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Anamorphic Lens
Anamorphic format is a cinematography technique that captures widescreen images using recording media with narrower native aspect ratios. Originally developed for 35 mm film to create widescreen presentations without sacrificing image area, the technique has since been adapted to various film gauges, digital sensors, and video formats. Rather than cropping or matting the image and discarding visual information, anamorphic capture employs cylindrical lenses to horizontally compress or "squeeze" the image during recording. A complementary lens is then used during projection to expand the image back to its intended widescreen proportions. By utilizing the full height of the film frame or sensor, this method retains more image resolution than cropped non-anamorphic widescreen formats. Anamorphic lenses have more complex optics than standard spherical lenses, which require more light and can introduce distinctive distortions and lens flares. However, these artefacts are so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Chrétien
Henri Jacques Chrétien (; 1 February 1879, Paris – 6 February 1956, Washington, D.C.) was a French astronomer and an inventor. Born in Paris, France, his most famous inventions are: * the anamorphic widescreen process, using an anamorphic lens system called Hypergonar, that resulted in the CinemaScope widescreen technique, and * the co-invention, with George Willis Ritchey, of the Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, an improved type of astronomical telescope, employing a system now used in virtually all large research telescopes. He spent part of his early astronomical career at the Nice Observatory, which was close to his house, the Villa Paradou. The Villa was built by famous French architect Charles Garnier (architect), Charles Garnier who also built the Nice Observatory and both the operas of Paris and Monaco. In 1995, the abandoned villa was acquired by the artist Rainer Maria Latzke, who restored it and added new murals to the existing frescoes. Chrétien was one of the f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lens Flares
A lens flare happens when light is scattered, or ''flared'', in a lens system, often in response to a bright light, producing a sometimes undesirable artifact in the image. This happens through light scattered by the imaging mechanism itself, for example through internal reflection and forward scatter from material imperfections in the lens. Lenses with large numbers of elements such as zooms tend to have more lens flare, as they contain a relatively large number of interfaces at which internal scattering may occur. These mechanisms differ from the focused image generation mechanism, which depends on rays from the refraction of light from the subject itself. There are two types of flare: visible artifacts and glare across the image. The glare makes the image look "washed out" by reducing contrast and color saturation (adding light to dark image regions, and adding white to saturated regions, reducing their saturation). Visible artifacts, usually in the shape of the aperture ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special Effects
Special effects (often abbreviated as F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the fictional events in a story or virtual world. It is sometimes abbreviated as SFX, but this may also refer to ''sound effects''. Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of mechanical effects and optical effects. With the emergence of digital filmmaking a distinction between special effects and visual effects has grown, with the latter referring to digital post-production and optical effects, while "special effects" refers to mechanical effects. Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects) are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanised props, scenery, scale models, animatronics, pyrotechnics and atmospheric effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow, clouds, making a car appear to drive by i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leon Douglass
Leon Forrest Douglass (March 12, 1869 – September 7, 1940) was an American inventor and co-founder of the Victor Talking Machine Company who registered approximately fifty patents, mostly for film and sound recording techniques. Life and professional career Douglass was born in rural Nebraska, near present-day Syracuse. His parents were Seymour James Douglass, a millwright and carpenter, and Mate (Fuller) Douglass. He attended grammar school in Lincoln, Nebraska, was apprenticed to a printer, at eleven was working as a telegraph messenger, and by seventeen was telephone exchange manager for the Nebraska Telephone Company in Seward.Gracyk, Tim"Leon F. Douglass: Inventor and Victor's First Vice-President" Accessed July 13, 2008. Phonograph In 1888, Douglass saw a phonograph for the first time and was fascinated. He made his own and took it to Omaha to show it to E.A. Benson, president of the Nebraska Phonograph Co., who hired him as the company’s agent for the western part of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Autant-Lara
Claude Autant-Lara (; 5 August 1901 – 5 February 2000) was a French film director, screenwriter, set designer and costume designer who worked in films for over 50 years. He made films characterised by bourgeois Realism (arts), realism, anti-clericalism and sexual frankness, often from literary sources. His career was frequently marked by controversy. Even though he was considered left-wing during most of his life, in his late 80s he was elected to the European Parliament as a member for the far-right National Rally, National Front: he stepped down two months later after making antisemitism, antisemitic statements. Early life Claude Autant-Lara was born on 5 August 1901 at Luzarches in Val-d'Oise. Édouard Autant, his father, was an architect, and his mother, Louise Lara, was an actress from the Comédie-Française. They were founders of the cultural group "Art et Action", which gave their son an early introduction to the theatre.Joël Magny"Autant-Lara, Claude (1901–2000)" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jack London
John Griffith London (; January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction. London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal welfare, Labor rights, workers' rights and socialism.Swift, John N. "Jack London's 'The Unparalleled Invasion': Germ Warfare, Eugenics, and Cultural Hygiene." American Literary Realism, vol. 35, no. 1, 2002, pp. 59–71. .Hensley, John R. "Eugenics and Social Darwinism in Stanley Waterloo's 'The Story of Ab' and Jack London's 'Before Adam.'" Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 25, no. 1, 2002, pp. 23–37. . London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
To Build A Fire
"To Build a Fire" is a short story by American author Jack London. There are two versions of this story. The first one was published in 1902, and the other was published in 1908. The story written in 1908 has become an often anthologized classic, while the 1902 story is less well known. The 1908 version is about an unnamed male protagonist who ventures out in the subzero boreal forest Taiga or tayga ( ; , ), also known as boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by pinophyta, coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches. The taiga, or boreal forest, is the world's largest land biome. I ... of the Yukon Territory. He is followed by a native dog and is en route to visit his friends—ignoring warnings from an older man from Sulphur Creek about the dangers of hiking alone in extreme cold. The protagonist underestimates the harsh conditions and freezes to death after his fire is doused and he is unable to re-light it. In the 1902 versi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War I
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting took place mainly in European theatre of World War I, Europe and the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I, Middle East, as well as in parts of African theatre of World War I, Africa and the Asian and Pacific theatre of World War I, Asia-Pacific, and in Europe was characterised by trench warfare; the widespread use of Artillery of World War I, artillery, machine guns, and Chemical weapons in World War I, chemical weapons (gas); and the introductions of Tanks in World War I, tanks and Aviation in World War I, aircraft. World War I was one of the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflicts in history, resulting in an estimated World War I casualties, 10 million military dead and more than 20 million wounded, plus some 10 million civilian de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anamorphic Widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen (also called full-height anamorphic or FHA) is a process by which a widescreen image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium (photographic film or MPEG-2 standard-definition frame, for example) with a narrower aspect ratio, reducing the horizontal resolution of the image while keeping its full original vertical resolution. Compatible play-back equipment (a projector with modified lens, or a digital video player or set-top box) can then expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen image. This is typically used to allow one to store widescreen images on a medium that was originally intended for a narrower ratio, while using as much of the frame – and therefore recording as much detail – as possible. The technique comes from cinema, when a film would be framed and recorded as widescreen but the picture would be "squashed together" using a special concave lens to fit into non-widescreen 1.37:1 aspect ratio film. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Online Etymology Dictionary
Etymonline, or ''Online Etymology Dictionary'', sometimes abbreviated as OED (not to be confused with the ''Oxford English Dictionary'', which the site often cites), is a free online dictionary that describes the etymology, origins of English language, English words, written and compiled by Douglas R. Harper. Description Douglas R. Harper is an American Civil War historian and copy editor for LNP Media Group. He compiled the etymology dictionary to record the history and evolution of more than 50,000 words, including slang and technical terms. The core of its etymology information stems from ''The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology'' by Robert Barnhart, Ernest Klein's ''Comprehensive Etymology Dictionary of the English Language'', ''The Middle English Compendium'', ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', and the 1889–1902 ''Century Dictionary''. Harper also researches on digital archives. On the ''Etymonline'' homepage, Harper says that he considers himself "essentially and for the m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Collins English Dictionary
The ''Collins English Dictionary'' is a printed and online dictionary of English. It is published by HarperCollins in Glasgow. It was first published in 1979. Corpus The dictionary uses language research based on the Collins Corpus, which is continually updated and has over 20 billion words. Editions * The current edition is the 14th; it was published on 31 August 2023, with more than 732,000 words, meanings, and phrases (not 730,000 headwords) and 9,500 place names and 7,300 biographies. A newer edition of the 14th edition was published 7 May 2024. * The previous edition was the 13th edition, which was published in November 2018. * A special "30th Anniversary" 10th edition was published in 2010. * Earlier editions were published once every 3 or 4 years. History The 1979 edition of the dictionary, with Patrick Hanks as editor and Laurence Urdang as editorial director, was the first British English dictionary to be typeset from the output from a computer database in a specif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anamorphosis
Anamorphosis is a distorted projection that requires the viewer to occupy a specific vantage point, use special devices, or both to view a recognizable image. It is used in painting, photography, sculpture and installation, toys, and film special effects. The word is derived from the Greek prefix ''ana-'', meaning "back" or "again", and the word ''morphe'', meaning "shape" or "form". Extreme anamorphosis has been used by artists to disguise caricatures, erotic and scatological scenes, and other furtive images from a casual spectator, while revealing an undistorted image to the knowledgeable viewer. Types of projection There are two main types of anamorphosis: ''perspective'' (oblique) and ''mirror'' (catoptric). More complex anamorphoses can be devised using distorted lenses, mirrors, or other optical transformations. An oblique anamorphism forms an affine transformation of the subject. Early examples of Perspective (graphical), perspectival anamorphosis date to the Renaissa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
