Transmongolian Railroad and the Diorama Illusion

Two people have made a 4 minute "travelogue" of their 7,500 mile train trip from Beijing to Moscow using the video capability of one of the DSLRs.    A large part of this journey is on the Trans Siberian Railroad of course.

Few rail lines can compete historically with the Trans Siberian Railroad. (1) It was built starting in 1891 and started from both ends to meet in the middle. Started by the Czars and completed just before the Bolshevik Revolution, the railroad connects Petrograd (St. Petersburg, Leningrad) and Vladisvostok, the longest railroad in existence.   Of course, St Petersburg was the capital of Imperial Russia at the time and Vladivostok was their relatively ice free port on the Pacific Ocean.

You can start to see the diorama effect / illusion in this picture

The Trans Siberian Railroad is famous for opening up Siberia, for the role it played in the Russian Revolution and the Civil War, in World War 1 and World War 2.  If you saw the movie Reds (1981) with Warren Beatty, it features prominently in that.     When Moscow nearly fell to the Germans in the winter of 1941, it was the secret transfer of the armies of Siberia to Moscow in a triumph of logistics that stopped the Germans and threw them back in one of the great battles of history.

With John Reed on the Trans Siberian Railroad 

For those who are considering a trip on the Trans Siberian Railroad, here is a humorous link in something called "Wikitravel":
http://wikitravel.org/en/Trans-Siberian_Railway

A friend of mine who has been on this train says that by the end of trip you realize that train travel is not all that romantic if they do not clean out the latrine cars often enough.

At Chita, one can turn south and connect to a train that goes to Beijing.

Its 4 minutes long, its very interesting, and the music is great.

http://www.factoria.me/transmongolian/

But what I find very interesting is that I keep seeing the so-called diorama illusion when I watch it.  The diorama illusion is the illusion that something that is life size when photographed a certain way looks as though it is a model.   The classic examples of these were Viewmaster photographs of something small.   It has to do with a shallow depth of field.

Here is a Wikipedia page on the topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_faking

In general the digital cameras have a more shallow depth of field because they are using lenses that have smaller focal lengths.  Why it is we associate the shallow depth of field with the illusion of a model I do not know.

An article about the film (use Google Chrome and it will translate it for you):

http://www.quesabesde.com/noticias/video-pekin-moscu-transiberiano-transmongoliano-factoria,1_9637

Wikipedia on the Trans Siberian Railway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway

Reds (1981) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082979/

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Notes:

1. Perhaps one of the very few that might compete with the Trans Siberian is the legendary Berlin -Baghdad Railway which played a role in WW1 and is no longer operational.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Railway

Rudyard Kipling, Language Change and the Case of "Gentlemen-Rankers"

[in progress, I just cant get this right]

This is a post about a particular poem by Rudyard Kipling which is the origin of about 14 very recognizable idioms in the English language, yet is also, on its own, somewhat incomprehensible to a modern reader.

Every once in a while I come across the source of a commonly known idiom or saying in its original form or context, and it is usually an amusing surprise. Maybe I knew it came from that (whatever that is, book, play, short story) and maybe I had just forgotten. But then all of a sudden there it is and it is all the more amusing because it is in situ, in its place.

For example, it turns out that "its Greek to me" is a throw-away line from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by Wm. Shakespeare in which a fellow conspirator tells Brutus what happened at the Senate that day. Someone was speaking from Greece. What did he say, asked Brutus. I have no idea, said the conspirator, it was Greek to me.

So in a typical Internet binge that covered the usual related topics of philosophy, optics, cosmology and the concept of echelon in military service (e.g. company, regiment, brigade, division, corps, etc), I came across a poem by Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) where about 26% of the 56 lines are immediately recognizable. Not only are they recognizable, but they are used individually, so its not just one turn of phrase out in the real world, its something like 14 of them, each standing on its own. (Note: "standing on its own" is a good example of an idiom in modern use).

Here is a stanza from the poem in question, called "Gentlemen Rankers"

               We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
                       We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
               And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
                       God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
               Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
                       Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
               And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
                      And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.

I had not realized until now that Rudyard Kipling lived in the 20th century.    He died right before the start of World War 2 in 1936. He was born in Mumbai to British parents in the year our Civil War ended (e.g. 1865). 

And yet the language of his poems seem much more archaic, or at least filled with unrecognizable idiom, then your average late 19th century essay or poem.   For example, Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven was first published in 1845, or 20 years before Kipling was even born, and yet The Raven is very readable today with very few archaic uses that are a problem.   Well, as they say, the US and England are separated by a common language, and apparently this is even more so when you use a lot of idiom and slang.

This fabulous off-center photograph of Kipling is throwing off the symmetry of my blog.  Stop that!

Here is a partial list of such phrases: run his own six horses, and faith he went, he held the ready tin, machinely crammed, sweet to, blowzy, regimental hop, out on the spree (1), cock-a-hoop, Tommy, worsted, blacks your boots, Curse of Reuben, knew the worst, and of course Gentlemen-Rankers, the very title of the poem is incomprehensible, at least to me.

A "Gentleman-Ranker" is a soldier in the British Army who is from the upper classes but finds himself an enlisted soldier (e.g. below his station in life).  This would happen because of misfortune, a mistake, or a flaw in his character.  But in any case, he has the education and manners of a member of the ruling class, but he is living the life of a common soldier.  Hence, a "gentleman" who is a "ranker".

Other idiom in this poem which are still in common use include: something less than kind, black sheep, troop, thrash, down the ladder.

Here are six lines in particular that I found very recognizable but had not realized had come from this poem: "To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned", "Its the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep", "We have done with Hope and Honor, we are lost to Love and Truth", "We're poor little lambs who've lost our way", "And we die, and none can tell Them where we died", "Damned from here to eternity".

Notice the eccentric punctuation, its not mere love and honor we are done with, no, its Love and Honor that we are talking about.

When researching this I came across the following image of Mickey, Donald and Pluto as the Three Musketeers, but some Internet wit had them labeled as "Gentlemen-Rankers", fallen from the upper classes to a mere soldier, but still showing here a certain spirit and elan.

Gentlemen-rankers of a different period?

Read the entire poem here:

http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_gentlemen.htm

The poem has been adapted as a famous drinking song, and numerous other topics in popular culture. It is practically the anthem of those who are in despair about their lives and position in life.

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References

Rudyard Kipling on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudyard_Kipling

Military Rank

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_rank

Marian Reforms of the Roman Army:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_reforms

The Man Who Would Be King (1975) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073341/

Gunga Din (1939) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031398/

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Notes:

1. A spree is an archaic term for cattle raid. Its more common usage is someone who is out on a drinking binge, or spree.

2. For those of you not up on the organization of the Roman Army after the Marian reforms of the 2nd century BC, the cohort was a standard unit of the Roman Legion, each legion had ten cohorts, each cohort was about 500 fighting men.

3. From Here to Eternity (1953) which of course we now realize is short for "Damned from here to eternity".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045793/

Linux Enhanced Precision Firearm Experience: Sniper Rifle Goes Open Source

Now open source operating systems, lasers, image processing and firearms are combined into a single consumer product: Tracking Point has a new rifle that integrates various techniques to increase the accuracy of your average sniper / long range rifle user.

What I want to know is whether this will run Ubuntu and whether one will always have to constantly upgrade the OS or "be left behind". I would hate to update the OS on this thing and have a problem, you know what I mean? Ooops, sorry, didnt mean to shoot you!   Ha ha.  Sorry about your dog.

Whats the upgrade system on this distribution?  Yum ?  Apt ?   How do I know if the file system is reliable, is it journaling or using ZFS ?   Has GLUT been ported to this platform?  What kind of boot loader does it use?   Are we talking LILO or GRUB here?   How can I get to the shell?  I wouldnt want to have a sniper rifle for which I could not get to the shell.

Does Open Source Software have a role to play in homeland security and national defense?  I would hope that surveillance cameras, unmanned drones and personal nuclear weapons would all run Linux and presumably Apache.   That should teach a lesson to those liberal do-gooders who thought that Open Source was going to change the world.

Read about it at Ammoland

http://www.ammoland.com/2013/01/trackingpoint-launches-worlds-first-precision-guided-firearms/#axzz2PJzFgmce

Here is the video which describes what they are doing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvbyAcYjzlc

And of course, each rifle comes with a WIFI hotspot to foster communication between itself and other weapons peripherals.   

Editorial

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/02/a-precision-guided-firearm-powered-by-linux/

The Manufacturer

http://tracking-point.com/

VFX, The World Trade Organization and Actionable Subsidies

[in progress]

[Ok Kids, Global Wahrman will now try to dig into the reality of the subsidies and see what the real numbers are, at least up to a point... so take whatever numbers you read here with a grain of salt...]

In a previous post, I itemized the many factors that have lead to the disaster that is computer animation and visual effects in this country.

See The Train Wreck that is Computer Animation Production: A Postmortem

Some of the issues that have caused this situation are fundamental and are unlikely to change in any significant way. For example, to change the business model of the visual effects facility is a noble goal, and has in a certain sense occurred from time to time, but it is very difficult and usually quite temporary. Nor are we likely to see our government do anything about globalization: our govenment gets off on and profits by impoverishing Americans by sending their work overseas. That isnt going to change.

On the other hand, our government belongs to trade organizations designed to see that such things as subsidies from a government to its local industry do not occur. Of course the reality is that they occur all the time, and as an example of this, see the section below about subsidies in Japan. (1)

For those of you who are not up to date on this, here is a fast review of how the subsidies supposedly works.  If you, the filmmaker spends $1.00 in Canada on making your movie, the Canadian government will write you a check at the beginning of production for $0.60. So if you spend $10,000,000, the government will write you a check for $6,000,000. (3)  And in return you actually have to spend that $10,000,000 on certain things in Canada, and there are some restrictions on these things. But in particular, you can use it to buy visual effects as long as most of the people working on those visual effects are either Canadian citizens, or are residents in Canada eligible to work (easy to arrange), and of course the FX company must be in Canada.

Thats a 60% discount. What producer could resist that? The answer is: none. So they take the work to Canada, which in this case usually means Vancouver. There is a similar deal in England, and the work goes to London. In both cases, Vancouver and London, there is a robust and experienced community of companies and workers who are happy and ready to do the work.

There are a few other wrinkles on this situation. There are special specific case subsidies in New Zealand involving WETA and Peter Jackson. And there are other deals in various parts of the world.

The end result has been for American company after company to be unable to compete and go out of business. From the Orphanage, to Asylum, to Digital Domain, to Rhythm and Hues (2), they have gone out of business and when they did, they cited subsidies as a primary cause.

So what is a subsidy? What exactly defines a subsidy?

According to the World Trade Organization, a subsidy is:

Definition of Subsidy

Unlike the Tokyo Round Subsidies Code, the WTO SCM Agreement contains a definition of the term “subsidy”. The definition contains three basic elements: (i) a financial contribution (ii) by a government or any public body within the territory of a Member (iii) which confers a benefit. All three of these elements must be satisfied in order for a subsidy to exist.

The concept of “financial contribution” was included in the SCM Agreement only after a protracted negotiation. Some Members argued that there could be no subsidy unless there was a charge on the public account. Other Members considered that forms of government intervention that did not involve an expense to the government nevertheless distorted competition and should thus be considered to be subsidies. The SCM Agreement basically adopted the former approach. The Agreement requires a financial contribution and contains a list of the types of measures that represent a financial contribution, e.g., grants, loans, equity infusions, loan guarantees, fiscal incentives, the provision of goods or services, the purchase of goods.

There is a concept known as an "actionable subsidy", and an "actionable subsidy" has what are known as "adverse effects".

Article 5

Adverse Effects

No member should cause, through the use of any subsidy referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 1, adverse effects to the interests of other members, i.e.

(a) injury to the domestic industry of another member,
(b) (...)(c) serious prejudice to the industry of another member.

So now we know what is a subsidy, and furthermore what is an actionable subsidy. And I think that the argument could be made that the subsidies that are described above are actionable. So what happens next? Well, next, you have to convince your government that they wish to discuss this matter with the WTO and work through the dispute process. You as an individual, and a trade group or any non-government organization can not do this. Only governments can do this. And all parties must be signatories of the WTO. Well it turns out that Canada, the UK and the USA are signatories of the WTO.

So next, one contacts the State Department. Perhaps. Or perhaps, one contacts one's elected representative, and they contact the State Department. But what if your elected representative is in the pocket of the Studios, and they like the subsidies? That would be sticky, now wouldn't it?

WTO on Subsidies

http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/24-scm.pdf

The dispute process

http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/disp2_e.htm

____________________________________________________

1. The following is from an introduction of an article in Foreign Affairs about subsidies in Japan. The entire essay can be found at the following link (subscription required).

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/69120/herbert-m-bratter/government-subsidies-in-japan

Here is the introduction to the article:

GOVERNMENT subsidies have been a consistent feature of Japanese practice since the country emerged from the feudal system in the eighteen-sixties. Japan's industrial history is singularly unlike that of other countries in that it is not marked by a policy of "laissez faire." Immediately following the restoration of 1867-8, the government set itself the task of industrializing the country, realizing that for this purpose it would have to convert into capitalists and factory workers a nation of knights and retainers. From the first, therefore, the government has exercised a paternal rôle in Japan's economic development. The result has been to make the Japanese people dependent upon the government to a degree unparalleled in other capitalist countries. "Almost any new industry," says a recent writer,[i] "so long as its promoters had some political friends, could secure exemption from taxation, even if no more direct form of subsidy could be obtained."

In starting modern industries it was the government's intention to turn them over to private management and ownership as soon as possible, retaining only a measure of control. In some cases this was done, but not in all. Not only has the government continued to manufacture steel, woolen cloth, and other articles, but it has reserved as state monopolies the trade in salt, tobacco, camphor and ginseng. For the rest, the "westernization" policy has created mammoth corporations, which -- despite their size -- still look to the government for sustenance. Indeed, the list of interests receiving aid in one form or another covers almost the entire field of Japanese economic life. Banking, industry, agriculture, labor, shipping, and shipbuilding, foreign trade, construction, and domestic commerce, all are in receipt of help; hardly any activity of importance or promise is not clamoring for it.

2.  When a production company goes out of business, it is usually due to a number of factors, not just one.  However, in all the cases listed here, foreign subsidies were recognized and publicly stated to be one of the causes, if not a primary cause, of their demise.

3. Its hard to believe that the subsidy is so high, I admit it.  And I have never verified the numbers, but I am trying to now.   It must be less than the reported 60%, that is just too good, I admit it.

The Train Wreck That is Computer Animation Production: A Postmortem

[Updated 4/15/2013]

There are many different issues affecting the health of the visual effects and related computer animation industries in high-end, e.g. motion picture, television and web production. The reason this situation is so complicated has many origins but not least is that it has been building up now for many years, well over a decade and probably closer to two.

So when the train wreck happens, and people are finally willing to take action or potentially change their behavior to improve things, it is not at all easy to figure out how to make changes that will substantially improve the situation. An ounce of prevention might have avoided a pound of cure, or maybe even a ton of cure, but that is water under the damn dam by now.

But what exactly is this train wreck?   What is it exactly?   I think it is the following things.  That a large number of people, Americans and others,  were encouraged to devote a tremendous amount of energy and time and money to become skilled in this area of computer animation, only to discover that there was no reasonable employment for them that would allow them to live a reasonably secure life and support their families.   And that furthermore, having made this bad choice, that it was in fact too late for them to change direction because their career has been, from the point of view of employment, set.   Thus we have thousands and thousands and thousands of people either impoverished or going from bad company to bad company trying to earn a living.   This human misery is the primary part of the train wreck.  Secondarily, that in the process of creating a new industry, computer based visual effects and computer generated films, we not only wiped out several earlier industries, but because of subsidies and globalization we lost our own industries, and that the American computer animation and visual effects industries no longer exist or are on the verge of being completely eliminated.  And third, that in spite of the great technical advances in 3D, that in fact there is very little demand for those skills outside of certain kinds of animation production, and those who specialized in them, and helped create them, are very likely to never work again.

What led to this situation?  Let me count the ways.  But not everything on the list that follows is of equal weight, and not all of them are bad.  Furthermore, some of them are vague.   Had computer animators organized as a labor group from the beginning, would it have made a big difference?  Would it not in fact have hampered the industry and perhaps kept it from coming into existence?   Quite possibly, but on the other hand, the failure to organize and have a plan in place to deal with the project-nature of the business and have a method for benefits to transcend that is a fundamental mistake.

One more thing.   This is not black and white.  You are going to have to think.  Don't assume I am wrong if you disagree, instead find out more about what I am talking about.  Obviously this is from my point of view.

So cut me some slack, people, and pay attention: I am not doing this for me as much as I am doing this for you. I have at best a fatherly attitude towards the situation. I can't force you not to do drugs and drive drunk, but I can sure as hell make sure you know that you are risking your life when you do so. And since I am one of the people who invented the automobile, to continue our analogy, I feel some responsibility to do so.

Each item below could be at least a paragraph, if not an essay.

The situation has its origins in, among other things:

- subsidies from foreign governments to production companies doing work in their country

- combined with production companies that are self-financed through production and therefore have very low reserves and very tight constraints on what they can do at any one time,
- the labor intensive, highly skilled nature of the work, 

- in an industry that has through competition driven the margin to essentially zero such that a production company can do a tremendous amount of work, spend a lot of money, and end up with almost nothing in the bank when they are done,

- with perceived lower cost of labor in some countries combined with the belief that the labor is a commodity, 

- the belief of the customer that the work itself (VFX and animation) is a commodity and is only differentiated by cost ... in other words that the production companies are not very different from each other, (3)

- the improvement in the enabling technologies that make remote collaboration and remote production possible and the willingness on the part of the customers to use remote production (1)

- the glut in labor resulting from extreme exaggeration of the labor market available and the perceived glamour of the market area due to all the media hype and the encouragement of such events as SIGGRAPH (2)

- the contempt for and dismissal of anyone with experience in production

- the failure of both labor and production companies in this country to make allowances for and set up systems to accommodate the project-nature of the work unlike other aspects of the motion picture industry.

- the failure of labor and production companies to use the political tools at their disposal to see that certain advantages in foreign countries, particularly subsidies, are either matched or eliminated.

- the disinclination of the studios to be involved with and finance the costs of production and R&D

- the boom and bust nature of the business which by definition is going to grow and shrink dramatically based on perceived market conditions. This is true, but different, for visual effects and feature animation, e.g. they have their own cycles of boom and bust separate from each other.

- the specificity of the skills involved: people who do not have work are not qualified to do anything else.

None of the above should be the least bit new to anyone.

Each of the above deserves at least a paragraph if not a paper to describe, define and explain what is meant. If you do not think that a point above applies, then you might want to think again or inquire. Because the fact is, they are all part of the enabling situation here that has led to our train wreck.

For example, many people are calling for labor to organize.  On the one hand I am always in favor of labor organizing to present a united front to management.  In this case, I doubt very much if labor organization, possibly even unionization, would have made a huge difference, but it might have made a minor difference in the following way: (a) there might be a system set up to accomodate some of the continuation of benefits for project oriented people and (b) there might have been more in the area of the political process here: particularly involving the US Govt and foreign subsidies.   I doubt very much if unions would have done much to help improve employment in this country in this case, which is probably what most people would desire or expect from a union.

In order to not be perceived as being so negative (although in fact I am), the following has also happened which is not necessarily bad, in fact, they are very good. Even if they may in some sense contribute to this problem in some sort of ironic way:

- a massive increase in the demand at the high end for computer animation because of the great successes brought about by this technology

- a massive increase in the power of the computation, disk, networking, etc, available at any price.

- a much better set of software that is available more or less off the shelf combined with greatly improved techniques

- a set of software that labor can learn on their own or through experience that makes them valuable to a different production company (e.g. you do not have to train everyone from scratch).

- a vastly increased set of skills that can be called upon in a project (e.g. character animation is both a talent and a craft, and good character animators were not really available early on, certainly not in any quantity).

In the next post we will address the first of these as it is so important to the current train wreck: subsidies by foreign nations.  Click here.

Train Wreck at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_wreck

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1. It used to be the case that the studios would not work with visual effects production companies outside the Los Angeles area.

2. ACM SIGGRAPH is a major offender in this area. The various vendors in the industry are also a part of this hype: they encourage people to go into this field and spend their money and time, but turn their back when people can not get jobs.

3. In other words, the studios and film productions believe that the work is all alike, or close enough, so why not go to the lowest-cost provider?

Tippett Studios Disturbance in the Force

[being rewritten, awkward construction]

There has been another event in the long saga of visual effects employment in this country. (1)

This time it involves Phil Tippett and his Tippett Studios which has laid off about 40% of their staff, roughly 50 people. In an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Jules Roman, CEO and President, predicted that the work was going up north to Canada and that they had to get a project by the end of the year or, the implication was, that was the end of Tippett Studios.

See the article here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tippett-studios-vfx-house-lays-431762#

For those who do not know Phil, he is a brilliant stop motion animator whose studio made the transition from traditional arts to 3D / Computer Animation.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when the first Star Wars came out, the film distinguished itself by showing rare enthusiasm in all its shots. A door would open with a bang. A spaceship was clearly an Empire Ship of the Line such as EE Doc Smith would conceive of it. A bad guy looked bad. A throwaway shot that most people remember is when Chewbacca is playing chess with R2D2 and a little chess piece destroys his opponent which was a stop-motion shot by Tippett.

Phil went up to Marin County to help set up the new ILM for Empire Strikes Back and then went off to run his own production company. Starship Troopers was their first big entry into computer animation and they did a spectacular job, imho.

Here is an interview with Phil from about the time he went up to ILM.

http://starwarsinterviews1.blogspot.com/2010/05/phil-tippett-interview-stop-motion.html

At deGraf/Wahrman we worked with Phil on Robocop II which was an odd film but a pleasure to work on. The screenplay was much better than the film itself for some reason.

Anyway, the producer, Jon Davison, had us collaborate with Phil's company on our 3D talking head of the bad guy, a scanned version of actor Tom Noonan. The computer animation was going to be played back a frame at a time on a laserdisk (thats how long ago this was), on a stop motion character that they were animating.   This would be a modern version of the idea of projecting an image inside a miniature, as one might find with King Kong (1933).

It can difficult sometimes for facilities to work with each other because of the traditional competitiveness of the industry and because so many people in this industry are immature. But not in this case. Everyone was great to work with.

For years now, Tippett Studios was one of the few other VFX companies in N. California besides ILM.

It is the nature of companies like this that they must grow and shrink to meet the production work that they have in-house. And they have survived now, even prospered, for many years, perhaps 20. Their excellence at character animation has always been a strong way for them to distinguish themselves and to get the work that was appropriate for their talents.

The point I am trying to make is this. Although it is normal for production companies to grow and shrink with the work, and even normal for production companies to go out of business after a time (they all do, eventually), losing Tippett would be a major loss of a company known for its excellent character animation, and a place of employment for animators.

Not all computer animation companies and vfx companies are the same. They have different styles, different bodies of work, different cultures. Tippett is a stop-motion animation culture in a computer graphics world. I would hate to lose them, and the vfx community would suffer a loss if they went away much bigger than the mere numbers of employed would indicate.

So lets ask the question. What exactly are the politicians in this state and the US Congress thinking while Canadian and UK subsidies and globalization wipe out the vfx community in this country?

My guess is that they don't care how many unemployed there are or whether the industry goes away as long as the Hollywood studios can save a buck.

Phil Tippett on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0864138/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

King Kong (1933) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024216/

_____________________________________

1. Visual Effects now means computer animation or computer graphics, but it did not used to mean that, of course.

Misc Links

Blogger is broken again, so I am temporarily adding links here for future reference.

www.outsidethebeltway.com
www.futurepundit.com

The Future of Decay: The Abandoned Tunnels of the PA Turnpike

"Always look on the bright side of life" the crucified thief advised Brian as he was nailed to the cross. Even as America declines into impotence and decay, led by corrupt and incompetent leaders, engaged in hideously expensive wars at the behest of morons and torturing the natives, working with diligence to disenfranchise workers, destroy unions, and send jobs to China who have in the last decade executed the largest espionage program in history against us, there are still things to be proud of in America.

As the country declines and collapses the bright side is that infrastructure is abandoned and these fascinating and dangerous artifacts of our former civilization can be repurposed as tourist attractions. From old missile silos, to airports, from secret bases to abandoned tunnels, roads, factories and mills, America gains new potential theme parks and sources of revenue.

America may never rival the great centers of decay such as the former Soviet Union, but it can still hold its own and contribute our own uniquely American tradition of decay, corruption and degradation.

Forget "Tomorrowland" and look to the decaying past to see the future of America.

The first stop on our tour is the abandoned tunnels of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Eastern Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike was an early toll road in this country connecting Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and extending 360 miles across the state, east to west. The turnpike utilized seven abandoned railroad tunnels built in the 1880s. These were dual lane tunnels, one lane in each direction. As time went by, the single lane through the tunnels became a bottleneck and caused major congestion. Either new tunnels needed to be built, or the tunnels themselves bypassed. Of the 7 tunnels, 4 were expanded by building a parallel tunnel to allow for two lanes in each direction, and 3 tunnels were abandoned and a new section of the turnpike built to go around the obstacle rather than through it.

Like the WW2 German Submarine Basers in France these tunnels were too expensive to be demolished, but unlike the submarine bases, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has sold the tunnels and the connecting road and access right of way to a nature conservancy, the Southern Allegheny Conservancy, who has worked to preserve the area. It is working with "Pike2Bike" a group which is working to make part of the abandoned turnpike into a bike path.

Our Host

See thie following video for a tour of the tunnels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If6LlLGL5CM

A web site on the abandoned turnpike:

http://abandonedturnpike.com/

The Pennsylvania Turnpike on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Turnpike

The Abandoned Turnpike on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandoned_Pennsylvania_Turnpike

Ancient History of Visual Effects: R2D2 in CE3K in Fall 1977

For the betterment of my colleagues in the VFX industry and other people interested in the history of this screwed up field of visual effects, I plan to write some snapshots of the industry at various times in the past.   The hope is that this will help document how the industry has wildly changed, why the issues facing us today are both new and old, and why some of those issues are nearly impossible for us to address by ourselves.

It will also be an excuse to discuss trivia from ancient visual effects films so that, as Herodotus says in his famous introduction, the great deeds of the past are not forgotten. (1)

The first period we are going to address are a series of events that occurred in the time frame from about 1976 - 1980, the very dawn of the modern visual effects industry. But specifically, I want to begin our story with a very specific time, a golden time if you will, which would be in roughly August - October 1977.

The following sequence would have been created about that time. It is from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) (aka CE3K) and it confirms a story that has been floating around since the release of the film, that if you looked, you would find that there was an R2D2 somewhere on the mothership in CE3K.

I was showing this sequence to someone who should know better who said how much he had wanted to be part of the visual effects industry at that time because it was so glamourous and so very lucrative.

Lucrative?  Are you kidding me?   But first, lets examine the issues involving R2D2.

This picture is from an approximately 2 second shot as the mothership is first revealing itself to our protagonists, but the scientists haven't noticed it yet. They think they have already had their close encounter, not realizing that all that has happened is that they have met the scout ships. The real event is about to begin. The reveal of the mothership is dramatic and exciting, it is one of the best sequences in the history of visual effects.

The sequence on Youtube is below.  The shot with R2D2 is at approximately 1:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYCBgSRNjk0

The way model shops used to work, in part, was to fabricate new models out of parts that they either created from molds, or carved, or repurposed plastic model parts that were commercially available. Thus they might buy a Revell model of a B29 and use elements from it, suitably painted, as part of a spaceship, or an alien city. This shot with R2D2, was a homage to Star Wars, their competitor, which had come out just a few months before, and probably was from a model that had been released with the film. It could have been sculpted especially for this purpose, these guys would do stuff like that, and I am checking to see if anyone knows.

But consider: the EEG (Entertainment Effects Group) was in full production on finishing CE3K, they were presumably also ramping up on the Star Trek: The Motion Picture disaster. ILM was dead, they had finished their movie, it was a success, everyone was laid off, and George was negotiating with people about coming up to Marin County and creating a new ILM for the 2nd (now the 5th) Star Wars movie. Apogee might have been formed but if so, it had just started. Robert Abel was doing 7UP commericials during one of their most creative periods having survived the Star Trek disaster. Bladerunner was in the distant future. Tron was in the future.

So, how many people were working, and where, for what companies and what were they being paid?

Unless you were there, I think you will be very surprised.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075860/

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1. For Herodotus, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histories_(Herodotus)

Planetary Science and the Haiku

According to the online website of the Smithsonian Magazine, the 2013 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference has taken to publishing a version of the formal Japanese poetic form haiku to summarize each of their papers. The latest 2013 conference, URL above, had thirty-two such haiku published. 

The specific form of the haiku that they are using is the 5-7-5 form: three lines total, the first line has 5 syllables, the second 7 syllables, and the third line 5 syllables.

Now it turns out that a haiku is actually much more than just these simple rules.  But it is probably too much to ask planetary scientists to worry too much about such niceties and we should just applaud their efforts to find a pithy summary of their published work.  

Here are the four haiku that the author of the article particularly liked.  The article goes into much more detail about what the paper was about.  See the complete article about the conference here.

What a haiku is supposed to look like  

The haiku for a paper on the orbits of Phobos and Deimos, moons of Mars, was

        Two moons in the sky
        wandering by the Sun’s face
        their orbits constrained.


For a paper on the fate of benzene observed in a lake on Titan, a moon of Saturn, we have:

        Tiny little rings
        Drifting in a Titan lake
        Fade away slowly.

On the issue of the content of a meteorite, and whether it contained exotic materials, we have:

        Oh, “megachondrule”
        We were sadly mistaken
        You are impact melt.

Finally, a paper analyzing the data from an old Viking experiment to see if they could detect atmospheric conditions on Mars, has

        Whispers from the past
        Viking mostly felt the wind
        Let’s all look closer.

We have previously discussed haiku on Global Wahrman here:

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2012/08/haiku-about-rodney-king.html