Week 12 Lecture questions

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 Great Train Robbery.

2) Who invented the traveling matte shot in 1916?

Frank Williams.

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

55 weeks.

4) Which film made use of the ‘slit scan’ process in the 1960s?

2001: A Space Odyssey.

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

Dery’s argument is based on Claudia Springer’s idea of the “feminization of electronic technology.

6) Tim Recuber in his essay “Immersion Cinema” describes the key idea – that of immersion cinema itself – what is it? What makes it unique?

Mr. Recuber contends that “... “immersion cinema” emphasizes technical achievement to the detriment of social or artistic relevance and embeds a passive, consumerist ideology within the spaces of contemporary moviegoing.” What makes immersion cinema unique is that the design of theater spaces and the technologies used to execute film production are creating the suspension of disbelief as opposed to traditional utilizations of acting, writing, and direction to create the same effect. In short, films and the experiences of watching them are so cool/lifelike that the message within the stories gets buried or ceased to matter to viewers. [I hope I’m getting close to the answer here, Recuber’s academic paper uses a lot of terminology and jargon that I am unfamiliar with.]

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)

A motion-controlled camera, hooked up to a computer, that issues a complicated series of movements to said camera. This technique transformed the medium.

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

4 minutes of the dinosaur footage were rendered in CGI.



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

Jason & The Argonauts by Ray Harryhausen.
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?

War of the Worlds.

week 11 lecture questions

1) In Margaret Crawford's Essay "The World in a Shopping Mall she outlines that 'the size and scale of a mall reflects "threshold demand"' - what is meant by this term?

“Threshold Demand” means that a bunch of arrogant necktied twats crunched a bunch of market research numbers to figure out exactly how many people might be daft enough to spend a ton of money on stuff they don’t need if only a shopping mall were conveniently within their reach.

2) In the same article Margaret Crawford describes something called "spontaneous malling" - what does this mean?

Crawford states that Spontaneous Malling is “...a process by which urban spaces are transformed into malls without new buildings or developers...” It basically means common people will be drummed out to make way for Chess King, and Orange Julius.

3) According to Michael Sorkin in his essay 'See you in Disneyland', how did Disneyland have its origins?

Walt Disney’s love of trains + original idea of Oakland’s Fairyland + cutting a deal with ABC television = Disneyland’s origins.


4) Michael Sorkin writes in his essay that Disney's EPCOT Center was motivated largely by frustrations Disney felt at his Anaheim CA park. What were those frustrations?

Disney was frustrated because the people/businesses glomming onto his dreams were out earning him by over $2:1.

5)In his essay "Travels in Hyperreality" Umberto Eco describes Disneyland as 'a place of total passivity' - what does he mean by this?

Eco means that Disneyland has rules and strictures. Disneyland is not an open-ended world, it must be consumed in the controlled manner that its creators intended.