Upload trouble.

Blogger seems to be having some trouble uploading images. Post is ready to go up as soon as this starts working again. Check back Soon!

Multiplane Camera - 3D, the good way.

On January 25th, 1947, the English magazine Picture Post ran an article on Song of the South, Disney's most embarrassing release. It's a movie that Mickey and Co. would love to pretend never happened, due to it's racist content. You can't buy it or see it on YouTube.

That's as may be, but the article also features a pretty good photograph of Disney's (Meaning they owned one, but not that they invented it.) multiplane camera.

A multiplane camera is a massive apparatus designed to make very fancy cartoons, and to break the spirits of men. It is huge and complex, with several planes of animation painted on transparent layers, so that when the camera looks down through these layers, the camera's depth of focus creates the illusion of depth. Characters can be in focus, while other layers of the animation are out of focus.

You've seen the results of this type of camera if you've seen Cinderella, or Popeye Meets Sinbad the Sailor (1936),my personal multiplane favorite. Although not the exact same machine as a conventional multiplane camera, Max Fleischer's setback camera used miniature three dimensional sets and 2D animation cels to create a similar illusion.

 This kind of 3D works for me in a way that the Avatar kind doesn't. I don't like wearing the glasses. The illusion works some of the time, and when it doesn't, it just gives me a headache. I much more enjoy the illusion of watching a miniature world moving on a table top than the electronic illusion of being in a giant 3D world.

So who brought up miniatures? Well, exaggerated depth of field is what you get when you're shooting with a macro lens. Long story short, when the lens is focused on something very close, the background becomes very blurry, as well as anything that manages to squeeze between the lens and the subject matter. On your point-and-shoot camera, it's the little tulip icon, and it makes all your tiny stuff seem magical.
An interesting equivalent (because I like them for the same reason) is tilt-shift photography. Basically, this is the technique of using a special lens to make real-world scenes look like a tabletop miniature. A tilt-shift lens is really intended to take pictures of things without perspective distortions. But, if you use it wrong (right!), you can make big stuff look tiny. Hooray!

Or... you can fake it in a computer and get similar (really similar) results. There are lots of tutorials on the web that'll show how to do it yourself. The trick is choosing a photograph that is suited to the effect, like scenes shot from a distance and above, like you're looking down on a model. I recommend searching YouTube for some tilt shift videos.

If I wanted to read into my preference for tilt shift versus Avatar-type 3D, I may deduce that I insist on feeling huge, rather than feeling like I'm in a giant world. I say I just like train sets, and I don't like having headaches.

THIS Button? - Trudy and Todd.

Joke #1 - "So, if I press THIS button, the east coast will be ash and rubble? THIS little button? This teeeesny little button? Are you sure, Todd? It doesn't look... *ACHOO!*"

Joke #2 - Todd could practically hear the blood pulsing through Trudy's veins. His hands trembled. The hunger, the need that drove all his kind to such acts of violence was calling out to him from millions of tiny capillaries right there, only inches from his face. Just one quick nip and... NO! he mustn't! Ne loved her. he had to be strong. "Yes, THAT button will make everybody in Russia explode, darling."

Joke #3 - "When words come out of THIS hole in your face, Todd Darling, my brain goes 'LA la la la laaaaaa la la la la dee dummmm.'"

Joke #4 - "SOMEone smells like artichokes and pudding. Know who, Todd? It's yyyyyyyyyyyyyYOU! Now come here and give me summa dat pudding!"

Joke #5 - "Oh! You startled me, Todd darling! I was just about to have a coffee break, but first I need to push this button and blow the Chinese sub out of the water. You'll never guess what Nora had stuck to her lip today!..."

Joke #6 - "Toddy, can you guess which one of these tanks has chlorine gas in it, darling? Breathe one and see. If you pick wrong, YOU'RE buying dinner!"

Joke #7 - "No! Don't press that button! I was saving that button for my other girlfrien-! Oooops!"

Joke #8 - "Awww, has someone been curing cancer while I was away at beauty school? Todd, you know I don't like it when you put your work before me."

***Commenter jokes will be added to the post***

Joke #9 (Thanks Dave) - In the home of tomorrow, every room will have a built-in adultery detector!

Joke #10 (Thanks Other Phil) - It had never occurred to Todd that the elusive clitoris might not actually be ON a woman's body, but could be found on something as mundane as a laboratory control panel. The fellas were not going to believe this.

Joke #11 (Thanks Dave) - "I want to go to this planet!"
"Um... dear, the solar system map is a little further to your right."


Well joked, gentlemen!
-ed.

Celotex - Keeps Steve Allen quiet

When we last left Steve Allen, he was promoting Wurlitzer electric pianos. He won some grudging respect despite the fact that he seemed a little prissy and a lot nerdy. Now he wants us to buy Celotex ceiling tiles in 1958, and he's selling them by showing us his super fantastic pad. Goddamn you, Steve.

There's Steve with one hand on the piano... and one elbow. Steve recorded so many albums that he probably sounded pretty great right as the picture was taken. Maybe he's inventing a new chord that can only be played by one hand, one elbow and Jayne Meadows' thigh?

So, Steve had a huge career, wrote a ton of books, got to sleep with Jayne every night AND had a house this cool, all while looking like the kid that ate paste in first grade. Hat tip to you, Mr Allen.

I'm getting pretty curious about this guy. I know he did a bunch of songs for Eyde Gorme and other famous sixties-type entertainers, but I couldn't hum one if you threatened me with violence. Maybe I need to fix that with the help of Amazon or iTunes? I have some homework tonight.

Anyway, there's Steve's house. Giant beams, stone floors, really cool room divider thing, very mod coffee table floor-to-ceiling windows, and ceiling tiles made of wadded paper (we hope). Do a Wikipedia search on Celotex and, rather than finding an article on the company itself, you find lots and lots of court cases, some of which are related to our old friend asbestos. Uh-oh spaghetti-o's!

I couldn't easily find any evidence that the Hush-Tone tiles in this ad were made with asbestos, and Steve lived to a pretty ripe old age of 78. So, assuming this ad was honest in that Celotex tiles were used in the Allen home, it doesn't look like asbestos took him out.

And even if he had died of mesothelioma, he'd just write a song about it and make a bunch of money. Steve was just that good, apparently.

Little Ads - Test own, ummmm, "E", "A", I mean "Y".

Joke #1 - Test own eyes right at home. Sue self for malpractice right at home.

Joke #2 - Tempt owl ears right of whole. SAIL up to ISOO of grasses.

Joke #3 - NEW! Point at new sensational device right at home!

Joke #1 - NOW he has what looks almost like A NEW SKIN... and new nose, and lips. STILL looks like SISSY! Read FREE offer!

Joke #2 - The great Acne Treatise of 1948 was one the first peacetime accords put forth by the United Nations in the postwar era.

Joke #1 - Draw anything you can see with lucy! Imagine your new life as operator B!

Joke #2 - Looks like a fun, artsy new way to stalk your soon-to-be girlfriend.

Joke #1 - Unfortunate that they chose to print the only drawing of the user being electrocuted. Come to think of it, the artist must draw pretty fast!

Quick Cadillac

Late start this morning. Here's a Cadillac ad to stare at. I don't like Cadillacs, and never really have. The new ones are so boxy that they look like buildings. Cars should not look like buildings. This example is from 1952, when Cadillacs were bulbous, phallic, and largely fulfilled the wishes of most American male car buyers. Note the two chrome tits on the bumper. Classy! When one person calls "fun" and "exciting", another person sees as "juvenile". Anyway, it's a nice eyeful.

Kool Aid Golden Nectar - Brain drain.

One of the funniest things I ever saw on The Simpsons (a show almost devoid of anything funny in the last ten years or so and which should subsequently be canceled, sorry, fanboys) was a dream sequence in which Homer meets the Kool-Aid man. Anyway, Homer 's having his surreal flight through a colorful wonderland when he is greeted by the Kool-Aid man. He immediately jumps inside the Kool-Aid man's head/pitcher and drinks the appropriately red liquid inside. Kool Aid man keeps truckin' right along at first, but after a second he becomes dizzy, staggers, and falls down... presumably dead.

This is what I think of when I look at this 1957 ad for Kool-Aid. The marketing division of General Foods obviously wants us to think of Kool-Aid man as a living pitcher - merely a vessel for their product. The Kool-Aid itself is not his mind, or his blood. So, we shouldn't be horrified that he's pouring out his brains for us to drink.

Clearly, The Simpsons thinks of it differently. When I first saw this scene, I laughed so hard i cried. Homer's gluttony is such that he takes the life of a magical being by devouring it's mind, only a little dismayed and confused to find himself sitting in the drained skull of a dead miracle afterwards.

I prefer the Simpsons' version of Kool-Aid man physiology.


The weirdness of an anthropomorphic pitcher doesn't stop me from wondering if his chalky stick arms are just a rendering style or if they're the way he is made. The "humans" also have stick limbs, so maybe it's just the art style.

That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore the fact that Kool-Aid man is tipping his pitcher head by pushing up on his own handle. It doesn't work that way. You can't propel your sail boat by using a fan. Kool-Aid man is running the risk of breaking his handle off.

I was hankering for some Kool-Aid up to this point, but their blatant disregard for the laws of physics turns me off. They can keep their tall frosty glass of refreshing Kool-Aid. I'm going to drink mind-blood from the skull of a mythical character instead.