Movie Camera Research Articles

‘A divine right to photograph’: E. Graeme Robertson’s (1903–1975) historical motion pictures of National Hospital staff in 1933

ABSTRACT In the course of researching and writing the first-ever book length biography of Edward Graeme Robertson’s (1903–1975) eventful life and career in Australasian neurology, a rare 1933 cinema film recording of National Hospital staff at Queen Square has recently been rediscovered. Graeme completed his residency in neurology at Queen Square in the early 1930s and maintained close connections with his colleagues in London, thoughtfully recording them at different times using early movie cameras. Two versions of Graeme’s 1933 film have been preserved, and there are also other color clips of his colleagues from later in life in the UCL Neurology archives and Robertson family collection. These remarkable films contain images of several historically significant neurologists, including Gordon Morgan Holmes (1876–1965), Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson (1878–1937), Derek Denny-Brown (1901–1981), Macdonald Critchley (1900–1997), and several others. We provide a contextual summary of the many clips recorded alongside an in-depth inventory of all the personalities represented in the 1933 film. Selected photographs are used to indicate the contents of these remarkable films.

Examining the emergence of the ‘AI eye’ and its effect on the ‘creative treatment of actuality’ in computational non-fiction

ABSTRACT Documentaries have frequently captured journeys to places audiences might not have seen before. The first documentary film Nanook of the North (1922), often referred to as a travel film, took viewers to the Canadian Artic for the first time. In 1929, The Man with a Movie Camera revealed the rhythm of the Soviet cities through the Kino-Eye. Now the documentary film genre, the City Film is taking viewers on a virtual tour into new digital synthetic domains as they contain artificially generated images produced by GenAI. In response to this emergence of the ‘AI eye’, a computational vision of the world, the following attributes of AI as an asset, tool and collaborator shape the discussion of novel creative documentary processes that are emerging when Gen AI is integrated into computational non-fiction. This article explores a computational vision of the world in relation to the City Film documentary genre.

Glimmer Synchronization Of Luciola Parvula Fireflies To External Stimulas

It is known that the Luciola parvula fireflies clearly emit the lights at regular time intervals and synchronization between multiple males are observed, but the details of synchronization have not yet been clarified. Presently, we took videos of the luminescence phenomenon of multiple male Luciola parvula fireflies and performed a correlation analysis on the details of the time change of the luminescence brightness of each male Luciola parvula fireflies. The 12 Luciola parvula fireflies are kept in glass wells so that each Luciola parvula fireflies can only moves in restricted areas and their luminescence is recorded by a digital movie camera at the video rate of 30 fps. According to the preliminary study, each glimmer lasts about 3 frames and thus the time series brightness is fitted by a parabolic function in order to give a precise timing of maximum brightness. First of all, time intervals between glimmers of each Luciola parvula fireflies are evaluated. Secondly, the glimmer correlation between different Luciola parvula fireflies are investigated. As a result, it was clarified that the light emission cycle of Luciola parvula fireflies is almost constant at 0.54 seconds, more than 70% of all light emissions are synchronized and the order of synchronization is almost fixed with very small delay. Consequently, it has been shown quantitatively that the glimmers of male Luciola parvula fireflies are well synchronized.

The Underwater Eye: How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy by Margaret Cohen (review)

The Underwater Eye: How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy by Margaret Cohen (review)

Cinema and the prefigurative

Prefiguration is a term borrowed from political science, describing the experimentation with alternative ways of living, doing and being together in the present as a form of activism. In this article I will argue that cinema can be a powerful tool that can be used to support prefigurative objectives. Arguably, the point of origin of this methodology is Man with a Movie Camera (??????? ? K???????????? 1929) by Dziga Vertov. Structurally this film can be described as 'database driven' and as prescient toward the digital age in which databases and hypertexts are common organising principles affecting daily life experiences. But more importantly, the film presages a different, more harmonious society in a style that simultaneously uses documentary, experimental and poetic elements. The purpose of this enquiry is to establish whether subsequent crowd-sourced and community driven documentaries can be seen as equally successful examples of prefiguration.

“Screen on the Chum”: Social Reconstruction and Mobile Film Propaganda in the North of the Ob region in the 1930s

Drawing on the example of agitation and propaganda campaigns carried out in the north of the Ob region in the 1930s among the indigenous population, a specific tool of the Soviet ideological indoctrination of the Great Break period — a mobile cinema (installations designed to screen silent and sound films to a small audience in open areas and in premises not equipped with stationary film projectors) — has been comprehensively studied. The mobile cinema is considered as one of the varieties of cultural management technologies that are equally characteristic of all states and empires of the modern era, including the USSR, where, due to the existence of state ideology and low literacy of the population, it was even more important than other cultural technologies. The management supported and strengthened the centralized power, serving as a complement to force and coercion. Based on the materials of the State Archive of the Socio-Political History of the Tyumen Region, it has been es-tablished that the first mobile cinema in the north of the Ob region was created under the auspices of the Commit-tee of the North under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the USSR, but it reached its fullest flou-rishing in the area during the period when the region came under the jurisdiction of the Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route (1935–1938). The repertoire of a mobile cinema was compiled centrally, and it included popular science and feature films, united by a common goal, which was the ideological indoctrination of the audi-ence. For representatives of the indigenous peoples of the North, movie screening itself was the most important experience of joining a new life, akin to the rite of initiation. Indigenous peoples were most interested in movies that narrated about their own daily life: hunting, fishing, travelling. Mobile cinemas were moved around the north by sled and specially equipped boats. The work of a mobile cinema in the north of the Ob region was associated with constant overcoming of a number of problems: the shortage of films, frequent breakdowns of movie cameras, and the lack of qualified projectionists. Nevertheless, mobile cinemas made significant contribution to the mo-dernization of everyday life and worldview of the indigenous peoples of the Ob North.

Around the moving image

The article is devoted to the analysis of the "moving image" as a phenomenon of noospheric significance, a phenomenon of historically unavoidable, existential-authentic, extremely objective symbolic fixation of the temporal-spatial processuality of the world. It was found out that this "moving image" put an end to the polemic presented by the German educator Lessing in his treatise "Laokoon, or on the limits of painting and poetry", outlining the boundaries between "spatial arts" that reflect "space, objects in it" and poetry (properly language art), which embodies first of all time, and in this way connected Time and Space in its very structure. A very specific interaction of spatial and temporal information in the very architecture of the human brain has been established, in which the left hemisphere forms language-speech, and the right hemisphere forms spatial representationsformations, and the human brain itself "films" the surrounding world in the same way as a movie camera, but in full awareness.

About an alternative method of autonomous determination of latitude and longitude of moving objects

In this article, an analytical review of the literature on methods for measuring the stabilization error of stabilization systems (SS) is carried out. The relevance of further research and development in the field of ways to improve the accuracy of measurements of the stabilization error of the SS is substantiated.
 The modern method for determining the median error of the SS has distinctive features and has a number of advantages: it requires much less time and the use of manual labor; performed in digital form of information processing in numerical and graphical form; does not require the need to install a movie camera (it was replaced by an optoelectronic module, information from which is fed to the input of a video monitor, to which it is connected via the Pinnacle Movie Box Plus USB matching device, through which the video image is transmitted for recording to a laptop). After performing the research, information according to a specially developed program is automatically processed on a computer, which, based on the results of calculations, gives a more accurate (compared to the new method) value of the median stabilization error along the horizontal and vertical guidance channels.
 The model of construction of the line of domestic SS corresponds to the principle of "dependent stabilization" rigid connection of vertical and horizontal channels of the stabilizer with the device of supervision over objects.

Analytical review of studies in the field of stabilization error measurement methods

In this article, an analytical review of the literature on methods for measuring the stabilization error of stabilization systems (SS) is carried out. The relevance of further research and development in the field of ways to improve the accuracy of measurements of the stabilization error of the SS is substantiated.
 The modern method for determining the median error of the SS has distinctive features and has a number of advantages: it requires much less time and the use of manual labor; performed in digital form of information processing in numerical and graphical form; does not require the need to install a movie camera (it was replaced by an optoelectronic module, information from which is fed to the input of a video monitor, to which it is connected via the Pinnacle Movie Box Plus USB matching device, through which the video image is transmitted for recording to a laptop). After performing the research, information according to a specially developed program is automatically processed on a computer, which, based on the results of calculations, gives a more accurate (compared to the new method) value of the median stabilization error along the horizontal and vertical guidance channels.
 The model of construction of the line of domestic SS corresponds to the principle of "dependent stabilization" rigid connection of vertical and horizontal channels of the stabilizer with the device of supervision over objects.

Untangling Fact, Fiction, Fantasy—and Outright Lies: Compilation Films as Archival Piracy

Films compiled from archival footage unsettle assumptions about film and photography’s ability to capture truth—and the archive’s ability to contain it—through a critical practice of pirating. Sandhya Suri’s Around India with a Movie Camera, Rona Sela’s Looted and Hidden: Palestinian Archives in Israel, and Kamal Aljafari’s Recollection manipulate images from archives to expose the technical and institutional manipulations within colonial propaganda, posing questions about how and when visual evidence becomes truth, with implications for mobile phone eyewitness videos today—and also deepfakes in viral disinformation.

무게 중심 알고리즘(Barycenter Algorithm)을 활용한 무성 영화 분기 검출 - 지가 베르토프의 [카메라를 든 사나이]를 중심으로

In today's media environment, there is an increasing demand for a method capable of technically analyzing moving images. In the field of film, which contains vast amounts of data, an efficient method and structure for analyzing moving image information is indispensable. This study presents short segmentation and film analysis methods and results, focusing on sequences through Barycenter algorithms and machine learning methodologies, in Dziga Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera," a director representing the silent film era. The existing proposed machine learning methodology simultaneously utilizes the Barycenter algorithm method in short segmentation due to its limited accuracy, although the time required for short segmentation is short. The Barycenter algorithm is a method of finding the center of gravity in an image by brightness and saturation; it has high short segmentation accuracy compared to the machine learning methodology that relies on center movement. It is proved that the method of using the Barycenter algorithm presented in this study is more accurate than the existing method. This study aims to contribute as a criticism tool based on quantitative indicators of film as well as to improve our understanding and characterizations of films.

ИССЛЕДОВАНИЕ ГИДРАВЛИЧЕСКОГО ПРИВОДА КЛАПАНОВ ГРМ

Improving the characteristics of the internal combustion engine of an agricultural vehicle is possible by using a hydraulic actuator of the electronically controlled gas distribution valves. The drive ensures the opening of the engine valves by the pistons of the hydraulic cylinders when oil is pumped into them, the valves are closed using valve springs when the oil is drained from the hydraulic cylinders. The advantages of the hydraulic drive are: the ability to turn off the engine cylinders, an increase in the speed of opening and closing the valves of the gas distribution mechanism, no need to adjust the thermal clearances, a constant speed of the valves landing on the saddles. The hydraulic drive is integrated into the engine lubrication system. The working body of the hydraulic drive is engine oil with a pressure of 8 MPa, created by a separate pump. The physical and mathematical model of a hydraulic valve drive in the Simulink environment takes into account hydraulic pressure losses, various inertial effects, elastic-deformation interaction between drive elements, and inductance of solenoid valve coils. The experimental setup includes: a KAMAZ 740 engine, a hydraulic drive for two valves of one cylinder head, measuring equipment. The results of the experiments were recorded using a high-speed movie camera. The determination of the kinematic characteristics of the valves of the gas distribution mechanism was carried out by processing the video frames of the shooting at a known frequency of their fixation. The results of experiments coincide with the results of calculations. The speed of movement of the engine valves, thanks to the use of a hydraulic actuator, is significantly increased compared to the use of a traditional mechanical actuator. The time delay between the supply of an electrical signal to the electromagnetic valves and the response of the hydraulic drive to it is determined. The results obtained make it possible to start creating a serial hydraulic valve drive that improves engine parameters by intensifying and controlling the gas exchange of the engine cylinder with the environment

Cinemanhatta

Both as a concept and a practice, remix has become enshrined in media theory and production. Using an existing creative expression as materials to produce a new creative expression, remix highlights how culture operates through a continual circulation of shared elements. Remix reincorporates this practice into the present culture as an alternative to the dominant logic of the culture industries. 
 However, as a useful principle applied in a general way, the specific cultural and historical conditions of remix’s origins become obscured and mythologized, obscuring how emergence and creativity function as part of culture in specific conditions. Moreover, although we frame remix as an alternative or oppositional practice, it remains compatible with the logic of creativity as the work of the genius or auteurs. It reinforces the idea of art as an expressive object that can be commodified for the consumption of an audience.
 The time is right to rethink what the term ‘remix’ does and what it accomplishes. Remix presents an alternative to the dominant mode of production, but can it offer a transformative opposition that not only remakes culture, but remakes the ways we make culture? If not, what can? 
 This presentation offers a complementary concept I call “recreative practice”, meant in the sense of re-creative (re-new-ing through creativity) as well as in the sense of recreational (“to refresh oneself by some amusement”). It emerges from a synthesis of Dewey’s writing on the aesthetic experience (1934/2005), Williams’ theory of the residual, dominant and emergent (1977), and Barad’s call responsive/responsible theory (2012). 
 The production of something that has never been is influenced by what has come before, and reception is framed by understanding of what is familiar to us. Recreative practice recognizes that the production of aesthetic experience does not belong to a class apart – culture is ordinary, everyone is creative, and we are constantly generating and circulating culture. Nor are theorists and artists exempt – we are inextricably entangled in the world we seek to transform, and our work, too, is part of a process of the everyday and the ordinary.
 To further demonstrate recreative practice, I draw from my forthcoming dissertation, An Effective Dream is a Reality, as well as several years’ experimentation with algorithmic cinema. I give this a focus through presentation of speculative project: Cinemanhatta. 
 Cinemanhatta is a speculative proposal building on Manhatta (1921) as a foundation. An antecedent of recreative practice, Manhatta drew on existing creative traditions in a way that created new possibilities for meaning-making and influenced the conditions for meaning-making itself. Cinemanhatta honors that tradition and exemplifies recreative practice by proposing three interrelated projects, each inspired by a significant creative effort: Heidi Rae Cooley’s Finding Augusta and the accompanying Augusta App (2014), Perry Bard’s Man With A Movie Camera: Global Remake (2007-present), and Barbara Lattanzi’s HF Critical Mass (2002). These projects work together to produce a material-semiotic performance of exchange and collaboration, using a set of recreative practices to construct a community of inquiry.

Method for minimizing lens breathing with one moving group.

Lens breathing in movie cameras is the change in the overall content of a scene while bringing subjects located at different depths into focus. This paper presents a method for minimizing lens breathing or changing angular field-of-view while maintaining perspective by moving only one lens group. To maintain perspective, the stop is placed in a fixed position where no elements between the scene and the stop can move, thus fixing the entrance pupil in one location relative to the object fields. The result is perspective invariance while refocusing the lens. Using paraxial optics, we solve for the moving group's position to focus on every object position and eliminate breathing between the minimum and maximum object distances. We investigate the solution space for optical systems with two positive groups or a positive and a negative group (i.e., retrofocus and telephoto systems). We explain how to apply this paraxial solution to existing systems to minimize breathing. The results for two systems altered using this method are presented. Breathing improved by two orders of magnitude in both cases, and performance specifications were still met when compared to the initial systems.

Blood, sweat, and skins—and cement, and cinema, and searchlights: Carl Akeley’s adventures in inventing

Carl Akeley is a familiar figure in the world of museums, scientific exploration, conservation, and especially taxidermy—his innovations in that field in the early 20th century led peers to dub him ‘The Father of Modern Taxidermy’. But Akeley’s knack for innovation stretched far beyond mounting animal skins. As one colleague put it, ‘his practical mechanical resourcefulness was almost uncanny’. Akeley invented the ‘cement gun’ and sprayable concrete (aka ‘gunite’), a revolutionary movie camera embraced by Hollywood studios and documentarists, several ‘improved’ searchlight reflectors during World War I (when he was appointed a Consulting Engineer for the Army), and an assortment of other devices—more than 30 patents in all. One common thread tied all these efforts together: envisioning a problem, and devising a solution. This article presents an account of Carl Akeley’s inventive side, describing the wide array of inventions that grew from his natural mechanical aptitude, and his tireless passion to fabricate, and then improve.

Cine-Eye as A Perspective: A Review on Dziga Vertov's Man with A Movie Camera

Cine-Eye as A Perspective: A Review on Dziga Vertov's Man with A Movie Camera

In Praise of Refusing the Questions

In Praise of Refusing the Questions

Indian or British Film Heritage? The Material Life of Britain's Colonial Film Archive

This article examines selected titles from a collection of colonial films shot in India between 1899 and 1947, preserved at the British Film Institute (BFI) National Archives. It tracks these films' changing cultural value from the time they entered the archive to their recent digitization and recontextualization in curatorial projects such as the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture. As part of this yearlong program, British Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri repurposed these same films in her archival documentary Around India with a Movie Camera (2018). By subverting their intended meanings, Suri's film expands the BFI's curatorial discourses and advances what this article reads as a powerful experiment in decolonizing the film archive.

Дзига Вертов и Сергей Эйзенштейн: к истории соперничества

The creative сompetiton between the main Soviet directors of the 1920s, Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, played a decisive role in the development of Soviet cinema. The opposition between “documentary” and “fictional” gave birth to discussions the “truth” on the screen. Is it possible to express true “life by surprise” in a film, or it the viewer should be influenced politically in the new Soviet art, he should be involved in the historical process via screen performance, an artistic method. Directors were often compared and opposed to each other, and their rivalry often became the basis for their own theoretical and stylistic searches. The article deals with a number of episodes and motives of the conflict between two masters. Previously unpublished archival documents are introduced into scientific circulation, which complete the picture of their relationship. The author comes to the conclusion that many creative points, in particular, while working on the film Man with a Movie Camera, were caused by Vertov’s rivalry and jealousy for Eisenstein’s success. While for the director of Battleship Potemkin, addressing the experience of Cine-Eye played one of the key roles in the process of formulating his film editing theory.

ОБРАЗ ГОРОДА ВО ФРАНЦУЗСКОМ ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНОМ КИНО 1970-Х ГГ.: «ЧЕЛОВЕК, КОТОРЫЙ СПИТ» ЖОРЖА ПЕРЕКА

The article examines the image of the city on the example of the film “The Man Who Sleeps”, released in 1974. The presented film accumulates the first experimental experiences of avant-garde cinema of the 1920s in working with image and sound and tries to create a new narrative, resorting to the actual social issues of 1970s, in particular to issue of private and public space. Private and public spaces, considered in the film as part of general urban space, are spaces of repetitive actions and practices of the protagonist filmed in a chaotic sequence. The city is understood as constantly changing construction where the line between subjective perception of the protagonist of the city and objective perception for which the movie camera, CCTV cameras are responsible is blurred.