25 december 2008

The making of a Santa



Santa Claus, is a mythical figure with legendary, historical and folkloric origins who, in many Western cultures, is said to bring gifts to the homes of the good children on 24 December, the night before Christmas Day.
The modern figure of Santa Claus is derived from the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas, whose name is a dialectal pronunciation of Saint Nicholas, the historical Greek bishop and gift-giver of Myra. During the Christianization of Germanic Europe, this figure may have absorbed elements of the god Odin, who was associated with the Germanic pagan midwinter event of Yule and led the Wild Hunt, a ghostly procession through the sky.

Santa Claus is generally depicted as a portly, joyous, white-bearded man—sometimes with spectacles—wearing a red coat with white collar and cuffs, white-cuffed red trousers, and black leather belt and boots and who carries a bag full of gifts for children.


Since the 20th century, in an idea popularized by the 1934 song "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", Santa Claus has been believed to make a list of children throughout the world, categorizing them according to their behavior ("naughty" or "nice") and to deliver presents, including toys, and candy to all of the well-behaved children in the world, and sometimes coal to the naughty children, on the single night of Christmas Eve. He accomplishes this feat with the aid of the elves who make the toys in the workshop and the flying reindeer who pull his sleigh. He is commonly portrayed as living at the North Pole and saying "ho ho ho" often.

22 december 2008

Hadrians wall




Hadrian's Wall (Latin: Vallum Aelium) was a defensive fortification in Roman Britain, begun in AD 122 during the rule of emperor Hadrian. In addition to its military role, gates through the wall served as customs posts.

A significant portion of the wall still exists and can be followed on foot along the Hadrian's Wall Path. It is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern England and was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.



17 december 2008

Arcachon, end of summer




A film release is the authorization by the owner of a completed film to a public exhibition of the film. The exhibition may be in theatres or for home viewing. A film's release date and the method of release is part of the marketing of the film. It may be a wide or limited release.

The process may involve finding a film distributor. A film's marketing may involve the film being shown at a film festival or trade show to attract distributor attention and, if successful, may then be released through a chosen distributor.
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14 december 2008

spinning rope



Spinning is the process of creating yarn (or thread, rope, cable) from various raw fiber materials. Separate fibers are twisted together to bind them into a strong, long yarn. Characteristics of the yarn vary based on the material used, fiber length and alignment, quantity of fiber used and degree of twist. The earliest spinning probably involved simply twisting the fibres in the hand. Later a stick, called a spindle, was used to add the twist and hold the twisted fiber. Usually a whorl or weight stabilizes the spindle. The spindle is spun and twists the fiber until it becomes yarn. The spindle may be suspended or supported, Later the spinning wheel was developed which allowed a continuous and faster yarn production. Spinning wheels may be foot, hand or electrically powered. Modern powered spinning, originally done by water or steam power but now done by electricity, is vastly faster than hand-spinning. Hobby or small scale artisan spinners spin their own yarn to control specific yarn qualities and produce yarn not commercially available. They also may spin for self-sufficiency, sense of accomplishment, or sense of connection to history and the land. And, of course, for the meditative qualities of spinning.


13 december 2008

Highest dune of Europa


"Screen direction" is a term used in motion picture editing and refers to an underlying concept of cinematic grammar which involves the direction that actors or objects appear to be moving on the screen from the point of view of the camera or audience. A rule of film editing is that movement from one edited shot to another must maintain the consistency of screen direction in order to avoid audience confusion."Camera left" or "frame left" indicates movement towards the left side of the screen, while "camera right" or "frame right" refers to movement towards the right side of the screen. "Foreground" refers to the apparent space close to the camera (and thus to the audience), while "background" refers to the apparent space in the distance away from the camera and the audience.It is the responsibility of the director, cameraman, and script supervisor on the set to maintain consistency of screen direction so that later during editing the myriad short pieces of film can be properly assembled by the editor into a coherent film that tells the story intended.Avant-garde, experimental, and some independent film and video productions often deliberately violate screen direction rules in order to create audience disorientation or ambiguity. However, unless done very skillfully, violation of screen direction can appear to the audience to be the result of filmmaker ineptitude rather than experimentation.




06 december 2008

The new Carcasonne


Visual effects (commonly shortened to Visual F/X or VFX) are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer generated imagery has recently become accessible to the Independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software.

Winter in the eighties



Blackhawk Films, from the 1950s through the early 1980s, marketed motion pictures on 16mm, 8mm and Super 8 film. Most were vintage one- or two-reel short subjects, usually comedies starring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and other famous comedy series of the past. Blackhawk also offered newsreels, documentaries, and silent feature films. With the rise of the video market in the early 1980s, Blackhawk began producing video versions of many of their titles in 1981 and within a few years no longer manufactured film copies

04 december 2008

Nature of Norway



A natural history film or wildlife film is a documentary film about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on film taken in their natural habitat. Such programs are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema, medium, in fact, where this genre started almost simultaneously alongside television series.
Robert J. Flaherty's 1922 film Nanook of the North is typically cited as the first feature-length documentary. The Living Desert written and directed by James Alger is often considered as one of the first full-length cinematic nature-documentaries. Produced by the Walt Disney Company, it was first released in 1953.