On my visit to the Museum of Moving Images, everything our tour guide explained to me was completely new. I really enjoyed learning what I did. I don’t remember the names of the programs/exhibits we went to but I do remember what they do and what I learned from them.
I learned about the recording studio. There I learned that when actor’s lines aren’t caught on the microphone, dubbing for other languages, voice-overs for censorship, and for animation, they go into a similar place like we did to do so. They read their scripts while looking at their mouths to line up what they are saying so that it will look proper. We had a rehearsal try and then it recorded us so that we hear back and see if our lines matched up with the mouths. My line was from Coming to America where Eddie Murphy character says, “When you think of garbage, think of Akeem!” It was a bit confusing to hear his voice in the headphones but I got it right on the recorded try. I also learned that if they miss a simple word in their lines, they will have to re-do that line over again. I would say doing this can be very strenuous.
Another thing I learned was how live television works. We didn’t get to spend much time on this subject because it was a pretty simple concept. We saw two big television screens one with nine small squares inside of it and another with the cable viewing screen taking up about a third of the screen with the people in the office, doing absolutely nothing but looking at their screens. The TV with the nine small screens was to show us the different camera views of what the audiences will be watching. It also showed us of the people that were in charge of announcing what the people were watching, each person was in charge of their own square. In the booth we say the director giving direction to what was going on.
One of the things I found most interesting was the voice and sound effect area. We went over shots of the movie Titanic. We saw parts of the movie with no sound at all just moving images, with just the voice, than just the sound effects, after we viewed all of them separately the tour guide than played it all together. We learned that when there are distant scenes or shots of a movie, such as when they are in a swimming pool to do the scene of the boat sinking. The people will go into the recording studio to say their lines because at the distance that they are in and record the lines they may have. When it comes to the sound effects, the tour guide explained to us the people who find and put together these effects are called Foley artists. The reason for them is they want to amplify the sound so that the audience watching these movies can feel like they are really there and that it is more realistic.
She had us try to guess how they created the sounds before actually telling us. Some of the sounds they make themselves or simply download it from the internet. There was a shot where Rose jumped off a part of the ship and onto the wooden floor. That sound was created by an actually wooden board. There was another shot where the cords of the ship snapped off and hit the water, which was created by a whip. The last shot we saw was where the ship was breaking in half and slammed into the water. This sound effect I found most interesting. It was made with crushing a soda can and an elephant. When she played it back for us with all the sounds, it was a little disappointing because you can now tell what everything was and it sounded pretty fake. However I still enjoyed learning about this.
We than went on to see different props from different movies. Things like the sweater from Nightmare on Elm Street I believe the third movie from the series. This prop was used for when they had to get live people to stretch through the sweater in a gooey skin. Another prop was a doll from The Exorcist for when the character Regan (a little girl who was possessed by a demon) head turned in a full circle. Of course the actress Linda Blair couldn’t really do that so they got a doll with a rotating head for the movie. We also saw miniatures of houses so they can get close ups of really big buildings.
We also saw what people used to watch ten minute films in (forgot the name). It was a podium looking stand where it had a small piece to put your eyes through and inside of it had the reel of film. It was pretty interesting to see this because of how it was constructed. We then went into a room where we say the different make-up and wax they used to make young actors/actresses look older, like the mask Robin Williams used in Mrs. Doubtfire. Also the cut and stitched legs of Winona Ryder’s from Black Swan
In that room we also saw different pictures of actors/actresses – primary the white ones. This is where the tour guide explained to us that the reason why they had mostly white people on the wall was because the film (along with the rest of the world at the time) was segregated. That the three ‘colored’ people on the walls played parts like housekeeper. We also learned about an Asian actress named Anna May Wong. We were informed that she was a pretty famous colored actress who tried to get a part of an Asian woman but was turned down because she was ‘too Asian’. Instead they got a white woman to play the part and put makeup on her to make her look Asian.
The last thing we saw and learned about was video games. We learned about the first video game ever made. It was a simple black background screen with two squares (the players) and a line between them and a smaller square which was the ball. The controllers were bulky and it had two big knobs, a smaller knob below and a knob on the side. The games played on this console were rather simple kinds of games. This game was similar to tennis. It was pretty fun to play but I would definitely get bored of it quick.
Overall I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this trip. I will definitely be going again. As a media student I feel this will be really helpful for having some background knowledge if I want to get into the movie industry. Thank you for coming up with this trip.
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