Film, once exclusively the domain of still photography, lends its name to the industry and art of movie-movie making, otherwise known as The Motion Picture Industry. In the motion picture sense, a film is a lengthy series of still images on a strip of plastic. This strip is run through a projector and shown on a screen. The motion of the film through the projector creates the illusion of movement. Films, in the motion picture sense, are created by photographing actual scenes with a motion picture camera or by photographing drawings or miniature models using techniques of animation; in today’s industry, animation is generally computer generated (CGI and computer animation, as opposed to that hand-wrought stuff.) Unlike still photographs, films also include an optical soundtrack (the graphic recording of spoken words, music, and other sounds that accompany the images, thus rendering their stories more multidimensional [in a somewhat more literal sense] than still photographs are designed to manage. Though the idea of film is universal (or mostly universal) all films are culture-specific and can be seen as autobiographical announcements made by the cultures in question. Because of the versatility of motion pictures, cinematic film is a source of popular entertainment, education, and indoctrination. Because of the culture-specific qualities of the motion picture, the associated arts of dubbing, subtitling, and translating have also either come into existence, or have evolved in complexity. During my life in the Czech Republic, I’d learned (admittedly second hand) that the arts of translating and dubbing have created very specific sub-categories of “voice over” dubbing. There is a voice actor in Prague who is recognized as the Official Voice of Keeanu Reeves, in Czech. Apparently, this actor is able to directly translate Mr. Reeves’ vocal mannerisms into their Czech equivalents. This is a thing that is far more complicated than it sounds, especially as Czech and English bear such striking differences from one another. A voice actor able to deconstruct social/linguistic assumptions and accurately “translate” them is probably also a brilliant anthropological and linguistic observer. That he can observe and participate or at least recreate the cumulative effects of culture specific linguistic assumptions is an indication that his ability stems from an almost supernatural bit of insight into the US-American linguistic psyche. Motion picture film works in ways that are the visual equivalent of at least one particular Czech brain. The particular characteristics of human perception illuminate the effectiveness of this artistic/indoctrinatory/educational medium. Motion pictures rely on and work because of a series of still photographs, recognized as frames. When a film is played, the projector utilizes a rotating shutter to darken the screen as each frame is advance. This shutter opens when the next frame is in proper placement. These interruptions are not noticed by the human eye/brain complex retains an image for a fraction of a second after the image itself is no longer visible. This phenomenon is known as the persistence of vision, and the psychological perception of actual movement is known, in a scientifically-poetic sense, as “beta movement,” a kind of visual echo. Motion pictures fascinate me because of these physiological/psychological effects, and as I fiddled around, making something out of a different photograph all together, I was struck by the manner in which my fiddling made me think of a strip of variably-transparent film. The image in question is also the basis (somewhat) of a story, and I’ll be quite anxious to see how that turns our, or what tale it actually reveals. Until then, however, here is an image. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great week.