2/19/15

Revere Movie Cameras - Watching the kids.

Who doesn't like going to the beach to film children in bathing suits? Nobody, that's who doesn't! Revere wants to help you capture the moment on your next beach holiday.



Oh, wait. Those are his own kids. Well, that's okay too. Back in 1948, they didn't have to worry about anybody misinterpreting the photo in this ad. To be sure, our century did not invent pedophile sickos. They've always existed, but among the readership of The Saturday Evening Post, this notion was inconceivable.

So, thanks, 24-hour news cycle, for making sure that we think of perverts first and parents second!

Maybe you're still pure of heart and mind. Maybe you're having trouble seeing this ad in a sinister light. Well, that's what the Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Squad is here for. Without putting too fine a point on it, we have managed to enhance this ad so that even the most puritanical zealot can view this ad the way we view it.



There, isn't that better? I mean... isn't that much much worse? Unless you're a monster, you'll now feel the need to have several showers. You're welcome!



3 comments:

Jim D. said...

Great work on the illustration! For that kind of work, "gimp" is more aptly-named than "photoshop."

When I was about 12 my dad let me use an old Revere 8mm like the one Mr. Peeper is using, only with a shorter lens. That thing on the side that looks like a dial is actually a flip-up lever that you use to wind the camera! - - it was spring-driven, but the spring only gave you about 12 seconds of propulsion, so you had to make, shall we say, creative compromises. On the other hand, I seem to remember that if you pushed the shutter switch away from you instead of pulling it towards you, it would expose one frame at a time - - so you could do stop motion.

Wow, all the movies I made back in those days! If only I had been able to make them with film in the camera . . .

Before you start harshing on the Revere for being wind-up, when I was in high school I graduated to a 16mm Bolex that was being sold by a local TV station that had used it for location shots, and it was also wind-up, though you could go almost 30 seconds on a winding!

Dang, this qualifies as an episode of old-timer's memory prolapse, where the contents of my childhood leak out into public where everyone can see them. How humiliating . . . at least I didn't include such standard lines as " . . . back in those days we made our OWN fun!"

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Thanks for the critical infodump, Jim! Though I've never owned a movie camera like the Revere, I am old enough to know that the flappy deal on the side is for winding it. Batteries were not yet good enough for this application yet in 1960, so it had to be springs. Twelve seconds, though? That's some feeble run-time.

It should be noted that, in our enhanced version, I made his lens longer - something like a 200mm telephoto - because obviously he's hiding a long way off. Maybe our Photoshop agility snookered you?

The grass was made in Corel Painter, actually. I had it lying around in a layer of a file from an old job where I painted a prairie scene. Painter has nicer brushes than PS, IMO. I have a brush I made just for painting grass. It's super pressure sensitive, tapering something like 1100% with the full range of pressure. Painter also lets you randomize the color of each bristle in the brush by an adjustable amount, too, so the blades get this nice variable streakiness to them than keeps them from looking too flat.

There. See what you've done? You made me infodump! Thanks for reading, Jim!

[-Mgmt.]

Jim D. said...

Yes, totally snookered by your lens-enhancement! Well-played, Phil!

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