I shot this film over 4 trips to NYC 2011-2012. The time-lapse sequences you see here were made (mostly) from hundreds of thousands of still images. A Canon 7D and T3i were the main cameras, with backup from a couple of older Nikon Coolpix 5000 point and shooters. A few clips are sped-up video.
Many thanks to the generosity of the musician/composer who allowed his great celtic track “Sawjig” to be used;
Ben Rusch aka Jasmine Brunch benrusch.com jasminebrunch.com
Brilliant little film about a wonderfully creative guy, a war refugee, who developed a wind-powered device that can find and detonate anti-personnel mines. It’s part of the GE-sponsored FOCUS/FORWARD film contest:
MINE KAFON is a Finalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition and is in the running to become the $100,000 Grand Prize Winner. It could also be named an Audience Favorite if it’s among the ten that receives the most votes. If you love it, vote for it. Click on the VOTE button in the top right corner of the video player. Note that voting may not be available on all mobile platforms, and browser cookies must be enabled to vote.
A short documentary portrait on a designer who has created a low cost solution to landmine clearance.
Check out his website: massoudhassani.com
or for other films by us at Ardent Film Trust: ardentfilm.org
DIRECTOR
Callum Cooper
DOP
Michael Latham
CAMERA
Michael Latham
Mahmud Hassani
Callum Cooper
SLOW MOTION CAMERA
Ed Edwards
EDITOR
Anna Meller
COLOR GRADER
Chris Teeder
SOUND MIXER AND DESIGNER
Sandy Milne
TITLE DESIGNER
Ray O’Meara
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Bobby Kapur
PRODUCERS
Alicia Brown
Michael Latham
Callum Cooper
THANKS
Lucie Kalmar
Slowmo High Speed
Optimism Films
The RNLA explosive ordnance disposal service
Copyright Ardent Film Trust 2012
It’s enough to make an old typewriter guy drive to Arizona, for more than the air (with a stop in Albuquerque at the Owl Cafe for an Owl burger, of course).
Polymath reporter Bill Geist from CBS News reported this piece for Sunday Morning, in February, featuring Mesa Typewriter Exchange in Arizona, and more:
Teacher and education blogs were all atwitter — and Twitter was all ablog, I suppose you could say — about the opening this past weekend of the movie “Won’t Back Down.”
“Parent trigger” laws bubble up in discussion a lot recently — laws that allow a group of parents to petition a school district, or the state, and say that they want to take over a local school. Conservatives and other anti-teacher groups promote these laws as a means of education reform. Generally, in the few cases in which a school is taken over by parents, teachers and local administrators are fired, and the school operates much like a charter school.
“Won’t Back Down” professes to be “based on a true story.” I am reminded that both “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” also professed to be based on a true story — the same story, in fact. I’ve written about this before – based on a true story, except not in Texas, no chainsaw, no massacre, nor was there a hotel and a shower. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more carefully based on a true story — there is a Mississippi River; or The Bald Soprano — there are bald people, and there are sopranos. But I digress.
The film has a cast of some great star power — Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter. It was produced by the documentary group that also produced Al Gore‘s “Inconvenient Truth,” and then moved to the popular but wildly polemical “Waiting for Superman,” another hit on teachers. They should have stopped with that one, instead of raising the ante (raising the “anti?”).
Audiences don’t like films that cast teachers as villains, it would appear.
(Reuters) – Education reform film “Won’t Back Down” opened Friday to terrible reviews – and high hopes from activists who expect the movie to inspire parents everywhere to demand big changes in public schools.
The drama stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a spirited mother who teams up with a passionate teacher to seize control of their failing neighborhood school, over the opposition of a self-serving teachers union.
Reviewers called it trite and dull, but education reformers on both the left and right have hailed the film as a potential game-changer that could aid their fight to weaken teachers’ unions and inject more competition into public education.
Even an Oscar-caliber leading cast couldn’t save this one. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest film “Won’t Back Down,” also starring Viola Davis and Holly Hunter, set the record this past weekend for the worst opening of a film that appeared in more than 2,500 theaters, making a mere $2.6 million [via Box Office Mojo].
Yes, all three of these former Oscar nominees — Hunter having won a golden statuette in 1994 for “The Piano” — now have a pretty bad blemish on their resume. But they aren’t to blame, say industry watchers, who are reacting to the film with a resounding face palm. “‘Won’t Back Down’ wore the dunce cap last weekend, mostly because its marketing was almost non-existent,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.
“Record for the worst opening?” Ouch.
Back to the “based on a true story” issue: We may understand why the screenwriter and director of the first Texas Chainsaw movie, Tobe Hooper took the liberties he did to add elements to the story. He knew the original story of a disturbed man in Wisconsin who was jailed for corpse mutilation. He knew that was the foundation for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” How to update it, to make the story bankable from the box office? Move it to Texas, add a chainsaw with all its terrifying whine, and add in the standard teenager murder story elements; maybe put a mask on the villain/evil beast, to make it more terrifying — there is great terror in being pursued by nameless, faceless folk as Orwell showed us. Both Hitchcock and Hooper fully understood that the real, dull story, wasn’t something people would pay to sit through while eating grossly-overpriced popcorn.
“Won’t Back Down” suffered from sticking too close to the facts. If you’re going to claim the antagonist is psycho, you have to give them a big butcher’s knife or a chainsaw, and a costume, in order to make really, really scary.
Teachers just are not that scary in real life. Teachers are not the villains, in real life.
National Review’s Rich Lowry likes the movie because it pokes unions in the eye — it’s all about crushing unions, isn’t it, Rich? (Most teachers not unionized, many “unions” banned from collective bargaining.) (via Oregonian) Lowry: ” . . .a film featuring a hooker with a heart of gold, or pretty much any romantic comedy.” Teacher bashing as romantic comedy?
From the Deseret News: “Ben Lomond Peak towers above Ogden (Utah). The mountain is believed to have inspired the Paramount movie logo, below, in use since 1914. (Ravell Call, Deseret News)
It’s none of the above because one of Hollywood’s most familiar images — the famous Paramount Pictures logo — was inspired by Weber County’s Ben Lomond Peak.
As such, Ben Lomond — not even the highest summit in Weber County — may be the most famous mountain in the Beehive State.
The peak is given credit for prompting creation of the majestic but fictional mountain in the popular Paramount design, based on two histories of the motion-picture company.
According to Leslie Halliwell’s “Mountain of Dreams,” a biography of Paramount, founder William Hodkinson grew up in Ogden and the logo was “a memory of childhood in his home state of Utah.”
Compare it to the Paramount Pictures logo now:
Paramount Pictures logo
Teachers may want to hustle over to the Deseret News site to capture the story for classroom use — the online version includes a short set of slides of a hike to the top of the peak (it’s a climb most reasonably healthy people can make in a day – “reasonably healthy” to include acclimated to the altitude).
What other geographic features have become commercial logos? How do images of geography affect our culture?
For my money, I still like Timpanogos better, even if the Osmonds did use it.
This image of Mt. Ben Lomond looks more like the Paramount logo, some might say.
Dr. Bumsted found this in her searches, on MySpace of all places, and passed it along for its use of typewriters . . .
Heck, it’s a nice little piece of art all on its own. It’s fun to watch Jim Henson without any muppets. It’s eerie, too — Henson argues in film that time is rather precious, and life often too short. His time was precious, and his life was cut way too short, especially for fans of Kermit and The Muppet Show.
This description comes from the MySpace site of “Charlie,” where Dr. Bumsted found it.
Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this nine-minute, experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson-and starred Jim Henson! Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, Time Piece enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for outstanding short subject.
The full film can be obtained from iTunes, now – in better fidelity, I’d imagine.
From Jim Henson’s 1966 Academy Award nominated short film. Henson, as the writer/producer/director/star, created the experimental short about the effect of time keeping on us all. The full video is available on iTunes here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/time-piece/id283450519?ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Disney artists Joe Lanzisero and Tim Kirk drew this tribute of Mickey Mouse consoling Kermit the Frog, which appeared in the Summer 1990 issue of WD Eye, Walt Disney Imagineering’s employee magazine. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Why does time-lapse photography fascinate me so? It reveals changes over time we too often miss, or don’t stop to appreciate.
Here’s an excerpt from a 1975 film, set to music recently released. Watch closely, you’ll see the shadows of the World Trade Center passing over New York City.
Described at Youtube:
A music video for the gorgeous track “Exercise #3 (Building) by CFCF (Mike Silver). Song is from his upcoming EP titled “Exercises,” which arrives on April 24th via Paper Bag Records.
Footage is from the 1975 short film “Organism,” by Hilary Harris.
Short Wikipedia listing for Hilary Harris; geography and AP human geography teachers may especially appreciate some of Harris’s work, including Highway from 1958, and the 1962 Academy Award Winner Seaward the Great Ships
In the American Film Institute‘s polling to find the greatest hero in the movies, Atticus Finch finished first. Interesting that a class from Arlington, Virginia’s Washington-Lee High School found one of the best venues anywhere to watch the film to study it.
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ranks 25th on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movies list of greatest American films, and AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest hero in this history of American film when it announced its AFI’s 100 Years…100 Heroes and Villains list in 2003. AFI also recognized the film for its #1 ranking of Best Courtroom Dramas in AFI’s 10 Top 10 list and its #2 ranking on AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheers America’s Most Inspiring Films list, just behind IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. The film, which premiered in Los Angeles on Christmas day in 1962 and opened wide in 1963, was directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula. [Screenplay was by the great Texas playwright Horton Foote.]
From the White House YouTube site:
President Obama hosted a film screening of To Kill a Mockingbird in the Family Theater at The White House to commemorate its 50th anniversary with guests including local students from Washington-Lee High School, Mary Badham Wilt, the actress who played Scout, and Veronique Peck, widow of Gregory Peck who played Atticus Finch. The President also acknowledged the American Film Institute for their commitment to the fine arts and NBC Universal and USA Network for their efforts to commemorate this important film.
What venues could one use in Dallas? Check with the Sixth Floor Museum, to see if their 7th floor facility is available. Check to see if there is a room available at the Earl Cabell Federal Building, or the George L. Allen Court building. The old, renovated Texas Theater on Jefferson Boulevard might cut a deal. Surely there is a room big enough at the Belo Mansion, the home of the Dallas Bar Association — if it’s not totally booked up for other events. With the Horton Foote connection, perhaps the Wyly Theater could find a rehearsal room to throw up a screen. Odds are pretty good you could get an attorney to come talk law and civil rights at any of those locations.
How could a teacher sneak a viewing of this movie into the curriculum? Isn’t it tragic that we have to sneak in great classics?
When Bugs Bunny earned the sobriquet, “Oscar-winning rabbit,” there was a good chance that a good cartoon nominated for an Academy Award would be shown at a movie in your neighborhood. In the past two decades, it has grated on me that so many of the Oscar-nominated short subjects, documentaries and cartoons could not be seen.
If you watched the Oscar broadcast, you may have been tantalized as I was by the view of the “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lesmore,” which ended up winning the award for Best Animated Short Film
Wonder of wonders: The makers of the piece put it up on YouTube, so you and I can see it. God bless “Conceptual designer Brandon Oldenburg and children’s book author/illustrator William Joyce” for doing that, and may they have much more success with similar projects, even and especially out of their New Orleans, hurricane-wracked studio.
I do love the tops of mountains, and I wish I could climb them. Fortunately, there are cameras, people who know how to use them, and people who know how to edit film to tell a story, and put us all in awe.
Plus, living among us are people brave enough and skilled enough to get to the tops of those mountains, people who make the filming possible and worthwhile.
In summer 2010, Lorna Illingworth, Madaleine Sorkin and I spent 25 days in the Cirque of the Unclimbables, Northwest Territories, Canada. Our goal was to free climb the entire 1963 Original Route on the sheer 2000′ Southeast Face of Proboscis, and grants from the American Alpine Club encouraged us to document the adventure. The result: Women at Work (VI 5.12 R).
Geography: Off the Nahanni River, now in the expanded Nahanni National Park, in the Northwest Territories near the border with the Yukon Territory — see maps below.
In May of 2010, Los Angeles-based filmmakers Christopher Lockett and Gary Nicholson read an article on Wired.com about “The Last Generation Of Typewriter Repairmen.” Casual conversation over coffee about the importance of the typewriter in world history eventually turned toward the inevitable conclusion that “this would make a good documentary.”
Lockett and Nicholson agreed that the passing of the typewriter, a portable printing press that moved the world’s communication technology from pen and ink to the QWERTY keyboards on today’s computers, along with the highly skilled technicians who service them, should be documented.
But as so often happens in documentaries, a funny thing happened on the way… to paraphrase Mark Twain, news of the typewriter’s death is greatly exaggerated. Three typewriter repairmen the filmmakers have interviewed all agree that their business is better than it has been in years.
Perhaps it is a reaction to the plugged in existence of today’s 24/7 communications world. Perhaps it is mere nostalgia and kitsch. Perhaps it is an admiration for the elegance of design and the value of time-tested workmanship. And for some, like typewriter collector Steve Soboroff, it is the appeal of owning machines on which American writers like Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, Ray Bradbury, John Updike and Jack London typed some of their finest work. (He also owns typewriters once owned by George Bernard Shaw and John Lennon)
But one thing is certain, from the Typosphere – an online community of bloggers who sometimes meet up for “Type-In” events, to vintage stores in fashionable neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, Portland and Philadelphia, to noted typewriter collector Tom Hanks, to teachers using typewriters to encourage young writers to focus their thoughts without benefit of a delete key – if the typewriter is on the way out, it’s going out with more appreciation that it’s seen in years.
So far, the filmmakers have documented two Type-in events, (Los Angeles and Phoenix, AZ) have interviewed three typewriter repairmen, one noted typewriter collector and already have arranged to interview at least one Hollywood screenwriter who still uses a typewriter. They have also interviewed journalists, authors, teachers, enthusiasts and people who use typewriters in their personal and professional life.
But there are other novelists, screenwriters and enthusiasts out there. And there are so many more typewriters they’d like to feature – typewriters that produced some of the finest works of 20th Century American literature. They have also interviewed technicians with the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office who repair the typewriters the department still uses. They are handy for typing forms in triplicate and for such communications requiring a personal touch as letters of condolence.
Along with dozens of photographically gorgeous typewriters lovingly restored by repairmen Ruben Flores, Ermanno Manzorati and Bill Wahl, the filmmakers have interviewed Darryl Rehr, the author of the definitive book “Collecting Antique Typewriters” and an artist whose work features typewriters.
All of which is currently beyond the filmmakers’ financial grasp. Travel isn’t cheap. In terms of technical skills and gear, the filmmakers are covered. Lockett holds an MFA in Cinematography from the American Film Institute and his credits include TV shows for every major TV network and most cable networks, indie features and PBS documentaries. Nicholson holds a BFA in Motion Pictures and Television from the Academy of Art University and his producing credits include indie features, Broadway, and music. The team is shooting on Canon 7D and 60D DLSRs and editing in 1920 x 1080 full HD on Final Cut Pro and recording sound digitally on a Zoom H4N.
The Typewriter (In The 21st Century) – if the typewriter didn’t exist, the filmmakers couldn’t have typed this. And you probably wouldn’t be reading it on a computer screen. It’s that important.
The film will feature people who demonstrate much greater fanatacism towards typewriters than I do.
Northern Light Productions made the film for the “Canyon Visitor Education Center in Yellowstone National Park. The film offers a compelling overview of the ‘big picture’ geology that has shaped and continues to influence Yellowstone and its ecosystem.”
Big picture geology? How about making this film available to schools to talk about geology, geography, and history?
Yellowstone National Park annually gets about three million visitors. Yellowstone is one of those places that ever American should see — but at that rate, it would be more than 100 years before everybody gets there.
We need good, beautifully shot, well-produced, interesting films on American landmarks in the classroom.
How do we get this one freed for America’s kids, Yellowstone Park?
RT @JenGranholm: On 30th anniversary of Sally Ride's Historic Journey, NASA selects a record number of female astronaut candidates http://t…Splashed: 9 hours ago
RT @JenGranholm: You cannot be what you cannot see. Thank you to Sally Ride for inspiring this new generation of female astronauts. http://…Splashed: 9 hours ago
RT @JenGranholm: This just in: added benefit of immigration reform -- it reduces the federal deficit by $175 B, per CBO, b/c more ppl in la…Splashed: 9 hours ago
@GregAbbott_TX Sylvan Learning Centers are not public schools, unaffected by CSCOPE -- why were they quoted in the story?Splashed: 9 hours ago
@GregAbbott_TX Can you name a teacher who celebrated the end of CSCOPE's lesson planning aids? There may be some, but I can't find 'em.Splashed: 9 hours ago
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Posted by Ed Darrell 
