<editorsnote>Hi, I'm Jen Friel, and we here at TNTML examine the lives of nerds outside of the basements and into the social media, and dating world. We have over 75 peeps that write about their life in real time. (Real nerds, real time, real deal.) Sit back, relax, and enjoy some of the stories!!</editorsnote>
Dude, and I just thought the Greeks were all naked all the time, and didn't really care about painting clothing on 'em. #WHOKNEW!!!!
(Per I09:) Original Greek statues were brightly painted, but after thousands of years, those paints have worn away. Find out how shining a light on the statues can be all that's required to see them as they were thousands of years ago.
Although it seems impossible to think that anything could be left to discover after thousands of years of wind, sun, sand, and art students, finding the long lost patterns on a piece of ancient Greek sculpture can be as easy as shining a lamp on it. A technique called ‘raking light' has been used to analyze art for a long time. A lamp is positioned carefully enough that the path of the light is almost parallel to the surface of the object. When used on paintings, this makes brushstrokes, grit, and dust obvious. On statues, the effect is more subtle. Brush-strokes are impossible to see, but because different paints wear off at different rates, the stone is raised in some places – protected from erosion by its cap of paint – and lowered in others. Elaborate patterns become visible.
Ultraviolet is also used to discern patterns. UV light makes many organic compounds fluoresce. Art dealers use UV lights to check if art has been touched up, since older paints have a lot of organic compounds and modern paints have relatively little. On ancient Greek statues, tiny fragments of pigment still left on the surface glow bright, illuminating more detailed patterns.
Once the pattern is mapped, there is still the problem of figuring out which paint colors to use. A series of dark blues will create a very different effect than gold and pink. Even if enough pigment is left over so that the naked eye can make out a color, a few thousand years can really change a statue's complexion. There's no reason to think that color seen today would be anything like the hues the statues were originally painted.
There is a way around this dilemma. The colors may fade over time, but the original materials – plant and animal-derived pigments, crushed stones or shells – still look the same today as they did thousands of years ago. This can also be discovered using light.
Infrared and X-ray spectroscopy can help researchers understand what the paints are made of, and how they looked all that time ago. Spectroscopy relies on the fact that atoms are picky when it comes to what kind of incoming energy they absorb. Certain materials will only accept certain wavelengths of light. Everything else they reflect. Spectroscopes send out a variety of wavelengths, like scouts into a foreign land. Inevitably, a few of these scouts do not come back. By noting which wavelengths are absorbed, scientists can determine what materials the substance is made of. Infrared helps determine organic compounds. X-rays, because of their higher energy level, don't stop for anything less than the heavier elements, like rocks and minerals. Together, researchers can determine approximately what color a millennia-old statue was painted.
1984 took LSD, warped itself with satire and morphed with Monty Python. Brazil could very well be one of the greatest movies of all time. A story of a man chasing the woman he loves, dreams of clouds and safe havens, while falling uncontrollably into the depths of red tape and paperwork. An everyman, Jonathan Pryce, plays Sam Lowry, a low level clerk in a dead end job who doesn’t want a promotion. It isn’t until he becomes obsessed with a woman that he decides to climb the corporate ladder to find her. Along the way he illegally fixes his air conditioning in his apartment, fights the law enforcement, helps a suspected terrorist escape and ends up being tortured for information. Okay, not the most uplifting tale ever spun, but God it’s awesome.
Sometimes the world’s most complex horrors can begin with the simplest incident. An anal retentive clerk keeps his desk immaculate. The tiniest speck of dirt doesn’t go unnoticed. Then he spots an annoying fly buzzing around his office. Not letting this pest ruin his day he climbs up on his desk and kills the fly with a stack of papers. A moment later the dead bug drops from the ceiling and falls into a printer, changing one letter in one name, thus setting the entire story in motion.
Ian Holm plays Sam’s boss, a pathetic weasel who tricks Sam into doing paperwork for him. Holm plays the incompetent employer who can’t tie his shoes without Sam with a brilliant flare. Fearing that Sam might accept a promotion and leave him to fend for himself in his job he signs a letter for his subordinate rejecting a promotion to Information Retrieval. But that will all change when Sam realizes that by accepting a promotion he will get closer to the woman of his dreams. Unfortunately, his boss, corrupt law enforcement and red tape will force him down in into the depths of bureaucratic hell.
Whoever would think that an air conditioner repair man could be a criminal? Well, in a world run by paperwork a man who decides to operate outside the system will be hunted by the law, no matter how absurd the crime might seem. Robert DeNiro plays Harry Tuttle, a rogue repair man, who has left the system and roams the city at night searching for broken air conditioners to fix. When Sam’s air conditioner breaks and he is unable to contact Central Services to get a repair man to fix it dependable Harry Tuttle arrives in the middle of the night, dressed in black, to lend him a hand. It’s only fitting that Harry will be destroyed by the very same paperwork that he avoids.
In any good satire the villain is always on the so called good side. Michael Palin, from the Monty Python troupe, plays Jack, a sadistic officer who tortures suspects based on thin evidence. Michael Palin is charming and delightfully creepy at the same time. When we are introduced to him we don’t think he’s such a bad guy until the end when he tortures Sam to get him to talk. Can we trust our law enforcement? We create a system to help us live our lives, but can that same system end up running us?
The only motivation for Sam wanting to accept promotion is to find a woman he’s been dreaming about. In his dreams she is a timid, beautiful, damsel in distress, but in real life she is a cigarette smoking, truck driving badass who doesn’t take crap from anyone, including Sam. The closer Sam gets to having her the more the system begins to swallow him up. When we chase our dreams do we lose touch with reality? If we don’t tend to our responsibilities and just fantasize about where we’d like to be we will end up living in delusion.
The last ten minutes of the movie can really be confusing if you don’t pay attention. If you care about Sam and want him to get the girl you might really believe that what’s happening is real. He escapes the torture chamber, blows up the Information Retrieval building and ends up with his woman in a trailer in the woods. Just when you believe that everything has worked out the camera pulls back and we realize he’s still sitting in the torture chamber. Jack wasn’t able to extract any information from him and now Sam is a vegetable living in his own dream world. The look on Sam’s face at the end seems like a state of Nirvana. Did he lose? Did he win? The end is truly an ironic twist. You can be happy and sad for him simultaneously. So remember, chase your dreams without losing touch with reality.
Brazil is more than a satire. It’s more than a sci fi film or a comedy. Brazil is a commentary on modern society. It’s a mixture of the future, the past and encompasses everything that is ridiculous about the twentieth century. From women’s obsession with plastic surgery to faceless terrorists this film reflects our system and how we live our lives. If we could just stop for a moment and think about how we create our own hell maybe we could rise above the system and ultimately live our dreams.
BERLIN — A Polish man living in Germany went about his business for about five years without noticing he had been shot in the head because he was drunk when it happened.
Police in the western city of Bochum said on Tuesday doctors found a .22 caliber bullet in the back of his head after the 35-year-old went to have what he thought was a cyst removed.
Presented with the 5.6mm projectile, the man recalled he had received a blow to the head around midnight at a New Year's party "in 2004 or 2005", but had forgotten about it because he had been "very drunk," a police spokesman said.
"He told us he remembered having a sore head, but that he wasn't really one for going to the doctor," the spokesman said.
The wound later healed around the bullet and it was not until the man decided to have the lump examined due to recurring pains that the discovery was made.
Police said they were not treating the incident as suspicious as the bullet might have got lodged in the man's head when a reveler fired a gun in celebration.
"It may have been a shot fired up in the air which entered his head on the way down," the spokesman said.
The resident of Herne, who has lived in Germany for several years, was expected to be released from hospital later this week after the bullet was removed on Friday, police said.
The Peculiars is a actually a spin-off of my webcomic "The Pure and Hidden Truth" (www.pureandhiddentruth.com). It tells the story of a team of crime fighters based in Baltimore City that have just gone public as they take on their first big challenge of facing off with a domestic terror cell of dangerously imaginative mimes.
I've long suspected Mimes to be evil! Interesting villains to say the least; Mimes can do amazing things with their bodies. Have you cast actual Mimes and what feats can we expect to see from them?
During the casting process when I was casting the lead villain and and "henchmimes" I was very disappointed that I was auditioning ordinary people for these roles. And then I lucked out one day when I got an e-mail from an actual professional mime from New York! A week later the person came down to Baltimore for dinner and to talk about the movie and was cast on the spot for the lead villain! What's cool is that the actor is a professional mime and can coach other villain actors during filming. I don't want to give away too much of what these mimes are capable of but let's just say that the phrase "dangerously imaginative" alludes to the very real possibility that their "miming" of various actions or wielding certain objects could pose a serious threat to our heroes... ;)
Very cool. So you say The Peculiars is a spin-off of your webcomic. Do the characters appear in The Pure and Hidden Truth? Are the two related in other ways?
So far The Peculiars are not mentioned in the comic as I have yet to get that far in the comic's current storyline. Rest assured everything all takes place in the same universe however. I like to call it the "Pure and Hiddenverse," haha! Even though The Peculiars as a superhero team haven't appeared in the comic yet there are quite a few characters from the comic that will make cameo appearances in the film. The cool thing about The Pure and Hidden Truth being a photocomic is that I can use the actual talent from the comic's photo shoots to appear in this film and vice-versa!
How do your skills as a film-maker translate into making a photocomic?
Well, I've always wanted to make movies ever since I was a little kid, so for the longest time I knew how I wanted my movies to look on screen. When I decided to do a photocomic I already had a keen idea of how my photos would look based on how the scene played out in my head when I wrote my script. Plus it helps that my comic was actually adapted from a sci-fi/fantasy TV-series pilot episode I wrote a couple years ago. The comic has been toned back due to not having all of the resources I needed at the time but the comic is still very faithful to the original plot.
I recognize the open-source character Jenny Everywhere. Why did you decide to use her and how has she been adapted to fit the Pure-and-Hiddenverse?
I chose to utilize the Jenny Everywhere character for a variety of reasons. One of the primary reasons was because I thought it was an amazing idea to have an open source character than anyone can use and I knew that I could pioneer a new frontier with the character by bringing her out of the normal comic medium she's typically found in and to bring her into a live-action form. This is the first live motion Jenny Everywhere and I'm proud to have done it. Another reason I wanted to use Jenny Everywhere was to be able to have an already established Jenny Everywhere fan base that I can outreach too. She fits in the Pure and Hiddenverse with a few tweaks to the normal way she's portrayed in webcomics. I have her set up as a teleporter with some other neat tricks up her sleeves that you'll just have to see the movie in order to find out. ;)
Speaking of fan bases, what sort of reaction have you received since casting Obama Girl?
Its been a very positive response. Mostly from peers and the cast. The news hasn't quite hit the mainstream yet because we had just made it official. The cool thing about it was that last summer I joked I would put her in a movie and my friends laughed. Fast forward to today and they aren't laughing any more!
You're currently raising funds for The Peculiars on Kickstarter and have so far raised nearly $4,000 (Congratulations by the way)! Are you worried at having only 7 days left to raise $4,500?
Yes, I am a little disappointed in the progress our kickstarter fundraiser has generated. We were really hoping online communities would support our project by featuring us. Despite many press releases not one blog has mentioned anything about our story. It isn't impossible for us to pull it off but its damn well going to be very difficult.
Oh dear! Well, I'm featuring you and hopefully others will follow suit *glares about* They'd better... What will happen if you don't get enough pledges by August 31st?
If we don't succeed with this kickstarter run we will still start filming in August but I'll have to be very conscious about how I go about things and the filming process may go slower than I originally intended for it to be. We are in a recession and making a feature length superhero film is definitely counter-intuitive to scrimping and saving in order to make ends meet and survive in today's economy. I have a lot of faith in my project and what this project represents so it's well worth the trials and tribulations I'm going to 'suffer' through. Other than that I'm still pretty positive about the whole project. Sometimes you have setbacks. If everything in life was easy what would be the point in living? Y'know? That's the way I see it.
Good attitude! What advice would you give to aspiring Indie Filmmakers?
My best advice for any aspiring film makers is to get out there and do what you want to do. Movie-making isn't rocket science -- it's a simplistic and pretty straightforward process -- but that doesn't mean it can be difficult at times. With such easy accessibility to affordable equipment to film with there shouldn't be any excuse to hold you back from doing it. For the longest time I kept making up excuses for myself to keep from working on The Peculiars. "I wasn't ready yet" or "I needed more experience." No, if you feel it's in your heart to tackle a project then I say tackle it. The only person holding you back will only be yourself.
Now the big one: Do you believe in aliens?
Do I believe in aliens? Of course I do! I believe it is too self-centred to believe that humans are the only living sentient life in this infinite universe. I kind of have a romanticised view of otherworldly life. I really wish I could see what their lives are like. It's very interesting. Now do I believe they are visiting Earth? That's where the line between science-fact and science fiction starts to get a little blurry. That's why it makes such a fun playground to work in with these types of projects. I don't know WHO I would be without science fiction.
Okay this is the last question and it isn’t really a question. This is open mic – Your chance to say anything else you want to say about The Peculiars.
I am very proud to be working on The Peculiars. Independent movies haven't truly tackled the superhero genre because the market for them is dominated by Hollywood production studios. The Peculiars marks the first serious attempt at doing a superhero film on a limited budget. If we play our cards right this very well could open up a new genre of indie films. There's low budget comedies, dramas, action, horror (currently the king of low budget filmmaking) - but we'd like to add superhero flicks to the roster. That's what we're hoping for! Please support and join us, a bunch of twenty-somethings not much different from yourselves, as we take this project head on and make some kind of history. This is a good time to be a filmmaker and an even greater time to help be a part of this amazing project. Thank you for your time everyone and I'll see you at the movies!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 3:42PM
Infrared and X-ray spectroscopy can help researchers understand what the paints are made of, and how they looked all that time ago. Spectroscopy relies on the fact that atoms are picky when it comes to what kind of incoming energy they absorb. Certain materials will only accept certain wavelengths of light. Everything else they reflect. Spectroscopes send out a variety of wavelengths, like scouts into a foreign land. Inevitably, a few of these scouts do not come back. By noting which wavelengths are absorbed, scientists can determine what materials the substance is made of. Infrared helps determine organic compounds. X-rays, because of their higher energy level, don't stop for anything less than the heavier elements, like rocks and minerals. Together, researchers can determine approximately what color a millennia-old statue was painted.
