Raymond Kurzweil

  Raymond is an author, inventor and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition, text to speech innovation, speech recognition inventions, and development of electronic keyboard instruments. He is also a big fan of life extension theories, so big that when he dies, he wants his body to be chemically preserved (frozen in liquid nitrogen) so that one day in the future, the technology could revive him. There are a lot of theories of his that are quite interesting, and then there are some which are a little too outside the box. He believes that one day in the future all humans will be able to live forever, using a ton of technology to do so.

War Of The Worlds/Listening to the Broadcast

Orson Welles broadcasted the story of War Of The Worlds as an experiment on the radio. No one truly realized the impact that this would have on the people, and the panic that it sent everywhere. Some people believed that aliens were attacking them, some believe that they saw spaceships in the sky. When asked why the broadcast was sent, Orson Welles apologised and said that it all was a joke. He realized that more people actually believed everything this "magic box" spoke, and wanted to see if people would believe that an alien attack was occurring if spoken from the magic box. It turned out sour for those who believed. Even weeks after the initial broadcast, firefighters and police officers were heading into the woods and mountains to tell the hiding people that there was no attack. This is what power the radio had during that time period.

After listening to the entire broadcast myself, I can fully understand why people would panic the way they did when it first aired. The first half an hour was a non stop commercial free intro for the story. It made it seem realistic, thus creating the illusion of a realistic alien attack. It reminded me of the broadcasts I heard on 9/11. I remember being picked up early from school, because I live on Long Island, and we had no idea what was going on. On the way home I heard the live coverage in the city via radio, and I could hear the screams and fire/police trucks in the background. It scared the crap out of me, and that's what I felt when I heard War Of The Worlds.

Artist Takes Every Drug Known to Man, Draws Self Portraits After Each Use

Absolutely brilliant!

http://cultso.com/artist-takes-every-drug-known-to-man-draws-self-portraits-after-each-use/

Earthquake

I asked my parents if they ever seen this movie, and both of them did. My father along with his four older sisters and younger brother went to see it together. My dad and uncle loved it, and my aunts were freaked out by the big booming sounds. My mother saw it with some of her friends, and they all freaked out. My mom claims this movie is the reason she doesn't like action/violent movies today. My dad says the movie is the reason he loves action/violent movies today. So as you can see, there was a big impact towards society back then when this movie first came out.

Wendy Carlos

 Wendy (Walter) was one of the first people to create music purely from converted synthesized sounds. She is famous for producing the music for Stanley Kubrik's films. She created the Moog Synthesizer, which was used to re-create an eerie version of the Ninth Symphony in A Clockwork Orange as well as the obscure music for The Shining. She also used a device called the spectrum follower, which recreated the sounds of musical instruments as artificial voice waves. I believe that her music influenced the dark tone of both Kubrick movies, and gave them both a unique sense of style during the 70's.

Singin' in the Rain

In the movie, A Clockwork Orange, the main character Alex sings Singin' in the Rain during a vicious rape scene near the beginning of the movie. The reason behind this usage of a cheerful song in contrast to the ultra-violence depicted was left unclear throughout the movie. Some speculated that it was used last minute to heighten the drama during the scene. It did prove to be useful however when Alex returned to the same house after his rehabilitation. He started whistling the tune while taking a bath, and the man who lives there suddenly remembered the attack. Some also believed it to be a metaphor for Alex's state of mind when committing ultra-violence. I don't agree with that, because I believe Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was the metaphor for Alex, not Singin'. Either way, using such a mood lifting tune for this violent movie was nothing short of genius. Whenever I hear that song, I immediately think of this movie. That is what I think they were aiming for.

Technicolor

    

    The history behind the revolutionary technicolor motion pictures was nothing short of astonishing. When it first began, the movie industry filmed a shot twice simultaneously using red and green filters. Then, they would take the colored strips and burn them into black and white film, overlapping each other. This was called the additive process. Eventually, the industry realized that there was a limitation using the additive process, and thus explored into the subtractive process using red, green and blue filters. This ended up producing a wider range of colors and did not require special color reels or processing equipment, and thus became the movie industry standard.
    One problem with technicolor was that it was expensive to produce, thus only large companies at the time had the money and resources to produce it. Also, it required a ton more lighting in order to catch images, so the sets were always very hot, and the electric bills were very expensive. The Walt Disney Company became one of the firsts to use technicolor, evident in their first animated movie, Snow White. Eventually, other movie studios were able to afford technicolor, and movies such as The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain were created.  It was definitely a stepping stone in the movie industry, and paved the way towards digital movie productions later in the future.