perfectly cut gem of countercultural thinking in itself—places Youngblood’s radical observations in comprehensive perspective. Providing an unparalleled historical documentation, Expanded Cinema clarifies a chapter of countercultural history that is still not fully represented in the arthistorical record half a century later. The book will also inspire the current generation of artists working in ever-newer expansions of the cinematic environment and will prove invaluable to all who are concerned with the technologies that are reshaping the nature of human communication.
Download or read book The Big Screen written by David Thomson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Big Screen tells the enthralling story of the movies: their rise and spread, their remarkable influence over us, and the technology that made the screen—smaller now, but ever more ubiquitous—as important as the images it carries. The Big Screen is not another history of the movies. Rather, it is a wide-ranging narrative about the movies and their signal role in modern life. At first, film was a waking dream, the gift of appearance delivered for a nickel to huddled masses sitting in the dark. But soon, and abruptly, movies began transforming our societies and our perceptions of the world. The celebrated film authority David Thomson takes us around the globe, through time, and across many media—moving from Eadweard Muybridge to Steve Jobs, from Sunrise to I Love Lucy, from John Wayne to George Clooney, from television commercials to streaming video—to tell the complex, gripping, paradoxical story of the movies. He tracks the ways we were initially enchanted by movies as imitations of life—the stories, the stars, the look—and how we allowed them to show us how to live. At the same time, movies, offering a seductive escape from everyday reality and its responsibilities, have made it possible for us to evade life altogether. The entranced audience has become a model for powerless and anxiety-ridden citizens trying to pursue happiness and dodge terror by sitting quietly in a dark room. Does the big screen take us out into the world, or merely mesmerize us? That is Thomson's question in this grand adventure of a book. Books about the movies are often aimed at film buffs, but this passionate and provocative feat of storytelling is vital to anyone trying to make sense of the age of screens—the age that, more than ever, we are living in.
Download or read book Hollywood Frame by Frame written by Karina Longworth and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a voyeuristic thrill in contact sheets, the direct prints used by photographers of the pre-digital age to edit their work. You look directly through the photographer's eyes as each photo gets closer to that perfect shot. And yet, it's often the photos not chosen that best capture the true spirit of their subjects and the life they lead after the director yells cut. This was never truer than in the classic Hollywood era, where behind-the-scenes photos were carefully vetted for marketing purposes and unapproved shots were never expected to be seen again. Hollywood Frame by Frame presents hundreds of never-before-published photos from the sets of some of the greatest films of the twentieth century. Hollywood's biggest stars are caught with their guard down behind the scenes of movie classics from Some Like It Hot and Breakfast at Tiffany's to Taxi Driver and The Silence of the Lambs. A treasure trove for any fan of Hollywood's Golden Age, this rare glimpse of the unseen silver screen will intrigue even movie buffs who think they've seen everything.
