Thursday, September 15, 2005
Week 2 – 2002.10.17
When I was a kid, one of the local TV stations used to show the old Flash Gordon movie serials. I loved them, though I had to laugh at the primitive special effects, raised as I was on the works of ILM and modern effects.
All in all, I have to feel a bit of relief at the fact that we live in a time when pretty much anything is possible in movies. But just like the excitement our generation feels as we watch a new medium—the internet—mature, I can imagine it must have been pretty cool at the turn of the last century, watching as pictures started moving, talking, doing strange things, and eventually doing them with color.
I know it seems silly to us now, to be in wonder at the sight of…man walking! Man running! Man running—double speed! Or whatever passed for great cinema back then. But every art form has to start somewhere. I’m sure a hundred years from now, our descendants will be saying things like, “so early websites were mostly text-based? And video was only in two dimensions? DSL was considered fast?” and laughing their asses off at our naivete. As they marvel in wonder at whatever the next new form of media is.
Side note: I was kind of hoping we’d watch Un Chien Andalou in class. I saw some clips from it in a documentary on surrealism and I’d like to see the whole thing. I did see one scene from it; do you know which one? Take a guess, I dare you. A straight razor, right across the eyeball. I have a pretty strong constitution, stronger than most, but…eesh. I guess I can just look away for that part.
Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen
When I was a kid, one of the local TV stations used to show the old Flash Gordon movie serials. I loved them, though I had to laugh at the primitive special effects, raised as I was on the works of ILM and modern effects.
All in all, I have to feel a bit of relief at the fact that we live in a time when pretty much anything is possible in movies. But just like the excitement our generation feels as we watch a new medium—the internet—mature, I can imagine it must have been pretty cool at the turn of the last century, watching as pictures started moving, talking, doing strange things, and eventually doing them with color.
I know it seems silly to us now, to be in wonder at the sight of…man walking! Man running! Man running—double speed! Or whatever passed for great cinema back then. But every art form has to start somewhere. I’m sure a hundred years from now, our descendants will be saying things like, “so early websites were mostly text-based? And video was only in two dimensions? DSL was considered fast?” and laughing their asses off at our naivete. As they marvel in wonder at whatever the next new form of media is.
Side note: I was kind of hoping we’d watch Un Chien Andalou in class. I saw some clips from it in a documentary on surrealism and I’d like to see the whole thing. I did see one scene from it; do you know which one? Take a guess, I dare you. A straight razor, right across the eyeball. I have a pretty strong constitution, stronger than most, but…eesh. I guess I can just look away for that part.
Copyright 2004 Rich Bowen
