23 december 2012

Patricianhouse


Museum Willet-Holthuysen is a museum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on the Herengracht canal. It is the only fully furnished canalside patrician house in Amsterdam that is open to the public. The museum has a large collection of silverware, plates, and books from the Dutch Golden Age. It also has a substantial collection of art.






The house was built for Jacob Hop, mayor of Amsterdam, around 1685. He was not the last mayor to own the house. In 1739 the outside was redesigned to look as it does today, in the highly fashionable Louis XIV style. The last private owner, Mrs. Willet-Holthuysen, bequeathed the entire house to the city of Amsterdam on condition that it became a museum in 1895. The curator named in that year was Frans Coenen Jr., a writer, composer, and art critic. It has been a museum ever since



 

21 december 2012

Birthplace of cinema



The collection of Jean Desmet (1875-1956) is held by EYE Film Institute Netherlands (formerly the Filmmuseum) since 1957. The vast collection contains, among many other items, masterpieces by D.W. Griffith and Louis Feuillade, films with Asta Nielsen and Lyda Borelli, and productions from the film companies Pathé, Gaumont and Edison. The film-historical significance of the Jean Desmet Collection is acknowledged worldwide. A large number of the films in the collection from the Netherlands’ first professional distributor are unique copies (the only preserved copy in the world). Among the more than 900 films from 1907-1916 are masterpieces that had not been seen for decades. These discoveries have cleared up a number of misconceptions, and the film-historical appreciation for historical genres such as Italian diva films, German melodramas and French comedies has been changed once and for all.


20 december 2012

Early Cinema



The history of film (known variously as film, motion pictures or movies) began in the late 1880s with the invention of the first movie camera.



Motion pictures were initially exhibited as a carnival novelty and developed to one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment, and mass media in the 20th century and into the 21st century. Most films before 1930 were silent. Motion picture films have substantially affected the arts, technology, and politics.[citation needed]
The movie theatre was considered a cheaper, simpler way to provide entertainment to the masses. Movies became the most popular visual art form of the late Victorian age. It was simpler because of the fact that before the cinema people would have to travel long distances to see major dioramas or amusement parks. With the advent of the cinema this changed. During the first decade of the cinema's existence, inventors worked to improve the machines for making and showing films.

3 D film




A 3D is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception. Derived from stereoscopic photography, a regular motion picture camera system is used to record the images as seen from two perspectives (or computer-generated imagery generates the two perspectives in post-production), and special projection hardware and/or eyewear are used to provide the illusion of depth when viewing the film. 3D films are not limited to feature film theatrical releases; television broadcasts and direct-to-video films have also incorporated similar methods, especially since 3D television and Blu-ray 3D.


3D films have existed in some form since 1915, but had been largely relegated to a niche in the motion picture industry because of the costly hardware and processes required to produce and display a 3D film, and the lack of a standardized format for all segments of the entertainment business. Nonetheless, 3D films were prominently featured in the 1950s in American cinema, and later experienced a worldwide resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s driven by IMAX high-end theaters and Disney themed-venues. 3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s, culminating in the unprecedented success of 3D presentations of Avatar in December 2009 and January 2010.


 

17 december 2012

Green House



House is uptempo music for dancing, although by modern dance-music standards it is mid-tempo, generally ranging between 118 and 135 bpm. Tempos tended to be slower in the early years of house.

The common element of house is a prominent kick drum on every beat usually generated by a drum machine or sampler. The kick drum sound is augmented by various kick fills and extended dropouts. The drum track is filled out with hi-hat cymbal-patterns that nearly always include a hi-hat on quaver off-beats between each kick, and a snare drum or clap sound on beats two and four of every bar. This pattern derives from the so-called "four-on-the-floor" dance drumbeats of the 1960s which impacted on 1980s house music via the 1970s disco drummers.

Electronically generated sounds and samples of recordings from genres such as jazz, blues, disco, funk, soul and synth pop are often added to the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House songs may also include disco, soul, or gospel vocals and additional percussion such as tambourine. Many house mixes also include repeating, short, syncopated, staccato chord-loops that are usually composed of 5-7 chords in a 4-beat measure.



 

16 december 2012

The sound of cinema




A cinema organ is a pipe organ originally designed specifically for imitation of an orchestra.
Theatre organs took the place of the orchestra when installed in a cinema (movie theatre) during the heyday of silent films. Most theatre organs were modelled after the style originally devised by Robert Hope-Jones, which he called a "unit orchestra".




Such instruments were typically built to provide the greatest possible variety of timbres with the fewest possible pipes, and often had pianos and other percussion instruments built in, as well as a variety of sound effects such as a siren.

Theatre organs are usually identified by their distinctive horseshoe-shaped consoles, which are frequently painted white with gold trim. An original example is the 3/13 Barton from Ann Arbor's historic Michigan Theatre. The organ was installed in 1927 and is currently played daily before most film screenings. There were over 7,000 such organs installed in American theatres from 1915 to 1933, but fewer than 40 original instruments remain in their original theatres.


 

13 december 2012

EYE Amsterdam



EYE Film Institute Netherlands is located in the Overhoeks neighborhood of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It includes a cinematography museum formerly called Filmmuseum, founded in 1952. Its predecessor was the Dutch Historic Film Archive, founded in 1946. The museum was situated in the Vondelparkpaviljoen since 1975, and in 2009, plans were announced for a new home for the museum on the northern bank of Amsterdam's waterfront. It was officially opened on April 4, 2012 by Queen Beatrix.





EYE is dedicated to the preservation of heritage for future generations, both Dutch films and foreign films screened in the Netherlands. The museum collection includes 46,000 film titles, 35,000 posters and 450,000 photographs. The earliest materials date from the start of the film industry in Holland in 1895.

Street-smart artist



A person who has a lot of common sense and knows what's going on in the world. This person knows what every type of person has to deal with daily and understands all groups of people and how to act around them. This person also knows all the current shit going on in the streets and the ghetto and everywhere else and knows how to make his own right decisions, knows how to deal with different situations and has his own independant state of mind. A street smart person isn't stubborn and actually listens to shit and understands shit.



10 december 2012

How do you say goodnight ?



HOW DO YOU SAY GOODNIGHT?

...when the world is whirring at such a fast pace? Scientific breakthroughs, feats of modern invention, and domestic wonders -- the relentless stimuli that animate waking life and permeate dreams are ever gaining momentum. A restless outer world pokes and prods and ultimately overtakes those who would try to rest. Enchanting, enthralling, frightening -- how do you possibly say goodnight? This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license as part of the remix contest "Past Re-imagined as the Future" hosted by the Free Music Archive (http://freemusicarchive.org/) and the Prelinger Archives (http://archive.org/details/prelingerhomemovies).\




09 december 2012

Salon Steamcarrousel



The Steam Carousel dating from 1895, was bought by Efteling from Hendrik Janvier, who had toured with it to local funfairs, and has been operating in the park since 1956. Hendrik Janvier considered to be the founding father of the salon carousel, sold the Carousel because of the high costs and declining income. Building the ride up took 4 days and it had to be transported with 25 train carriages and trucks.
Rumour has it that Anton Pieck, the most important creative designer of Efteling, pushed for the purchase, because he rode the carousel as a child in Haarlem.




There also is a bar area within the salon carousel. The area surrounding these carousels was normally used for entertainment, eating and dancing in past times..
The seats of the carousel are in the form of animals, such as 22 Hübner horses and 2 Karl Müller carved pigs, and 4 carved Moulina gondolas and coaches, all turning to the music of an original Gavioli organ (only 5 remaining worldwide).


 

The India Rubber Head.



Méliès achieves this by a simple trompe l’oeil effect: the background remains static throughout, but the superimposed element (Méliès’ own head) is filmed with a camera that is moving towards and away from it. Because the background fools us into thinking that the film has been shot entirely from a fixed camera position (as are the vast majority of Méliès’ films), the illusion is instantly convincing. Like all experienced stage performers, Méliès knew that a single head-inflation wouldn’t be enough – so he contrives to include two…

…Deservedly regarded as one of Georges Méliès’ supreme masterpieces, The Man with the Rubber Head represented one of his most significant technical advances since the not dissimilar The Four Troublesome Heads (Un Homme de têtes, 1898).

08 december 2012

Gothenburg 1913



Sweden 1913

Found footage of 100 year ago with newly added music.
A film from the early days of filmmaking. Just one (long) shot with no editing and of an amazing good black/white quality.
Silent film at that time was so particular that almost every man is looking straight into the camera wondering what kind a remarks were made.


07 december 2012

Wings









Close-up shots do not show the subject in the broad context of its surroundings. If overused, close-ups may leave viewers uncertain as to what they are seeing. Close-ups are rarely done with wide-angle lenses, because perspective causes objects in the center of the picture to be unnaturally enlarged. Certain times, different directors will use wide-angle lenses, because they can convey the message of confusion, and bring life to certain characters.

04 december 2012

Amsterdam: highlights & shadows



Homage is a show or demonstration of respect or dedication to someone or something, sometimes by simple declaration but often by some more oblique reference, artistic or poetic

The concept now often appears in the arts where one author shows respect to a topic by calling it an homage, such as Homage to Catalonia. Alternatively, creative artists may show respect to a veteran of the field or to an admired practitioner by alluding to their work In rock music this can take the form of a tribute album or of a sample. As of 2010, the digital techniques used to generate many forms of media make it easy to borrow from other works and this remediation may be used in homage to them.

02 december 2012

The portrait artist: Rembrandt



A biographical film, is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their lives.

Because the figures portrayed are actual people, whose actions and characteriics are known, biopics are considered some of the most demanding films of actors and actresses.




A certain amount of fabrication is expected, at least to reduce the risk of libel, but the films often alter events to suit the storyline. Events are sometimes portrayed more dramatically than they occurred, time is "condensed" to fit all important events into the film or several people are blended into a composite.


 

01 december 2012

Hi Amsterdam



A viral video is a video that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email.




With the proliferation of camera phones, many videos are being shot by amateurs on these devices. The availability of inexpensive video editing and publishing tools has dramatically increased.

Autumn in Hortus Botanicus



Hortus Botanicus is now one of the attractions of the Dutch capital for both Dutch and International visitors. The collection is famous for some of its trees and plants, some of which are on the "danger" list, also well-known plants and trees can be found there, like the Persian Ironwood Tree which is known in Dutch as Perzische Parrotia.

Hortus Botanicus's initial collection was amassed during the 17th century through plants and seeds brought back by traders of the East India Company (VOC) for use as medicines and for their possibilities for commerce. A single coffee plant, Coffea arabica, in Hortus's collection served as the parent for the entire coffee culture in Central and South America. Likewise, two small potted oil palms brought back by the VOC from Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, produced seeds after six years, and these were propagated throughout all of Southeast Asia, becoming a major source of revenue in the Dutch East Indies and now in Indonesia. In 1885-1918 Hugo de Vries was the director of the garden. Recent additions to Hortus include a huge hothouse, which incorporates three different tropical climates


 

 



29 november 2012

Welcome to Santa


Tradition holds that Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas) and his aides arrive each year by steam boat from Spain in mid November. Black Peter carries with him the book of Saint Nicholas. The rest of the entourage carries gifts, chocolate letters and spice nuts to be handed to the well-behaved children.


During the subsequent three weeks, Saint Nicholas is believed to ride a white-grey horse over the rooftops at night, delivering gifts through the chimney to the well-behaved children, while the naughty children risk being caught by Saint Nicholas's aides that carry jute bags and willow canes for that purpose

28 november 2012

One minutes 25


The One Minutes: 25
On the occasion of 25 years IDFA festival the One Minutes Foundation invited filmmakers from around the world to make films of exactly one minute with a theme of '25 '. From the approximately 100 entries 15 films were selected.

IDFA TV is IDFA's online documentary channel, streaming various complete documentaries free of charge, as well as trailers, festival reports, interviews and master classes.
Visit http://www.idfa.tv (Dutch viewers)or http://www.idfa.tv/en (International viewers)


 

19 november 2012

Timeline Rembrandt


Rembrandt van Rijn was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history.



Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt's later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.



 

5 Broken Camera's



5 Broken Cameras is a 2011 documentary film co-directed by Palestinian Emad Burnat and Israeli Guy Davidi. 5 Broken Cameras is a first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil'in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the footage was later given to Israeli



co-director Guy Davidi to edit. Structured around the destruction of each one of Burnat's cameras, the filmmakers' collaboration follows one family's evolution over five years of village turmoil.

16 november 2012

More than 1000 timbered houses





History of Quedlinburg goes back up to the 10th century! It was the capital of the East Franconian German Empire at the time of the Saxonian-Ottonian ruling dynasty and has been a prosperous trading town since the Middle Ages. Most of the buildings were scrupulously restored to their original condition and beauty thus the cities convey a vivid impression of the flair and half timber architecture of a medieval European town. It is truly a pleasure to walk through the narrow alleys and streets and to see all the colourful painted old houses with their tiny rooms and windows, rich decorated with flower boxes


 


15 november 2012

Playground Dierenrijk




A teleplay is a play for television, a comedy or drama written or adapted for television. The term surfaced during the 1950s with wide usage to distinguish television plays from stage plays for the theater and screenplays written for films. All three have different formats, conventions and constraints.


 

14 november 2012

Remix ArtStudio


By visiting the museum’s Rijksstudio, art lovers can create their own “sets” of Rijksmuseum works. Sets can include images of just flowers (think of the luscious roses and tulips in Dutch still life ), faces appearing in portraits, or paintings of Amsterdam itself through the ages. Just select a work of art and drop it into your own image collection. Then use these selected images to create your own personalized products. From tattoos to wallpaper to scooters (yes, scooters) to smart phone skins. Unusual yet everyday items of all shapes and sizes can now bear the image of gorgeous art. The art is free and the object could be as simple as a T-shirt.





What better way to make the collection accessible to the public? Some might say it is sacrilege to put Rembrandt’s face on the side of a van; the Rijksmuseum encourages it. None of the artists are alive anyway to claim copyright infringement, now are they?


 

12 november 2012

The historic town of Goslar


Goslar is a medieval town in Lower Saxony and serves as a regional hub to the wider Harz area. It lies at the foot of the Harz Mountains . Goslar is situated some 150 Miles West of Berlin. The nearest cities are Brunswick, Hanover, and Magdeburg. Goslar is much older than Berlin and worth a visit. If you are interested in history, outdoor pursuits (especially hiking), tranquility and nature, then Goslar is the right spot for you.
Goslar was founded in 922 AD, although it is widely assumed that it has been settled since pre-Roman times. The town is famed for its magnificent gates and ramparts, the medieval Imperial Palace, Romanesque churches, its half timbered guild houses, its witches, the last of which was burned at the stake in 1657 AD. In medieval times the city was a major producer of armouries and coins-- the raw ores for their manufacture came from the Rammelsberg mine just outside the city's walls.


09 november 2012

No Facebook without the Dutch


Onze 'seamail' aan Mark Zuckerburg ter gelegenheid van onze Facebookpagina www.facebook.com/hetscheepvaartmuseum.
Mark, did you know there would not have been Facebook without the Dutch?

Credits: OneBigAgency (www.onebigagency.com), CCCP (www.cccp.nl) and SuperHeroes (www.hellosuperheroes.com)


08 november 2012

Childrens zoo


 
The Cinematograph Films (Animals) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom It defines a criminal offence of distributing or exhibiting a film that was "organised or directed in such a way as to involve the cruel infliction of pain or terror on any animal or the cruel goading of any animal to fury - in other words, one in which actual cruelty to animals was photographed and/or occurred during the production.

The phrase 'cruel infliction' is understood to mean cruelty to animals that was specifically and gratuitously inflicted with the sole purpose of creating an entertainment film. Therefore, for example, the screening of a documentary about bullfighting or an educational film about vivisection in medical research would be unlikely to result in prosecution under the Act, because any footage of actual animal cruelty would be of an event that would have taken place regardless of whether or not it had been filmed, and the purpose of screening that footage is not entertainment.

Jeronimus monastery Lisbon


Jeronymites Monastery (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos,) is located near the shore of the parish of Belém, in the municipality of Lisbon, Portugal. The monastery is one of the most prominent monuments of the Manueline-style architecture (Portuguese late-Gothic) in Lisbon, classified in 1983 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The church and the monastery, like the nearby Torre de Belém and Padrão dos Descobrimentos, symbolise the Portuguese Age of Discovery and is among the main tourist attractions of Lisbon.



When Portugal joined the European Economic Community, the formal ceremonies were held in the cloister of the monument (1985).
On December 13, 2007, the Treaty of Lisbon was signed at the monastery, laying down the basis for the reform of the European Union.

04 november 2012

Dutch classical


Story
The fainthearted cigar trader Ducker keeps himself quiet during World War II. That changes when parachutist Dorbeck lands in his backyard. It turns out the parachutist bears a remarkable resemblance to Ducker. Ducker follows Dorbeck blindly, becomes involved in the Dutch resistance and soon starts killing people. When he escapes through German lines to the freed South Netherlands, no one has ever heard of Dorbeck

Director


Fons Rademakers was born on 5 September 1920 in Roosendaal, Holland. he began his career as an actor and theater director. His film directorial debut, Dorp aan de rivier, was also the first Dutch movie ever nominated for an Academy award (Oscar). In 1986 Rademakers won the Foreign Language Oscar.

03 november 2012

Quedlinburg Schloss


The town is located north of the Harz mountains approximatively 123 meters above sea level. The nearest mountains reach 181 meters above sea level. The biggest part of the town is located in the western part of the river Bodes bed. This river comes from the Harz mountains and flows into the river Saale and further into the river Elbe. The towns area of inner Quedlinburg is about 78.15 square kilometre, since the incorporation of 3 towns it grows up to 141.85 km².


In the innermost parts of the town a wide selection of half-timbered buildings from at least five different centuries are to be found (including a 14th century structure one of Germany's oldest), while around the outer fringes of the old town there are wonderful examples of Jugendstil buildings, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.




Since December 1994 the old town of Quedlinburg and the castle mount with the collegiate church are listed as one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.[2] Quedlinburg is one of the best-preserved medieval and renaissance towns in Europe, having escaped major damage in World War II.

In 2006 the Harzer Schmalspurbahnen Selketal branch was extended into Quedlinburg from Gernrode giving access to the historic steam narrow gauge railway, Alexisbad and high Harz plateau.

The castle and the cathedral still towers above the city the way they dominated the town in early Middle Ages. The cathedral is a prime example of German Romanesque style. The Domschatz, the treasure containing ancient artefacts and books, was stolen by an American soldier and finally bought back to Quedlinburg in 1993 and is again on display here.


 

01 november 2012

Process & progress


What is an orphan film?

Narrowly defined, it's a motion picture abandoned by its owner or caretaker. More generally, the term refers to all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream: public domain materials, home movies, outtakes, unreleased films, industrial and educational movies, independent documentaries, ethnographic films, newsreels, censored material, underground works, experimental pieces, silent-era productions, stock footage, found footage, medical films, kinescopes, small- and unusual-gauge films, amateur productions, surveillance footage, test reels, government films, advertisements, sponsored films, student works. The Orphan Film Symposium embraces the broader definition of this new rubric in film preservation. "Orphans" brings together scholars, artists, archivists, collectors, curators, conservators and enthusiasts who recognize the Orphic value of these neglected aspects of our culture.


 

28 oktober 2012

Trailer Portugal




A trailer or preview is an advertisement or a commercial for a feature film that will be exhibited in the future at a cinema. The term "trailer" comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the theater after the films ended, but the name has stuck. Trailers are now shown before the film (or the A movie in a double feature) begins.


Movie trailers have now become popular on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, as well as on the Internet and mobile devices. Of some ten billion videos watched online annually, film trailers rank third, after news and user-created video.

27 oktober 2012

Notre Dame Reims



Notre-Dame de Reims (Our Lady of Reims) is the seat of the Archdiocese of Reims, where the kings of France were crowned. The cathedral replaced an older church, destroyed by fire in 1211, that was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original structure had itself been erected on the site of some Roman baths. A major tourism destination, the cathedral receives about one million visitors annually.




26 oktober 2012

Quest in Dierenrijk zoo




One can think of digital storytelling as the modern extension of the ancient art of storytelling, now interwoven with digitized still and moving images and sound. Simply put, digital stories are short 2 to 3 minute multimedia movies that combine photographs, video, animation, sound, music, text, and often a narrative voice.

25 oktober 2012

Duderstadt


Sights

The German Timber-Frame Road, which covers Germany from north to south, joins unique landscapes, historic sites and carefully restored monuments. Health resorts and festival locations alternate with nature parks and romantic nooks. Cider and Bock beer were invented here and hardly any other tourist route can offer such a variety of German culinary delights.


Germany's northernmost vineyard, the biggest Christmas candle in the world and Germany's only Ivory Museum are all located on this historical trail. There are many events, festivals and markets throughout the year, which can be explored by car, bicycle, train, or motor-home.

24 oktober 2012

Fellinis TV commercial




Fellinis Fantastic TV Commercials

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Fellini agreed to make a miniature film featuring Campari, the famous Italian appiritif. The result, Oh, che bel paesaggio! (Oh, what a beautiful landscape!), shown above, features a man and a woman seated across from one another on a long-distance train. The man (played by Victor Poletti) smiles, but the woman (Silvia Dionisio) averts her eyes, staring sullenly out the window and picking up a remote control to switch the scenery. She grows increasingly exasperated as a sequence of desert and medieval landscapes pass by. Still smiling, the man takes the remote control, clicks it, and the beautiful Campo di Miracoli (Field of Miracles) of Pisa appears in the window, embellished by a towering bottle of Campari.

23 oktober 2012

Treasure Chamber




Video compression is needed to change our large video files into smaller video files so that they can be shared more easily and viewed online. Luckily for us, there's a whole world of video compression software to get our video ready for the web. There are compression software tools like Sorenson's Squeeze, Apple's Compressor 4 and MPEG Streamclip that handle video compression without the need for any other software. So whether you want your video looking its best on the Net, or playing loud and proud on an iPad, video compression software makes it happen.


Art remix Rijksmuseum





The Rijksmuseum Lets You Remix Its Art

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is one of the grand European museums. Home to many of the Dutch masters.
All those masterpieces are now available for close-up view online at the Rijksmuseumâs digitized collection. Users can explore the entire collection, which is handily sorted by artist, subject, style and even by events in Dutch history. The new digital archive has all the same great learning potential as any other online collection. Itâs searchable, as is the museumâs library.

But the Dutch are a whimsical people, so it seems right that, in digitizing its collection, the museum went a step further than further. Not only can users create their own online galleries from selected works in the museumâs collection, they can download Rijksmuseum artwork for free to decorate new products.




22 oktober 2012

BOZ a fine city



A filming location is a place where some or all of a film or television series is produced, in addition to or instead of using sets constructed on a movie studio backlot or soundstage. In filmmaking, a location is any place where a film crew will be filming actors and recording their dialog. A location where dialog is not recorded may be considered as a second unit photography site. Filmmakers often choose to shoot on location because they believe that greater realism can be achieved in a "real" place; however, location shooting is often motivated by the film's budget. Many films shoot interior scenes on a sound stage and exterior scenes on location.

It is often mistakenly believed that filming "on location" takes place in the actual location in which its story is set, but this is not necessarily the case.



21 oktober 2012

Birds' empire


A bird's-eye view is an elevated view of an object from above, with a perspective as though the observer were a bird, often used in the making of blueprints, floor plans and maps.

It can be an aerial photograph, but also a drawing. Before manned flight was common, the term "bird's eye" was used to distinguish views drawn from direct observation at high locations (for example a mountain or tower), from those constructed from an imagined (bird's) perspectives. Bird's eye views as a genre have existed since classical times. The last great flourishing of them was in the mid-to-late 19th century, when bird's eye view prints were popular in the United States and Europe.
The terms aerial view and aerial viewpoint are also sometimes used synonymously with bird's-eye view. The term aerial view can refer to any view from a great height, even at a wide angle, as for example when looking sideways from an airplane window or from a mountain top. Overhead view is fairly synonymous with bird's-eye view but tends to imply a less lofty vantage point than the latter term. For example, in computer and video games, an "overhead view" of a character or situation often places the vantage point only a few feet above human height.

20 oktober 2012

Toonder studios


Marten Toonder may well go down in history as the most important Dutch author of comics. Undoubtedly, there is no comic artist who has put his mark on the Dutch comics scene like Toonder. His creations have been published in dailies and periodicals all over the world. His most famous series was 'Tom Poes en Heer Bommel' ('Tom Puss and Mr. Bumble'), which ran virtually non-stop for nearly 45 years. Toonder has received a great many awards and honorary distinctions for both his illustrating skills and the quality of his literary output.

He co-founded Geesink-Toonder Produkties in Amsterdam, with Joop Geesink, producing comics and animated films for companies like the Dutch Railways and Philips. The company also commenced working on a feature film starring 'Tom Puss', financed by the German film company Degeto. Although the film was never finished, it proved an opportunity to secure several artists from forced labour in Germany. The collaboration with Geesink lasted until 1943, when Geesink began to devote himself to puppet animation.

18 oktober 2012

Renewed state museum



The Rijksmuseum (English: State Museum) is a Dutch national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Concertgebouw.
The Rijksmuseum was founded in The Hague in 1800 and moved to Amsterdam in 1808, where it was first located in the Royal Palace and later in the Trippenhuis. The current main building was designed by Pierre Cuypers and was originally opened in 1885, but was closed for renovation from 2003 to 2013. On 13 April 2013, the main building was reopened by Queen Beatrix after the ten year renovation which cost € 375 million.
The museum has on display 8,000 objects of art and history, from their total collection of 1 million objects from the years 1200–2000, among which are some masterpieces by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer. The museum also has a small Asian collection which is on display in the Asian Pavilion.

Snow-white Amsterdam



With the arrival of commercially viable charge-coupled device (CCD) technology in the 1980s, first the pickup video-tubes were replaced with this kind of sensor. Later, higher scale integration electronics was applied (mainly by Sony), simplifying and even removing the intermediate optics, thereby reducing the size of home video cameras and eventually leading to the development of full camcorders. Current webcams and mobile phones with cameras are the most miniaturized commercial forms of such technology.

17 oktober 2012

Elements of Mardi Gras


Creative Commons just reached an exciting milestone. As of this week, there are four million Creative Commons–licensed videos on YouTube. That’s over forty years’ worth of footage to remix and reuse, all licensed under CC BY, the most permissive CC license.


One thing that makes this mass of CC-licensed content really exciting is that all four million of those videos can be imported into YouTube’s online video editor. By letting people remix and adapt videos without having sophisticated editing software or expertise, YouTube and CC are making it easier for anyone to build on the work of others. And that’s pretty cool.

12 oktober 2012

Archives for film and video




The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life and social history. The Archives were founded by Rick Prelinger in 1981] in order to preserve what he calls "ephemeral" films: films sponsored by corporations and organizations, educational films, and amateur and home movie
The stated goal of the Prelinger Archives is to "collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven't been collected elsewhere."



The archives of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision of EYE in Amsterdam, and of the National Archive in The Hague contain the visual history of the past 100 years. Films, documentaries, radiobroadcast, and television programmes comprise more than 700.000 hours worth of material.
The main goal of the project is realising maximum accessibility to the audiovisual material for the targeted user groups (educational institutions, the general public, and the creative sector). To reach this goal, Images for the Future is developing and offering innovative services and applications.

11 oktober 2012

Famous Townhall



Duderstadt 180m, in the district Goettingen in southern Lower Saxony. Panoramic over the rooves of the town.


Construction of the Rathaus (city council building) began in 1302, with additional wings and components added until 1674. It was completely restored in the 1980s and most recently in 2002. At particular hours, a carillon plays from one of the towers as a bust of the "Anreis" (also: "Anreischke") comes out and nods.

Making of raining frogs and fish



Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital film-making tools a greater distinction between special effects and visual effects has been recognized, with "visual effects" referring to digital post-production and "special effects" referring to on-set mechanical effects and in-camera optical effects.

Optical effects (also called photographic effects), are techniques in which images or film frames are created photographically, either "in-camera" using multiple exposure, mattes, or the Schüfftan process, or in post-production processes using an optical printer. An optical effect might be used to place actors or sets against a different background.

Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects), are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, pyrotechnics and Atmospheric Effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds etc. Making a car appear to drive by itself, or blowing up a building are examples of mechanical effects. Mechanical effects are often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be built with break-away doors or walls to enhance a fight scene, or prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a monster.



05 oktober 2012

Restoration


The film restoration, movement is an ongoing project among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images which they contain. In the widest sense, preservation nowadays assures that a movie will continue to exist, as close to its original form as possible.
For many years the term “preservation” used to be a synonym of “duplication” only. The preservationist’s goal was to create a durable copy without significant loss of quality. Film preservation now holds the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, and access. The archivist seeks to protect the film and share the content with the public.

04 oktober 2012

Goslar: marketplace




One can think of digital storytelling as the modern extension of the ancient art of storytelling, now interwoven with digitized still and moving images and sound. Thanks to new media and digital technologies, individuals can approach storytelling from unique perspectives. Many people use elaborate non-traditional story forms, such as non-linear.

02 oktober 2012

Deutschland Mitte


Forget Form. There is No Form.
So what is a screenplay, or what might it be?
A screenplay is an exploration. It’s about the thing you don’t know. It’s a step into the abyss. It necessarily starts somewhere, anywhere; there is a starting point but the rest is undetermined. It is a secret, even from you. There’s no template for a screenplay, or there shouldn’t be. There are at least as many screenplay possibilities as there are people who write them. We’ve been conned into thinking there is a pre-established form. Like any big business, the film business believes in mass production. It’s cheaper and more efficient as a business model.