King George V in procession with Queen Mary during the 1911 Durbar by Fortunino Matania.
Matania was a member of the press and knew that he would not get anywhere near the Imperial couple during their procession. He got his hands on an Army uniform and, in disguise, stood at attention and watched as George and Mary passed by in front of him. Later, he painted this picture entirely from memory.
Made in 1922 while Starewicz was in Paris, this film (also known as “The Frogs who Wanted a King”) is a fable in the best Aesop tradition… the moral: Be careful what you ask for… you might get it!
The Frogs of Frogland think they need a king… they beg Jupiter (their human god?) to send them one. First, he sends a Wooden King. The frogs realize the Wooden King doesn’t do anything (he can just barely roll his eyes…), so they ask Jupiter for “a better King”.
Jupiter complies… he sends a Stork King. Storks, of course, eat frogs.
Too late, the Frogs realize the error of their ways. They plead for help from Jupiter, while hiding underwater (This is a technically interesting scene… the frog puppets seem to be in an aquarium, but the bubbles flowing through the aquarium move in sync with their speech… it doesn’t look like stop-motion, in other words. He may have used puppets on “rods” for this).
Jupiter is now irritated beyond belief, and “Gives ‘em Thunder” (actually lightning). These naughty frogs won’t bother anyone ever again.
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The frog puppets, and some of Starewicz’ others, were recently on display in the Museum of the Moving Image in London and the NY MoMA They are also seen in the Starewicz films “Nose to the Wind” and “Winter Carousel”.
This film makes a brief appearance in the 1996 major motion picture “BASQUIAT”. Although we don’t see enough of “Frogland” in this film, it is quite relevant…
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SOURCE :
http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/STARE/stare3.htm
LINK :
http://cosmonine.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/the-bug-trainer/
Edison 1903 – Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
This very early silent era stop-motion film was made by Władysław Starewicz in imperial Russia in 1912. He used real insects to create the story. In the story the beetle and his wife both show their infidelity. The beetle while on a business trip goes to a nightclub and picks up a mistress, the dragonfly. While at the nightclub the beetle angers the grasshopper who also wanted to take out the dragonfly. So when the beetle goes back to the motel with the dragonfly the grasshopper follows and gets his revenge by recording them on camera kissing.
Meanwhile back at the beetle residence the wife beetle also entertains a male friend who is also a grasshopper. The husband beetle gets home just after the wife kisses her grasshopper “friend.” Quickly the grasshopper goes up the chimney and the wife kisses her husband hello. But he is unhappy when he sees the hat and painting of another man in his den. He breaks the painting over his wifes head.
Later they appear to have reconciled as the go to see a film. But the camera man is the grasshopper from earlier that filmed the beetle and his mistress. He plays his film for the crowd and Mr. and Mrs. Beetle. Angered Mrs. Beetle hits Mr. Beetle with an umbrella and in the ensuing chaos the theatre gets wrecked and Mr. Beetle attacks the grasshopper. At the end of the film Mr. and Mrs. Beetle appear to be in jail.
Moral of the story: Don’t cheat on your spouse it will only come back to haunt you!
| Director: Wong Kar Wai
| Production: Jet Tone Productions
| Number of VFX shots: 512
Credits
| Music: “La horse” / Serge Gainsbourg – J.C Vannier
| Montage by Charles Labriet
VFX Production Notes
| http://buf.com/visual_effects.php?display=text&id=1053&year=2013
http://ericpare.com – http://timecodelab.com
*** New Documentary film about the project: http://lightspin.ericpare.com/documentary ***
LightSpin is an experimental photography and art project that finds its source in a unique lightpainting technique. For this project, ten performers improvised contemporary dance movements at the center of a ring on which 24 cameras were mounted. Their brief dances were carried out in pitch darkness, light being aimed at the subjects as to reveal their shapes and movements, thus capturing their passage in a defined space. Pushing the exploration even further, the final result of this project becomes a fully animated, 360-degree representation of movements! Viewed and shared on the Web, the LightSpin project is launched as a world premiere in honor of the International Dance Day.
Dancers: Emmanuelle Bourassa Beaudoin, Dylan Crossman, Paul-André Fortier, Margie Gillis, Kim Henry, Cori Kresge, Merryn Kritzinger, Leon Kupferschmid, Daphnée Laurendeau, Simon-Xavier Lefebvre, Louis-Elyan Martin, Alex Morin, Coralie Muroni, Erin Poole, Lucie Vigneault, Michael Watts
Music: It’s Time by Jules Bromley
Team
Nicolas Foisy, Stéphane Hoareau, David Gaudet, Jeremy Lloubes, Jean-François Sarrazin
LightSpin, from the creators of The http://24×360.com Project.
BTS: http://lightspin.ericpare.com/documentary
A Spanish naval ensign, captured from the 74-gun warship ‘San Ildefonso’ by the British warship ‘Defence’ during the Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October, 1805. The ensign was displayed at Nelson’s funeral service in St. Paul’s Cathedral; it is currently housed at the National Maritime Museum.
Find more of my work here: http://www.mikeolbinski.com
It took four years but I finally got it.
A rotating supercell. And not just a rotating supercell, but one with insane structure and amazing movement.
I’ve been visiting the Central Plains since 2010. Usually it’s just for a day, or three, or two…but it took until the fourth attempt to actually find what I’d been looking for. And boy did we find it.
No, there was no tornado. But that’s not really what I was after. I’m from Arizona. We don’t get structure like this. Clouds that rotate and look like alien spacecraft hanging over the Earth.
We chased this storm from the wrong side (north) and it took us going through hail and torrential rains to burst through on the south side. And when we did…this monster cloud was hanging over Texas and rotating like something out of Close Encounters.
The timelapse was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II with a Rokinon 14mm 2.8 lens. It’s broken up into four parts. The first section ends because it started pouring on us. We should have been further south when we started filming but you never know how long these things will last, so I started the timelapse as soon as I could.
One thing to note early on in the first part is the way the rain is coming down on the right and actually being sucked back into the rotation. Amazing.
A few miles south is where part two picks up. And I didn’t realize how fast it was moving south, so part three is just me panning the camera to the left. During that third part you can see dust along the cornfield being pulled into the storm as well…part of the strong inflow.
The final part is when the storm had started dying out and we shot lightning as it passed over us.
Between the third and fourth portions we drove through Booker, Texas where tornado sirens were going off…it was creepy as all heck. And intense.
I hope you enjoy this. Once thing I’ve learned about timelapsing is that I always wish it would be longer or wouldn’t end. I wish I had been south and been able to record this storm come at me for 45 minutes.
But I love it the way it is. I wasn’t ever certain I’d see structure like this even though it’s been such a goal of mine. But we did it.
And by we, I mean myself and my buddy Andy Hoeland, who knows his crap and got us into position so we could chase this storm. Without him along I don’t know if I get this timelapse.
