Why Man Creates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Winning Animated Look at Creativity (1968)

in Art, Film, History | April 27th, 2012

Maybe you already had a fas­ci­na­tion with Saul Bass’ cel­e­brat­ed movie title sequences, or maybe you gained one from yes­ter­day’s post about the cur­rent design­ers he’s inspired. Either way, you can round out your under­stand­ing of the man’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty by watch­ing Why Man Cre­ates (part one, part two), the ani­mat­ed film by Bass and his wife/collaborator Elaine which won the 1968 Acad­e­my Award for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. An eight-part med­i­ta­tion on the nature of cre­ativ­i­ty, the film mix­es ani­ma­tion and live action, using Bass’ advanced reper­toire of opti­cal tech­niques, to look at the issues sur­round­ing how and why humans have, through­out the his­to­ry of civ­i­liza­tion, kept on mak­ing things. It begins with ear­ly hunters felling a beast and mak­ing a cave paint­ing out of it. From that cave ris­es a tow­er built out of every major phase of human civ­i­liza­tion: the wheel near the bot­tom, the pyra­mids some­what high­er up, the lit­er­al dark­ness of the Dark Ages as the cam­era ris­es high­er still, ulti­mate­ly capped by a heap of planes, trains, and auto­mo­biles. One won­ders how Bass might, in an update, have stacked his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the inter­net atop of all this, but the sequence’s dat­ed­ness costs it none of its vir­tu­os­i­ty.

Some of Why Man Cre­ates’ sub­se­quent chap­ters, in their bold late-six­ties “trip­pi­ness,” may strike you as more dat­ed than vir­tu­osic. But it would take a hard­ened view­er indeed not to crack a smile at Bass’ Pythonesque turn when a drawn hand flips open the tops of a series of unthink­ing par­ty­go­ers’ heads, reveal­ing the empti­ness inside. In its 29 short min­utes, the film also looks at the cre­ative strug­gle in terms of the coarse­ness of eval­u­a­tive crowds, the ten­den­cy of suc­cess­ful rad­i­cal ideas to become self-per­pet­u­at­ing insti­tu­tions, and how peo­ple just like things bet­ter when they have Amer­i­can flags on them. Its jour­ney ends in an unex­pect­ed set­ting, amid the toil of agri­cul­tur­al and med­ical sci­en­tists who may pur­sue an idea for years only to find that it has no appli­ca­tion. This note of frus­tra­tion leads into a mon­tage of sun, fire, stat­u­ary, the Sphinx, can­vass­es, and rock­ets. Assem­bled with Bass’ sig­na­ture sub­tle visu­al com­plex­i­ty, it takes us from antiq­ui­ty to moder­ni­ty in a way only he could.

Why Man Cre­ates has been added to our list of Free Oscar Films on the Web as well as our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Just How Small are Atoms? Mind Blowing TEDEd Animation Puts It All Into Perspective

in Education, K-12, Physics, Science | April 26th, 2012

In this new video from TED Edu­ca­tion, teacher and author Jonathan Bergmann uses col­or­ful analo­gies to help us visu­al­ize the scale of the atom and its nucle­us. Bergmann is a pio­neer of the “Flipped Class­room” teach­ing method, which inverts the tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al mod­el of class­room lec­tures fol­lowed by home­work. In a flipped class­room there are no lec­tures. Instead, teach­ers assign video lessons like the one above as home­work, and devote their class­room time to help­ing stu­dents work their way through prob­lems. To learn more about the flipped class­room method you can read a recent arti­cle co-authored by Bergmann in The Dai­ly Riff. And to see more TED Edu­ca­tion videos, which come with quizzes and  oth­er sup­ple­men­tary teach­ing mate­ri­als, vis­it the TED­Ed YouTube chan­nel.

PS Find 31 Free Physics Cours­es in our Col­lec­tion of 450 Free Cours­es Online. They’re all from top uni­ver­si­ties — MIT, Stan­ford, Yale and the rest.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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A Quick Video Introduction to the World’s First Asteroid Mining Company

in Astronomy, Video - Science | April 26th, 2012

Per­haps you heard the news this week. Four bil­lion­aires (Lar­ry Page, Eric Schmidt, Ross Per­ot Jr. and Charles Simonyi) have thrown their finan­cial weight behind Plan­e­tary Resources, Inc., a Wash­ing­ton-based start­up with big and bold plans. Before our plan­et runs out of nat­ur­al resources, this ven­ture plans to start extract­ing water and met­als from resource-rich aster­oids fly­ing near Earth. One aster­oid, they spec­u­late, may con­tain more plat­inum than we’ve ever mined from Earth. Above, the com­pa­ny gives you a quick intro­duc­tion to their Sci­Fi-esque plans. The first Plan­e­tary Resources space­craft will launch with­in the next two years. via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics on the Web: Hux­ley, Orwell, Asi­mov, Gaiman & Beyond

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends! They’ll thank you for it.

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The Art of Film and TV Title Design

in Art, Film, Television | April 26th, 2012

PBS’ web series Off Book talks to artists work­ing hard, whether they’re doing so in the street, in tat­too par­lors, on Etsy, or on film and tele­vi­sion title sequences. In the lat­est install­ment above, Karin Fong and Peter Frank­furt dis­cuss their now-icon­ic Mad Men title sequence, as well as their ear­li­er and more trou­bling open­ing cred­its for David Fincher’s Se7en. Ben Con­rad explains how his title work inte­grat­ed into the phys­i­cal world of Ruben Fleis­cher’s Zom­bieland, allow­ing zom­bies to ram­page right through float­ing let­ters announc­ing things like “Colum­bia Pic­tures” and “Pro­duced by Gavin Polone,” and spelling out the num­bered rules of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic sur­vival even as the pro­tag­o­nists observed, bent, and broke them. Jim Hel­ton tells the sto­ry of his back-and-forth with direc­tor Derek Cian­france in design­ing the titles for Blue Valen­tine, which take explod­ing-fire­work imagery and aes­thet­i­cal­ly uni­fy it with the scat­tered mem­o­ries that make up the movie. All of them face the chal­lenge of simul­ta­ne­ous­ly invit­ing audi­ences into a sto­ry, reflect­ing its sen­si­bil­i­ty, and on top of that, mak­ing an orig­i­nal con­tri­bu­tion to the pro­duc­tion as a whole.

Though the meet­ing of design, film, and tele­vi­sion has nev­er been more enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly exam­ined than in this era of inter­net video, this line of work has a rich his­to­ry. After this episode of Off Book’s end cred­its, the inter­vie­wees all give props to title design­er Saul Bass — “Saint Saul,” Frank­furt calls him — who, if you believe them, ele­vat­ed title sequences, cor­po­rate logos, and oth­er pre­vi­ous­ly plain and straight­for­ward means of visu­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion into art forms unto them­selves. Watch Bass’ cre­ations in North By North­west, The Man With the Gold­en Arm, and West Side Sto­ry, some of the ear­li­est title sequences to show­case the for­m’s capac­i­ty for impli­ca­tion and abstrac­tion, and you’ll under­stand his impor­tance to these mod­ern-day design­ers. Per­haps this brief visu­al intro­duc­tion to Bass’ designs, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on Open Cul­ture, will inspire you to get into the busi­ness your­self.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

For­get the Films, Watch the Titles

Cin­e­ma His­to­ry by Titles & Num­bers

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Orson Welles Explains Why Ignorance Was His Major “Gift” to Citizen Kane

in Film | April 26th, 2012

In 1998, Roger Ebert had this to say about Orson Welles’ 1941 clas­sic, Cit­i­zen Kane:

It is one of the mir­a­cles of cin­e­ma that in 1941 a first-time direc­tor; a cyn­i­cal, hard-drink­ing writer; an inno­v­a­tive cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, and a group of New York stage and radio actors were giv­en the keys to a stu­dio and total con­trol, and made a mas­ter­piece. “Cit­i­zen Kane’‘ is more than a great movie; it is a gath­er­ing of all the lessons of the emerg­ing era of sound, just as “Birth of a Nation” assem­bled every­thing learned at the sum­mit of the silent era, and “2001’’ point­ed the way beyond nar­ra­tive. These peaks stand above all the oth­ers.

Cit­i­zen Kane blazed many new trails. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the sto­ry telling, the spe­cial effects, the sound­track — they were all inno­v­a­tive. And they were all woven into an artis­tic whole by a 26 year old direc­tor mak­ing his first film. Years lat­er, Welles explained the alche­my of Kane. Igno­rance, he said, was per­haps the genius of the film. “I did­n’t know what you could­n’t do. I did­n’t delib­er­ate­ly set out to invent any­thing. It just seemed to me, why not? And there is a great gift that igno­rance has to bring to any­thing. That was the gift I brought to Kane, igno­rance.”

Of course, Welles is also quick to rec­og­nize that Gregg Toland — “the great­est cam­era­man who ever lived” — con­tributed to the great­ness of Cit­i­zen Kane too, pro­vid­ing the right spir­it and cin­e­mato­graph­ic touch. If you’re unfa­mil­iar with Toland’s work, we’ve pro­vid­ed a short mini doc­u­men­tary on the leg­endary cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er below. H/T @coudal

Sev­er­al films direct­ed by and star­ring Orson Welles can be found in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Orson Welles Nar­rates Plato’s Cave Alle­go­ry, Kafka’s Para­ble, and Free­dom Riv­er

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Steven Spielberg on the Genius of Stanley Kubrick

in Film | April 25th, 2012

“Nobody could make a movie bet­ter than Stan­ley Kubrick–in his­to­ry,” says Steven Spiel­berg in this reveal­ing 1999 inter­view with British film­mak­er Paul Joyce. Spiel­berg sat down with Joyce just four months after Kubrick­’s sud­den death from a heart attack. He talks about the emo­tion­al effect Kubrick­’s films had on him when he was a young man, the friend­ship the two men shared after Spiel­berg became suc­cess­ful, and Kubrick­’s James Joyce-like abil­i­ty to rein­vent him­self with each new work. “He was a chameleon,” Spiel­berg says. “He nev­er made the same pic­ture twice. Every sin­gle pic­ture is a dif­fer­ent genre, a dif­fer­ent sto­ry, a dif­fer­ent risk. The only thing that bond­ed all of his films was the incred­i­ble vir­tu­oso that he was with craft.”

Note: Paul Joyce filmed sim­i­lar talks with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kid­man, the stars of Kubrick­’s final film Eyes Wide Shut. You can see those inter­views by fol­low­ing these links: Cruise; Kid­man.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Spiel­berg Reacts to the 1975 Oscar Nom­i­na­tions: ‘Com­mer­cial Back­lash’

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

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The Canterbury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Century, Yo

in Literature, Music | April 25th, 2012

Baba Brinkman, a self-pro­claimed “geek rap­per,” has a knack for com­bin­ing hip hop with seri­ous lit­er­a­ture and sci­ence. Last year, we fea­tured his Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion, an homage to Charles Dar­win that he pre­sent­ed in New York City and TEDxS­MU. And, before that, we show­cased Brinkman tak­ing on “Pro­fes­sor Ele­men­tal” in a no-holds-barred British v. Cana­di­an Lin­guis­tics Rap Bat­tle. Fun stuff.

But Brinkman first made his name by stag­ing the The Rap Can­ter­bury Tales, a cre­ative attempt to bring Chaucer’s 14th cen­tu­ry sto­ries into the 21st cen­tu­ry. The show pre­miered at the Edin­burgh Fes­ti­val Fringe in 2004. Then, Brinkman, a Cana­di­an schol­ar of medieval lit­er­a­ture, per­formed his show in sec­ondary schools across Eng­land, before bring­ing his act to the Unit­ed States — to Off Broad­way — late last year, where he got some glow­ing reviews.

Above, we have Brinkman rap­ping the The Miller’s Tale, the sec­ond of Chaucer’s Can­ter­bury Tales, at Bede’s World, 2009. And now that we have you warmed up, we’re going to men­tion Brinkman’s new stu­dio album, The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed, which brings his retelling of Chaucer’s tales to the wider world. You can pre­view his album online right here, and down­load orig­i­nal rap songs (in MP3 for­mat) for what­ev­er price you’re will­ing to pay. Or, find the album on iTunes for $9.99.

You can find The Can­ter­bury Tales (Chaucer’s ver­sion) in our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks col­lec­tions.

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Werner Herzog Reads From Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses

in Books, Film, Radio | April 25th, 2012

Rough­ly since the 2005 release of his wide­ly seen doc­u­men­tary Griz­zly Man, Wern­er Her­zog has come into great demand. He does so not just as a film­mak­er (though he has dozens and dozens of movies of many kinds to his name), or as a writer (though sev­er­al vol­umes of his diaries and one long-form inter­view have appeared as books). Many of Her­zog’s newest fans, lured into the fold by the dis­tinc­tive voiceover nar­ra­tion he records for his doc­u­men­taries, sim­ply want to hear him talk. Hav­ing grown up in Bavaria, honed his craft in Ger­man-lan­guage projects through the sev­en­ties, and more recent­ly put down roots in Los Ange­les, Her­zog com­mu­ni­cates in a man­ner some­how more basic and more intel­lec­tu­al, more and less artic­u­late, than any oth­er pub­lic per­son­al­i­ty alive. In one char­ac­ter­is­tic line from Griz­zly Man, he com­pares his view of nature to his hap­less sub­ject, the late bear enthu­si­ast Tim­o­thy Tread­well: “What haunts me is that, in all the faces of all the bears that Tread­well ever filmed, I dis­cov­er no kin­ship, no under­stand­ing, no mer­cy. I see only the over­whelm­ing indif­fer­ence of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored inter­est in food.”

If you’ve nev­er seen the movie, imag­ine those sen­tences spo­ken with a Teu­ton­i­cal­ly inflect­ed delib­er­ate­ness and the non-native Eng­lish speak­er’s slight hes­i­tan­cy about word choice. Then imag­ine it ulti­mate­ly arriv­ing at the kind of grasp of and rev­er­ence for the mean­ing of those words you tend to have to spend a lot of time star­ing into the abyss to achieve. Giv­en his inter­est in the affect­less sav­agery of the world around us, it comes as no sur­prise that Her­zog counts him­self as a fan of the nov­el­ist Cor­mac McCarthy. Pulled from an episode of NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day, the above clip fea­tures Her­zog read­ing, and thrilling to, a pas­sage from McCarthy’s 1992 nov­el, All the Pret­ty Hors­es. “It can­not get any bet­ter,” he adds, “and for decades we have not had this lan­guage in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture.” Crim­i­nal­ly, he did­n’t direct the adap­ta­tion of All the Pret­ty Hors­es, nor has he direct­ed any oth­er. But until the inevitable day that he does, per­haps he could just record McCarthy’s audio­books?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Reads “Go the F**k to Sleep” in NYC (NSFW)

An Evening With Wern­er Her­zog

Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture: An Open Yale Course

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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