Moving print blocks at Beijing opening ceremony...
If you missed the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, track down a video and watch it...it was arguably one of the best produced and executed "live events" I've ever seen.For we bookish folks, there was a stunning section with 2008 "wood block" cubes, tipping a hat to China's invention of movable type. What these blocks did must be seen to be believed. Suffice it to say that I assumed through most of it that it was a pneumatically driven computer program...only to find at the end that each block had a human in it...standing and dropping according to the choreography.
I saw an interview today with Zhang Yimou (Chinese director and producer of 2008 Opening Ceremony) in which he said, of the Movable Type section that those men (and women?) spent the last FOUR MONTHS practicing what we saw last night at least EIGHT HOURS a day (significantly more in the last weeks). He stated that never once were they able to do it flawlessly...until last night. I will post a video of this section as soon as I can find one. Amazing.
Labels: geekdom, random bits
posted by LuxMentis @ 2:33 PM
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2 Comments:
Hi Ian,
I agree that this was one fantastic spectacle! I was transfixed by the section your referencing. I remain unconvinced that it has anything to do with movable type. It is, however, an incredible use of "l'ecran d'epingles" or "pin screen" a groundbreaking animation method invented by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker in the 1920s.
You might know the pin screen from the toy version, a little box with dull pins which mimics the shape of your hand or whatever three dimensional object is placed against it. The big pin screens, used for animation, had millions of pins, and the depth/height of the pins would cast shadows to make an image. The ability to "erase" pieces of the image made it a very efficient tool for animation. You can check out some of Alexeieff's pin screen animations at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCQFVEGQ9xk
And see an example of the more prosaic version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0nybVW_yS8&feature=related
Well, it was intended to be a homage to the Chinese invention of movable type (this from the producer)...completely agree re the pin screen effect. It was just brilliant. I am waiting to find video of that section...my memory does not do it justice.
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