DAI 227 Week 12

1)      What was the name of the film made by Edwin S Porter that made use of a double-exposure to show a train window view of passing landscape?

The name of the film was The Great Train Robbery.

2)      Who invented the traveling matte shot in 1916?

Frank Williams invented the traveling matte shot in 1916.

3)      How many weeks did it take to animate the main character in 1933’s KING KONG?

It took 55 weeks to animate the 1933 King Kong.

4)       Which film made use of the ‘slit scan’ process in the 1960s?
The film 2001:A Space Odyssey (1968) by Kubrick used the ‘slit scan’ process.

5)       In his essay “Industrial Memory” theorist Mark Dery argues that the silver fluid T1000 cyborg character represents a ‘masculine recoil’ – but from what?

Mark Dery argues that the silver fluid is ‘masculine recoil’ from what Springer calls the “feminization of electronic technology.” The muscular cyborg imagery asserts the dominance of a phallic metaphor for technology i.e. female genitals, which are commonly considered to be concealed, passive, and internal, like the workings of a computer.

6)       Tim Recuber in his essay “Immersion Cinema” describes the key idea – that of immersion cinema itself – what is it? What makes it unique?
Immersion Cinema represents a new set of technological and aesthetic criteria in which sensory experience and the physical immersion of the spectator within the medium is important. It is unique because it creates physical and special experiences for the viewer to make them feel as if they are actually there in the picture they are viewing.

7)       In the special effects history links, in the Time magazine history of special effects, there is a description of ‘motion control’ cameras developed for “Star Wars” in the 1970s. What is motion control?(1 paragraph)
Motion control refers to the Dykstraflex motion-control system (named after special-effects supervisor John Dykstra) that is hooked up to a computer and issues a complicated series of movements to a camera. I allows filmmakers to create new shots that have never been done before.

8)       Out of the 14 minutes of Jurassic Park’s dinosaur footage, how many minutes were computer generated imagery or CGI?

Only four minutes were computer graphics.

9)      In the ‘denofgeek’ website, what is the name of the film that features an army of sword fighting skeletons, made in 1963?

The film that features an army of sword fighting skeletons is Jason and the Argonauts.

10)   In the ‘denofgeek’ site, which 2005 film used a special effects shot to sell the idea of a remake of a famous science fiction story to Steven Spielberg?

The film that used special effects to sell Steven Speilberg’s remake was War of the Worlds.