Posts Tagged ‘motion pictures’
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!…
Continuing yesterday’s theme of waning summer, one notes that the Summer Blockbuster Season is ending; the last of the “spectacular” movies of 2010 are making they way into theaters now. Soon, blazing guns and buff heroes give way to the poignancy and angst of Winter’s more grown-up fare.
But before one hangs up one’s 3-D glasses, one might check in at Movie Body Counts for a tally of the “the actual, visible ‘on screen kills/deaths/bodies’ of your favorite action, sci/fi, and war films”… or actors or directors.
The counts contain some surprises: the highest movie total to date? LotR: Return of the King (836… the more likely-seeming 300 only had 600). As for directors, John Woo is at an unsurprisingly high 1,111; while famed fright-monger [and recent (R) D honoree] Wes Craven stands at under 10. (Sadly, Russ Meyer, the auteur behind the epic that gives this missive its title, is not covered… but then, Meyer did specialize in a different kind of body count.)
One can consult the rules and review the process here… then browse through Movie Body Counts.
As, like squirrels, we save up for a long, deeply-felt winter, we might recall that it was on this date in 1912 that Arthur R. Eldred of Oceanside, New York, achieved the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America (which had been founded only two years before). He was the first person to earn the award. He didn’t receive the actual badge until September 2 (Labor Day), as the badge had not yet been made.
Arthur Eldred (source)
It’s a scream…
They sell popcorn, justify the “reach-around hug,” and just generally make an audience’s hearts beat faster– screams are a critical element in the motion picture formula. But screams aren’t easy. As Science News reports, it’s all about chaos theory…
Filmmakers use chaotic, unpredictable sounds to evoke particular emotions, say researchers who have assessed screams and other outbursts from more than 100 movies. The new findings, reported May 25 in Biology Letters, come as no surprise, but they do highlight an emerging if little-known area of study…
By exploring the use of such dissonant, harsh sounds in film, scientists hope to get a better understanding of how fear is expressed, says study coauthor Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Potentially, there are universal rules of arousal and ways to communicate fear,” says Blumstein, who typically studies screams in marmots, not starlets.
Blumstein and his coauthors acoustically analyzed 30-second cuts from more than 100 movies representing a broad array of genres. The movies included titles such as Aliens, Goldfinger, Annie Hall, The Green Mile, Slumdog Millionaire, Titanic, Carrie, The Shining and Black Hawk Down.
Not unexpectedly, the horror films had a lot of harsh and atonal screams. Dramatic films had sound tracks with fewer screams but a lot of abrupt changes in frequency. And adventure films, it turns out, had a surprising number of harsh male screams.
“Screams are basically chaos,” Fitch says…
A true, harsh scream “is not a trivial thing to do,” Fitch says. In fact, capturing a realistic, blood-curdling cry is so difficult that filmmakers have used the very same one, now found on many websites, in more than 200 movies. Known as the Wilhelm scream, it is named for the character who unleashed it in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River.
By way of illustration, this YouTube video: three minutes of the Wilhelm scream through the years…
As we put our hands over our ears, we might recall that there was lots of screaming on this date in 455, as the Vandals entered Rome, which they plundered for the next two weeks.
Almost the same as not being there…
Further to yesterday’s touristy theme, from the ever-interesting folks at Strange Maps, a guide developed in 1927 by Paramount Pictures, advising producers where to look for foreign locations… without leaving California:
More at “Scene to be Believed: California as the World.”
As we reconsider our packing strategies, we might recall that it was on this date in 1980 that CNN debuted– demonstrating that the whole world could also be found in Georgia.
Putting magic in the Magic Lantern…
In 1896, a young reporter for the New York Evening World was sent to interview Thomas Edison. Ever on the make, Edison was concerned to impress the young man, Stuart Blackton, who before turning to journalism, had performed as “The Komical Kartoonist” in vaudeville shows, drawing “lightning sketches.” Blackton accompanied Edison to his cabin studio, “Black Maria,” for a demonstration of Edison’s new motion picture technology. Edison used the occasion to make a quick film of Blackton sketching.
The inventor did such a good job selling the new technology that he talked Blackton and a partner into buying a print of the new film, along with nine others, plus a Vitascope to show them to paying audiences. The new act was a smash, so Blackton started making films of his own own– and the American Vitagraph Company (see also here) was born.
As Vitagraph did well, Blackton began to feel adventurous. And thank goodness he did: in the next few years, Blackton developed and instantiated the basic concepts of animation.
“The Enchanted Drawing” (copyrighted in 1900, but probably made at least a year earlier) depicts Blackton doing his lightning artist act, sketching a face, cigars, and a bottle of wine. He appears to remove the drawings as real objects, and the face appears to react. The animation here is stop-action (the camera is stopped, a single change is made, and the camera is then started again), first used by Méliès (who had a different kind of run-in with Edison) and others.
“Humorous Phases of Funny Faces,” completed in 1906, was the first “true” animated film– in that an appreciable part of the action was accomplished with single exposures of drawings, simulating motion (though the film also employed live action, stop motion, and stick puppetry).
Having paved the way for Looney Toons, Merrie Melodies, and the rest of the cartoon cavalcade, Blackton and his partner sold Vitagraph to Warner Bros. in 1925. (See here for a reminder of Vitagraph’s historical importance to live action films as well.)
(Thanks, Brain Pickings, for the prod.)
As we revel in fond memories of Saturday mornings past, we might recall, in anticipation of this weekend’s Final Four action, that it was on this date in 1906, as Blackton released “Faces,” that the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (subsequently known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA) was established. When then-president Theodore Roosevelt’s own son, Ted, broke his nose playing football at Harvard, Roosevelt became aware of the growing number of serious injuries and deaths occurring in collegiate football (18 deaths in 05 alone). He brought the presidents of five major institutions, Army (West Point), Navy (Annapolis), Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to several meetings at the White House in October, 1905 to discuss steps to make college athletics safer; the IAA was the result.
Cut! Take it again from “#@!*&%#@!”…
Humphrey Bogart, Joe E. Brown, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Leslie Howard, Paul Lukas, Barton MacLane, Fredric March, Paul Muni, Pat O’Brien, Claude Rains, Edward G. Robinson, and a host of others star in The Warner Bros. Blooper Reel for 1936!
TotH to the good folks at Neatorama.
As we struggle to remember our lines, we might recall that it was on this date in 1836 that Samuel Colt was granted a U.S. patent on a “revolving gun” (a revolving-breach-loading, folding-trigger firearm, initially instantiated as a pistol– the Patterson Pistol, the earliest ancestor of the famous Colt .45). In 1835, Colt had traveled to England, following the path of Elisha Collier, a Bostonian who had earlier patented a revolving flintlock. Colt obtained a British patent late that year, then hurried home.
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