Film Production Process Research Articles

Effect of the host polymer on the nanomechanical and morphological properties of templated polymer films

Atomic force microscopy and nanoindentation have been applied to the study of thin molecularly templated polymer films. The template was chosen to be the readily hydrogen‐bonded cotinine molecule and three different polymer hosts, Elvamide® nylon, Nylon‐6, and poly(4‐vinylphenol) were compared. The host polymer was shown to affect the nature of the template‐host interaction resulting in varying surface morphologies and differences in the nanohardness. These observations were shown to reflect differences in the underlying interaction chemistry, specifically, whether or not the polymer may be imprinted in the film production process. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 877‐883, 2013

Vacuum Ultraviolet Spectrometric Ellipsometry Application to Optical Metrology of High-κ Dielectrics and Metal Gate Materials

Nowadays an accurate measurement of the high-k dielectrics (HK) and metal gate (MG) material thickness and properties is becoming more and more important for beyond 40nm technology. Traditional optical broad band spectrometric ellipsometry (BBSE) (wavelength range 240~800 nm) thickness metrology is suffering from poor accuracy among initial layer (IL), HK layer and MG layers in multi-layer stacks and poor repeatability. By extending wavelength down to 150nm, KLA-Tencor Aleris 8500 Vacuum Ultraviolet SE (VUVSE) greatly improves measurement performance, and enables deduction of film energy bandgap and defect information from offline spectra analysis. In this work, the measurement performance on HKMG stacks with BBSE and advanced VUVSE were compared systematically. The better performance of VUVSE in metrology accuracy and repeatability was displayed. The results of measurement can be highly correlated with film production process conditions, including both in multi-layer stack thickness measurement and in HK material band gap and defects study.

The Archive and Reenactment: Performing Knowledge in the Making of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

The production of the film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006), made by the Canadian Inuit production company Igloolik Isuma Productions, can be seen as a site where archival and performance-based knowledge integrate and inform each other. Journals was made in Igloolik, Nunavut, with the participation of local Inuit residents whose reenactment of a traditional way of life in and for the production of the film serves a pedagogical function. By documenting these activities on the company's website, Isuma emphasizes the way their practice activates and continues traditional knowledge in the present rather than merely creating a record of the past. Both the film and the website further highlight performance, especially oral storytelling, as a means of transmitting history that challenges the dominance and authority of ethnographic documents and archival knowledge. At the same time, however, archival materials such as photographs, reports, and artifacts were an important resource in the film's production process. By simultaneously prioritizing performance practices and incorporating archival resources, the making of Journals negotiates different ways of knowing and preserving the past through its reenactment.

Concept design for a collaborative digital learning tool for film post-production

ABSTRACTThis article considers how and in what form a collaborative digital learning tool can contribute to the training of trainees in the field of film post-production. A concept design for such a tool is presented. The concept design was the product of a series of collaborative investigations, and the initial findings of these investigations are reported. The initial findings suggest that such a digital learning tool has the potential to qualitatively improve how training is offered in the complex field of film post-production. The proposed digital learning tool seeks to combine the in-depth training associated with university-based training programmes, with access to a broad range of resources contributed by expert film practitioners, as well as enabling trainees to engage directly with such expert film practitioners (an approach based on the ‘T-shape’ model of training). In order to become expert film practitioners, trainees have to become proficient in every aspect of the post-production process of film production. Post-production is not a routine practice that can be followed in a step-by-step manner. Experts in this field are characterized by their creativity and flexibility in being able to adapt the post-production process to the particular requirements of each film production. Such experts have an invaluable contribution to make to the training of the next generation of professional film practitioners. The concept for the collaborative digital learning tool presented in this article was designed in close collaboration with such experienced film practitioners, in order that their knowledge and experience can be made directly accessible to trainees in the field. The article identifies design challenges, discusses the applied participatory design methods and illustrates how the design challenges identified were addressed through visualization and the design concept. The article concludes with a discussion of the possible impact of the tool, and presents recommendations for the design and development of training within higher education film departments.

The Return of the Photograph: Time, Memory and the Genre of the Photo-Film in Andrei Zviagintsev's <em>Vozvrashchenie</em> (The Return, 2003)

This article examines the photographic coda of Andrei Zviagintsev's film Vozvrashchenie (The Return, 2003). The images which constitute this coda are approached in terms of their diegetic and poetic significance, but also within the context of the ‘Photo-Film, an experimental genre which explores the respective ontologies of still and moving images. As the work of the production photographer, Vladimir Mishukov, the images of the coda are analysed in terms of the ambiguous relationship between documentation of the film-production process and the fictional reality which this process seeks to create on screen. They are examined within the context of the history of film-production photography generally in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, and also as illustrations of Mishukov's particular thematic and aesthetic concerns as one of Russia's leading contemporary photographers.

La digitalización de la imagen cinematográfica y la ausencia de estándares tecnológicos

The purpose of this study is to analyze the digitalization of film production processes focusing on one of its major problems, the establishment of digital standards on the realm of image manipulation. This paper aims at relating digital technology and the development of cinema as a business activity in a highly competitive enviroment.

CALCIUM SILICATE (CASIO3) AS ALTERNATIVE IONIC COAGULANT AND SOLID LUBRICANT FOR CERAMIC MOLDS IN NATURAL RUBBER LATEX FILM PREPARATION

ABSTRACTCalcium silicate gel (CaSiO3) is a synthesized, ionic coagulant and solid lubricant prepared by the sol-gel process. Calcium silicate is an oxide compound used as an ionic coagulant in coatings on prototypic, standard molds before those molds are dipped into concentrated natural rubber latex in the latex film-production process. The advantages of coating the CaSiO3 gel, made from eggshells, on a ceramic mold surface are low water treatment, less-acid rising step, and a longer life of the standard molds. Synthesized CaSiO3 has good physical properties: a specific surface area of 107 m2/g, a small pore diameter of 14.91 nm, and a fine, average particle size of 20.76 μm, suitable for coating on standard or other ceramic molds. The concentrated latex film products obtained are thin and clear, with a smooth surfaces; they provide ease of mold release and have high tensile strength. The interfacial interaction γSL, between a prototype standard mold and the CaSiO3 gel, as an ionic coagulant is stronger than the γSL between a prototype standard mold and calcium nitrate gel is because of the electrostatic charges of CaSiO3 (Ca2+, Si4+, and O2−) on the mold surface.

Beyond Gran Torino's Guns: Hmong Cultural Warriors Performing Genders

Clint Eastwood's feature film Gran Torino (2008) represents an ongoing site of cultural struggle from the perspective of Hmong Americans, not only because of issues around the portrayal of Hmong culture and society, but also because of the very fraught politics of the film's production process itself. This collaborative piece stages conversations and critiques so as to be stylistically consistent with the ensemble nature of film production, bringing together the voices of a Hmong antiracist media activist, a white academic in media and Hmong studies, the Hmong lead actor from Gran Torino, and a Hmong PhD student in English. With special attention to how regimes of gender and sexuality manifest racial and ethnic hierarchy, the piece asks questions about the consequences of hypervisibility for Hmong Americans who have been chronically silenced and invisibilized, and interrogates the counterpointing of Eastwood's character, Walt, and his normative white masculinity with two dysfunctional immigrant masculinities—that of the effeminate, childlike geek and that of the hyperviolent and transgressive gangster. The piece proceeds to read Hmong cultural production and critique as racial struggle which entails a queer response that would go beyond exclusively textual readings of alternative masculinity to refigure racial engagements beyond conventional binaries of hyposexual versus hyperviolent, and beyond queer as antimasculine.

Of Ghosts and Gangsters: Capitalist Cultural Production and the Hong Kong Film Industry

This article contends that ghosts and gangsters are not merely popular genres in the Hong Kong film industry; they are also legitimate participants in the film production process itself, influencing financial, creative, and logistical resources and decisions. Film personnel's accounts of the possession and protection of their bodies by members of the cosmological and criminal underworlds, particularly in location filming in graveyards and gangster turf as well as ritual payments and appeasements made to the underworlds, reveal the diverse risks and cultural practices in film production. This article argues that despite the rationalization of commercial filmmaking, “enchantments” in the form of religion and feudalistic crime linger within capitalist production.

Roll-to-roll fabrication of a low-reflectance transparent conducting oxide film with subwavelength structures

The transparent conducting oxide (TCO) film is a significant component in flat panel display, e-paper and touch panel. The tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) material is one of the most popular TCOs. However, ITO has high refractive index, so the phenomenon of high-reflectance limits the wide use of ITO. In this study, the structure and mass production process of new low-reflectance TCO film is verified. Laser interference lithography and the roll-to-roll UV embossing process are used to fabricate subwavelength structures on PET film; then ITO was deposited on structures by roll-to-roll sputtering. When the dimension of structures reaches 300 nm pitch, the optical reflectance and electrical performance of film are reduced to 8.1% at wavelength 550 nm and its transmittance rate is 84.3% at the same wavelength, and the sheet resistance of this film is 50.44 Ω/□. This result indicates that the new TCO proposed in this study is suitable for touch panel and other display applications.

Advanced polymeric film production data analysis and process optimization by clustering and classification methods

Advanced polymeric film production data analysis and process optimization by clustering and classification methods

Fabrication and characterization of single Nb/NbxSi1-x/Nb Josephson junction for voltage standard

The core device of Modern programmable Josephson voltage standard is Josephson junction array. The most advantageous Josephson junction array is Nb/NbxSi1-x/Nb material array. The advantages of Nb/NbxSi1-x/Nb material Josephson junction are that three-layer film production process is simple, Nb and NbxSi1-x etching processes are the same and NbxSi1-x potential barrier layer components can be easily adjusted. In this paper, we investigate the NbxSi1-x/Nb single Josephson junction in National Institute of Metrology. Through measuring the dc current-voltage characteristics under low temperature (4.2 K), superconducting tunneling current and a zero voltage state jumping to voltage state are observed clearly, finally the measurement results are discussed. The work is the first study on Nb/NbxSi1-x/Nb single Josephson junction in China.

Polymer Film Production: Modeling and Control of the Forward Draw

Many industrial processes involve the transportation of a continuous web of material over a series of rollers to obtain a finished product. The manufacture of polymer film is one such web transport process, which utilizes a series of rotating elements that act to manipulate the film. This paper develops a dynamic mathematical model of the “forward draw” in a polymer film production process. The model is capable of being implemented in real-time for control purposes, yet includes significant physical phenomena such as material damping. Experimental results from a pilot production plant are used to validate the model under steady-state and transient conditions. The model is then used as a basis for a feed-forward control scheme, which reduces speed variations in the forward draw by a factor of 8 and therefore improves considerably the film quality.

IN MEMORIAM Norman Ackerman 1942–2008

Norman Ackerman, D.V.M. died on January 13th, 2008, due to complications from longstanding cardiac problems. Born in October 1942, Norman grew up in Miami, FL. He attended The University of Georgia preveterinary program until 1962 and then entered the veterinary professional program at Auburn University where he received the degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1966. After a brief stint as an associate veterinarian in a North Miami veterinary hospital, Norman joined the United States Air Force and served as base veterinarian at Misawa AFB in Japan, and later at Takhli AFB in Thailand. Norman returned to the United States and entered the small animal medicine and surgery Internship program at the University of Pennsylvania in 1969. In 1971 he entered the veterinary radiology residency program at the University of Missouri where he was mentored by Dr. Lou Corwin. He was certified by examination as a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Radiology in 1974. Norman remained on the faculty at Missouri until 1976 at which time he joined the radiology department at the University of California, Davis. In 1979 Norman returned to Florida to take a position in the Department of Radiology at the University of Florida. The next few years would see Norman serve with distinction as a faculty member, clinician, and teacher. During this time he was also actively involved with the American College of Veterinary Radiology (ACVR), serving on many committees and eventually serving as the president in 1981. By 1985 he had added 34 publications, five book chapters, and three books to his already extensive list of accomplishments. Because of his impressive academic record, Norman was awarded Full Professorship in the Department of Radiology in 1986. Norman retired from the University of Florida in 1994; however, he continued his work in radiology with a part time position in a veterinary specialty hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. He also maintained an active role in the ACVR, serving many tours of duty on the demanding and time-consuming Examination Committee. In the year 2000, Norman moved to Huntsville and continued his work as a radiologist accepting film referrals from multiple hospitals around the southeast, while continuing to find time to maintain a presence on the ACVR Examination Committee. Until his untimely death, he was an active locum in Radiology at the University of Florida Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital and the College of Veterinary Medicine at Oregon State University. I knew Norman to be an intensely private person, but a man of immense character and integrity. A man dedicated to his family, teaching, and promoting excellence in his profession. He was an accomplished photographer with a darkroom in his home, which served as a basis for his superb understanding of the photographic and radiographic process of diagnostic film production. His manipulation of X-ray film in the “hand tanks” was uncanny, allowing us to routinely enhance images in a way that the automatic film processors in the department could not. He tricked film with scatter radiation and heat, and intensifying screens with cold to make them behave outside their normally expected envelope so that we could make images of the equine spine and pelvis with ridiculously small, 20 Ma X-ray generators. The laborious chore of manual subtraction of our angiographic images was a treat to Norman. As his colleague, I found Norman to be a concerned teacher of veterinary students and residents of all disciplines who were dedicated to writing and publishing clinically pertinent material to fill in the gaps of the literature available to his mentees. He was generous with first authorship and promotion of the ACVR journal. Norman is sited with over 45 publications in Veterinary Radiology and Ultrasound alone, but in most of those he deferred to the young aspiring resident or junior colleague to be the first author. Even with his time consumed by writing, teaching, and college governance, he found time for the ACVR, to which he was truly dedicated. He genuinely felt that the organization that had afforded him such a rewarding career should be vigorously supported so that the vision of the founding radiologists could be perpetuated. Most of you do not know the breadth and depth of this man, and for that I am sorry. But you should understand that because of his quiet but intense dedication to veterinary radiology, in some part, all of us in this profession have been touched by the life and work of Norman Ackerman. His wife, Lourdes Corman, M.D., a son and a daughter, survive him.

Out of the Archive: Challenges and Opportunities for New Scholarly Access from Old Media Collections

With moving image materials increasingly being used for research, education, and communication, the Film & Media Archive at Washington University is uniquely situated to become a major center for new scholarship. With a particular emphasis on the African American experience, its collections focus on the preservation of documentaries and other media which chronicle America’s great political and social movements. The Archive’s collections are complex, in the kinds of materials it contains, copyright issues, physical formats, and their relationship to other elements in the film production process. Nonetheless, as this article suggests, the abundance of primary source material in the collection, coupled with recent developments in new technology, offers the promise of transforming old media formats for use in new and exciting forms research, education, and scholarly communication.

Camera, Set, Action: Process Innovation for Film and TV Production

Abstract Film and TV productions, a key area in production screen business, comprise of processes with high demand for creativity and flexibility. However, despite the era of fast developing technology, film production processes are carried out in an old fashioned way. This is reflected, for example, by the fact that document processing accompanied by daily shooting activities is still primarily paper-based and coordinating geographically distributed cast and crew is purely manual or at best through emails. There is an opportunity to bring process innovation into this industry, which can streamline and optimise film production processes and thus reduce production costs. Business Process Management (BPM) is the mainstream contemporary technology-enabled business improvement method. It has proven to provide significant benefits to an organisation in terms of cost savings and responsiveness to changes. In this paper, we apply BPM technology to process innovation for film production. We also share experiences in how to deal with innovation barriers in the film industry. Over the course of the investigation, a prototype called YAWL4Film was developed on top of a state-of-the-art BPM system. YAWL4Film supports collection and entering of production related data and automatic generation of reports required during film production. The system was deployed in two student productions at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), as well as in a feature film production by Porchlight, an independent film production company.

Toward Web-Scale Workflows for Film Production

The screen business encompasses all creative and management aspects related to film, television, and new media content, from concept to production and distribution. Companies in this industry face increasing competition due to market globalization. To stay competitive, they're turning to contemporary technology-enabled business improvement methods, such as business process management. Despite its potential benefits, the use of workflow systems for automating film production processes is largely unexplored. The authors' case study highlights some of the key challenges that lie ahead for Web-scale workflows for film production.

Agency in Adaptation

Agency in Adaptation

An investigation into the surface topology and thickness profile of functional ceramic spinel manganate sputtered, evaporated and screen-printed layers

In this paper an atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy analysis of the surface grain structure of negative temperature coefficient of resistance (NTCR) thermistor nickel manganate layers produced by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering, electron-beam evaporation and screen-printing is presented. Thin sputtered and evaporated films exhibited a dense low porosity surface with evidence for grain alignment in a brick layer fashion, whereas thick screen-printed layers displayed perceptible surface porosity. The layer thicknesses and the thickness distributions were analysed by surface profileometry. The three different deposition techniques used for film production are compared and described in detail, including the paste production for screen-printing, deposition conditions and post-deposition annealing and sintering processes for all three techniques. The effects of the differences in the film production processes on the film microstructure are discussed. This is important, because differences in microstructure can result in variations in the resistivity versus temperature characteristics.

20106 熱膜式マイクロせん断応力センサの開発(機械工学が支援するマイクロ流体技術,OS1 機械工学が支援する微細加工技術(半導体・MEMS・NEMS))

In late years, a group of minuteness sensor corresponding to this and minuteness sensors to clarify minuteness structure of a flow is demanded as miniaturization of a measurement device advances. I develop micro shear stress sensor that it aimed for the measurement and control of a flow of a heat fluid by this study. Based on silicon, I examine a production process of a metal film or semiconductor film of the minuteness sensors that assumed a resistance sensor. And made a prototype in this school clean room, I report the summary here.