Hypercompendia

Not exactly new, but I would consider it to be so when it’s being produced on a computer.  John Timmons and Maggie Ducharme collaborated on this piece with audio interviews, old photos, some new film shots and audio clips of big band music relevant to the era and to the story being told.

Ruth and Bob,  A Love Story (link to post with a trailer video) is a documentary style project that tells a story of a couple’s courtship, marriage, and family, focusing on the beginning in the last years of WWII and quickly following up to the present.  While it just dawned on me that video of the interviews Maggie did with her parents, the subjects of this story, would have been a nice addition, because this project was a surprise gift to them and to the family it would have been too big a tip-off.

The first step in the project was for Maggie to sit down with her mom and dad and get them to recall their meeting and their early years together.  She hit a bonanza of information, including the real "first" girlfriends and boyfriends.  This bit of information was a great way to start the story, rounding the characters for the audience and preparing them (as well as mom and dad I suppose) for the real love of their lives.  John integrated photos of the couple along with a few of friends and family, using zoom methods in the software program to focus on an individual within a group.  Other transitioning methods included fades that were primarily used for a break in time period or a major change in setting–such as the wedding, the children, or at the beginning, the war and the young soldier who was anxious to be home. 

Basically starting with a story, or two stories, one from each main character that reflects their individual viewpoints that lead up their meeting, their attraction, their marriage, through separation, children, and a few words for the present and future, the images back up the audio story being told.  Music immediately recognizable as of the era and particularly, of the War years, gave grounding to the images.

Collaboration, planning, focus, and knowledge of software such as Adobe Premiere along with microphone and web access to images and music files all went into effort to achieve not only entertainment and offer a gift to a special couple, but in taking on this task, John and Maggie have produced a bit of family history that can be shared now and handed down to future generations.

Very interesting developments–printed page with circuitry that hyperlinks back to a computer to bring up the information. (if:book)  I’m just not sure it makes a whole lot of sense.

I really need to get back to Alice because I’m getting all hyped up between the weird world of Borges and some links I’ve wandered onto–don’t even know if the software they’re offering is capable of producing these, but this one really was an inspiration.

This post for info and and further exploration as soon as I can.

Back a couple of years ago in a New Media class, I presented my final paper in a time capsule format, offering the progress made to date with an eye to the future. 

In this morning’s news, I was most interested in work being done to establish a direct path from mind to inert object and see that Hitachi has been able to "think" a toy train to run.  At the time I did a bit of research, experiments were being done in the medical field and there had been some positive successes. 

While I don’t know how far this work has moved along in the years since I first read up on it, I would hope that it receives the same attention and funding that Hitachi is putting into its project.

Watching Shrek, I’m still amazed at the animation.  Just amazingly detailed and smooth.  One of the best illustrated characters is Lord Farquaad. 

The programming and software on something like this must be amazing. 

Another thing that I really love with this movie–which is really geared for adults rather than kids who may or may not catch some of its subtleties–is the humor, a bit dark at times, just love it.

Hmmm.  The princess just turned into her ogre form.  She’s saying how ugly she is and the donkey’s first reaction confirms it.  But in truth, she’s not.  Really, she’s a little on the chubby side, has a round lump of a nose, long thin funnels for ears, and is green, but basically, she’s kind of cut–certainly not ugly.

Getting back to the graphics, I’m absolutely awed–and inspired by the animation.

Believe I’ve found the template in the Typepad files and will be working from there to reconstruct what took only a second to destroy.