Thomas Dolby Explains How a Synthesizer Works on a Jim Henson Kids Show (1989)

in Music, Technology, Television | May 21st, 2014

We’ve all heard the musi­cal fruits of audio syn­the­sis, espe­cial­ly if we reg­u­lar­ly lis­ten to the pop of the 1980s. But how, exact­ly, does a syn­the­siz­er work? Ask a mod­ern elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­ast and the answer may come out too tech­ni­cal, and at too much length, to bear. But pio­neer­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-mind­ed singer-song­writer Thomas Dol­by, he of “She Blind­ed Me with Sci­ence” (though I’ve always pre­fer his more ele­giac num­bers like “Air­waves”), can give you a clear­er, more con­cise expla­na­tion.


In fact, he gets it sim­ple to the point of child-friend­li­ness — so sim­ple that he gives it on a chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram. The Ghost of Faffn­er Hall, which ran in late 1989 in Eng­land and Amer­i­ca, taught lessons about music with a gallery of famous per­form­ers — Bob­by McFer­rin, Joni Mitchell, James Tay­lor, Mark Knopfler — in a pup­pet-rich set­ting. Those pup­pets, the denizens (liv­ing and dead) of the tit­u­lar Faffn­er Hall, came built by Jim Hen­son’s Crea­ture Shop, known for their mas­tery of Mup­pet craft.

Dol­by’s illus­tra­tion of a syn­the­siz­er’s oper­a­tion involves an unusu­al work of Mup­petry: a fly in a match­box. “A syn­the­siz­er con­sists of two things,” he says, “an oscil­la­tor and a fil­ter. The oscil­la­tor con­trols the pitch of the sound, and the fil­ter con­trols the tone.” Out, then, comes the box and its slight­ly unwill­ing (Mup­pet) inhab­i­tant. “I want you to imag­ine the fly is an oscil­la­tor, and this box is a fil­ter.” Dol­by shakes the box, rep­re­sent­ing elec­tri­cal cur­rent through an oscil­la­tor, which makes the fright­ened fly buzz. “The hard­er I shake the box, the high­er the pitch!” To demon­strate fil­tra­tion, he opens and clos­es the match­box, harshen­ing the fly­’s wail (until, indeed, it turns into a cry of “Help!”). If you’d like to hear Dol­by talk more about the inter­sec­tion of his art and his tech­nol­o­gy at a high­er, albeit Mup­pet­less lev­el, have a lis­ten to his appear­ance last year on the Nerdist pod­cast. He long ago, in anoth­er con­text, stat­ed his goal of teach­ing peo­ple that syn­the­siz­ers “don’t have to sound like a crate of mori­bund wasps” — an inter­est­ing thing to accom­plish with a match­box and a super­in­tel­li­gent fly.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dol­by Geek Out and Sing “She Blind­ed Me With Sci­ence”

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot Airs on American TV (1961): Starring Burgess Meredith & Zero Mostel

in Television, Theatre | May 18th, 2014

1961 saw the tele­vi­sion debuts of The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, ABC’s Wide World of Sports, Yogi Bear, and …um, Samuel Beck­et­t’s Wait­ing for Godot, famous­ly described by the­ater crit­ic Vivian Merci­er as “a play in which noth­ing hap­pens, twice.”

Burgess Mered­ith and Zero Mos­tel, both try­ing to sal­vage careers after being black­list­ed in the McCarthy peri­od, starred as Vladimir and Estragon, in WNTA-TV’s Play of the Week series’ no-frills pro­duc­tion. In con­trast to the recent Broad­way revival star­ring griz­zled,  grub­by  knights of the realm, Ian McK­ellen and Patrick Stew­art, Mered­ith and Mos­tel make a pret­ty harmless—and appar­ent­ly unharmed—team. Vladimir’s prostate trou­ble was scrubbed from the shoot­ing script, along with some 40 min­utes of the stage ver­sion, five years after its dis­as­trous Amer­i­can pre­miere. 

Alan Schnei­der, who direct­ed that pro­duc­tion, returned to helm the Play of the Week, along with orig­i­nal Amer­i­can cast mem­bers Kurt Kaszn­er and Alvin Epstein, repris­ing their sup­port­ing turns as Poz­zo and Lucky. Schnei­der appears to have had his hands full with the always-larg­er-than-life Mos­tel who chews plen­ty of scenery in addi­tion to his car­rot.

For his part, Mos­tel stat­ed that he “wished to be re-black­list­ed” if that would keep him from ever hav­ing to work with that direc­tor again.

Despite the ten­sion, he and Mered­ith achieve a win­some Lau­rel and Hardy-like rap­port as they plod up and down a paint­ed road with chore­o­graphed aim­less­ness.

It’s still a bit hard for me to imag­ine Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion audi­ences tun­ing-in in num­bers suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy the effort.

To be fair, there were a lot few­er chan­nels then. Play of the Week was a high brow project serv­ing up seri­ous the­atri­cal work on the small screen. The first episode was Judith Ander­son­’s Medea. Com­pared to that, or Shake­speare, or Ibsen, a prostate-free Godot might be passed off as tele­vised enter­tain­ment the whole fam­i­ly could tol­er­ate for an hour and forty-nine min­utes.

If you’re up for it, the entire pro­duc­tion is yours for the view­ing below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Samuel Beck­ett Directs His Absur­dist Play Wait­ing for Godot (1985)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Rare Audio: Samuel Beck­ett Reads Two Poems From His Nov­el Watt

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the award-win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Rehearsal Sessions For Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged Appearance (1993)

in Music, Television | May 14th, 2014

Debut­ing in 1989, MTV’s Unplugged promised to cure the culture’s slick 80s hang­over with acoustic gui­tars and earnest, cof­fee-shop inti­ma­cy from the 90s biggest stars (Mari­ah Carey) and a select few clas­sic giants (McCart­ney, Clap­ton, Dylan, a reformed Kiss). In a series doc­u­ment­ing some icon­ic last or near-last performances—from 10,000 Mani­acs, Alice in Chains—per­haps the most icon­ic was the Novem­ber, 1993 appear­ance of Nir­vana (below), whose trou­bled singer/guitarist over­dosed just weeks into the band’s 1994 Euro­pean tour, then took his life in April of that year. For chil­dren of the decade, Nirvana’s Unplugged appear­ance, though hard to watch in hind­sight, per­haps defines the 90s more than any oth­er TV moment. And yet, writes Andrew Wal­lace Cham­ings in The Atlantic, “it’s worth con­sid­er­ing the per­for­mance as a work of music, not mythol­o­gy. Because as music, it’s incred­i­ble.”

You want inti­ma­cy? “Parts of the Nir­vana set,” writes Cham­ings, “feel so per­son­al it’s awk­ward.” Cobain is cranky in between-song ban­ter, hunched over his gui­tar in his puke green thrift-store cardi­gan, snap­ping at his band­mates and the audi­ence. His per­for­mances are intense and eerie, par­tic­u­lar­ly his cov­er of Lead Belly’s “Where Did You Sleep Last Night,” the last song of the evening, which Neil Young described as “unearth­ly, like a were­wolf.” The band nev­er hid behind a pre-fab­ri­cat­ed mys­tique, but their acoustic set high­lights just how emo­tion­al­ly invest­ed Cobain was in music—his own and oth­ers. Joined by Germs (and lat­er Foo Fighers) gui­tarist Pat Smear, they most­ly eschewed the hits, and played cov­ers by Cobain’s favorite bands: Meat Pup­pets, Bowie, The Vase­lines. You want even more inti­ma­cy? Watch the Unplugged rehearsal ses­sions at the top of the post.

Where the tele­vised Unplugged episode has the loose, infor­mal vibe of band prac­tice with an audi­ence, this rehearsal footage is more of a sound­check, but with some tru­ly beau­ti­ful per­for­mances. Cobain tweaks tech­ni­cal details and gets snip­py with the engi­neer. Accord­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple involved, the rehearsal ses­sions were espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult, with Cobain suf­fer­ing from with­draw­al and gen­er­al­ly ner­vous and unhap­py, almost bail­ing on the show at the last minute. Cobain biog­ra­ph­er Charles Cross quotes one observ­er as say­ing “There was no jok­ing, no smiles, no fun com­ing from him.” Cobain’s request that the stu­dio be dec­o­rat­ed with black can­dles and stargaz­er lilies prompt­ed the pro­duc­er to ask, “You mean like a funer­al?” “Exact­ly,” he said, “like a funer­al.” But it’s the band’s insis­tence that the show be tai­lored to their anti-rock star per­son­al­i­ty that makes the per­for­mances so mem­o­rable. “We’d seen the oth­er Unpluggeds and didn’t like many of them,” recalled Dave Grohl, “because most bands would treat them like rock shows… except with acoustic gui­tars.” Nirvana’s Unplugged was some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent. A tele­vised swan song that was also, in Chaming’s words, “the pret­ti­est noise the band has ever made.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Watch Gumbasia the Jazzy Stop Motion Film That Gave Birth to Gumby (1955)

in Animation, K-12, Television | May 7th, 2014

Like many in the Hon­ey­comb Kids gen­er­a­tion, I did­n’t prop­er­ly appre­ci­ate chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion icon Gum­by until Eddie Mur­phy par­o­died him on Sat­ur­day Night Live. This sparked a revival. Watch­ing Gum­by episodes in the com­pa­ny of oth­er mer­ry young adults reframed my pre­vi­ous­ly held view of him as a rel­ic from a time when TV was bor­ing. Turns out that Gum­by and his equine side­kick Pokey were actu­al­ly pret­ty fun­ny, weird-in-a-good-way, and far more soul­ful than the wit­less flat ani­ma­tion jam­ming the air­waves of my 70s child­hood.

Then, in 2006, the Muse­um of the Mov­ing Image had an exhib­it devot­ed to the work of Art Clokey, father of Gum­by.

I decid­ed to take the kids, gam­bling that they might respond to Gum­by as I did now, not the way I did when I was their age. Their screen time was pret­ty lim­it­ed back then, and as a result, they’d avid­ly watch just about any­thing.

The first video we encoun­tered was Gum­ba­sia, the exper­i­men­tal, char­ac­ter-free, stop motion riff above that Clokey made as a stu­dent at USC. It was pro­duced in 1953 and released in 1955.

Not exact­ly what I’d been prim­ing the chil­dren to expect on the sub­way ride over.

“That’s Gum­by?” they cried in dis­may. “That cube?”

No. But those mor­ph­ing cubes and squig­gles did give birth to an empire, after pro­duc­er and pres­i­dent of the Motion Pic­ture Pro­duc­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, Sam Engel, offered to bankroll a pilot, declar­ing Gum­ba­sia the most excit­ing film he’d ever seen in his life. Clokey was teach­ing Eng­lish at the Har­vard Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my. Engel’s sole wish was to improve the qual­i­ty of chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming. He asked Clokey if he could “make lit­tle clay fig­ures out of that clay and ani­mate them.”

Clokey did just that, with Engel bankrolling the pilot, “Gum­by on the Moon.” The pro­duc­er was so pleased with the result, he refused to take a cut when Gum­by was giv­en a sev­en year con­tract at NBC.

Imag­ine a Cin­derel­la sto­ry like that hap­pen­ing today!

If this small morsel of Gum­by his­to­ry leaves you crav­ing more, book your flight for the inau­gur­al Gum­by Fest in Glen­do­ra, Cal­i­for­nia, where Gum­by grew to matu­ri­ty in “an unas­sum­ing indus­tri­al build­ing.”

You can find Gum­ba­sia in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Big Bang Big Boom: Graf­fi­ti Stop-Motion Ani­ma­tion Cre­ative­ly Depicts the Evo­lu­tion of Life

Watch “Bot­tle,” an Award-Win­ning Stop Motion Ani­mat­ed Tale of Transocean­ic Cor­re­spon­dence

Hard­er Than It Looks: How to Make a Great Stop Motion Ani­ma­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of sev­en books, and cre­ator of the award win­ning East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Mr. Rogers Introduces Kids to Experimental Electronic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nelson (1968)

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | May 2nd, 2014


Exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic musi­cian and inven­tor Bruce Haack’s com­po­si­tions expand­ed many a young con­scious­ness, and taught kids to dance, move, med­i­tate, and to be end­less­ly curi­ous about the tech­nol­o­gy of sound. All of this makes him the per­fect guest for Fred Rogers, who despite his total­ly square demeanor loved bring­ing his audi­ence unusu­al artists of all kinds. In the clips above and below from the first, 1968 sea­son of Mr. Roger’s Neigh­bor­hood, Haack intro­duces Rogers and a group of young­sters to the “musi­cal com­put­er,” a home­made ana­log syn­the­siz­er of his own invention—one of many he cre­at­ed from house­hold items, most of which inte­grat­ed human touch and move­ment into their con­trols, as you’ll see above. In both clips, Haack and long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor Esther Nel­son sing and play charm­ing songs as Nel­son leads them in var­i­ous move­ment exer­cis­es. (The remain­der of the sec­ond video most­ly fea­tures Mr. Roger’s cat.)

Although he’s seen a revival among elec­tron­ic musi­cians and DJs, Haack became best known in his career as a com­pos­er of children’s music, and for good rea­son. His 1962 debut kid’s record Dance, Sing & Lis­ten is an absolute clas­sic of the genre, com­bin­ing a dizzy­ing range of musi­cal styles—country, clas­si­cal, pop, medieval, and exper­i­men­tal electronic—with far-out spo­ken word from Haack and Nel­son. They fol­lowed this up with two more iter­a­tions of Dance, Sing & Lis­ten, then The Way Out Record for Chil­dren, The Elec­tron­ic Record for Chil­dren, the amaz­ing Dance to the Music, and sev­er­al more, all them weird­er and more won­der­ful than maybe any­thing you’ve ever heard. (Don’t believe me? Take a lis­ten to “Soul Trans­porta­tion,” “EIO (New Mac­Don­ald),” or the absolute­ly enchant­i­ng “Saint Basil,” with its Doors‑y organ out­ro.)

A psy­che­del­ic genius, Haack also made grown-up acid rock in the form of 1970’s The Elec­tric Lucifer, which is a bit like if Andrew Lloyd Web­ber and Tim Rice had writ­ten Jesus Christ Super­star on heavy dos­es of LSD and banks of ana­log syn­the­siz­ers.

While Haack­’s Mr. Rogers appear­ance may not have seemed like much at the time, in hind­sight this is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment of an artist who’s been called “The King of Tech­no” for his for­ward-look­ing sounds meet­ing the cut­ting edge in children’s pro­gram­ming. It’s a tes­ta­ment to how much the coun­ter­cul­ture influ­enced ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion. Many of the pro­gres­sive edu­ca­tion­al exper­i­ments of the six­ties have since become his­tor­i­cal curiosi­ties, replaced by insipid cor­po­rate mer­chan­dis­ing. What Haack and Nel­son’s musi­cal approach tells me is that we’d do well to revis­it the edu­ca­tion­al cli­mate of that day and take a few lessons from its freeform exper­i­men­ta­tion and open­ness. I’ll cer­tain­ly be play­ing these records for my daugh­ter.

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Mr. Rogers Goes to Wash­ing­ton

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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Carl Sagan Writes a Letter to 17-Year-Old Neil deGrasse Tyson (1975)

in Science, Television | April 29th, 2014

sagan letter to tyson

Carl Sagan, the turtle­neck-sport­ing astro­physi­cist from Cor­nell, was the great­est com­mu­ni­ca­tor of sci­ence of his gen­er­a­tion. Not only did he pub­lish hun­dreds of sci­en­tif­ic papers and was instru­men­tal in putting togeth­er that gold­en record on the Voy­ager space­crafts but he also wrote twen­ty crit­i­cal­ly praised best sell­ers on sci­ence, appeared reg­u­lar­ly on the Tonight Show, and even had a catch phrase — “bil­lions and bil­lions.” But Sagan is per­haps best known for his land­mark 1980 series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age (watch it here). He took view­ers through a tour of the uni­verse, show­ing them things from the mind-bog­gling big to the infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small and every­thing in between. The show proved to be a huge hit; close to a half-bil­lion peo­ple tuned in world­wide.

Even before the reboot of Cos­mos pre­miered on FOX in March, Neil deGrasse Tyson — who hosts the show — was already seen as Sagan’s suc­ces­sor. Not only does he serve as the direc­tor of the Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um in New York City and was instru­men­tal in kick­ing Plu­to out of the broth­er­hood of plan­ets, but he also authored numer­ous books, appears reg­u­lar­ly on The Dai­ly Show, and fre­quent­ly hosts AMAs on Red­dit. He’s also one of Amer­i­ca’s most vocal defend­ers of sci­ence at a time, unlike Sagan’s hey­day, when Cre­ation­ism, cli­mate change denial, and anti-vac­ci­na­tion hys­te­ria seem to be mak­ing inroads in our cul­ture.

Any­one who saw Tyson’s heart felt trib­ute to Sagan at the begin­ning of the first episode of Cos­mos knows that Sagan’s influ­ence on his younger coun­ter­part extend­ed much fur­ther than his media appear­ances. It was per­son­al. In 1975, Sagan, who was already famous at that time, was so impressed by Tyson’s col­lege appli­ca­tion that he per­son­al­ly reached out to him, hop­ing to con­vince the high school stu­dent to attend Cor­nell. He even offered to per­son­al­ly show Tyson around his lab.

You can read Sagan’s let­ter, dat­ed Novem­ber 12, 1975, below.

Dear Neil:

Thanks for your let­ter and most inter­est­ing resume. I was espe­cial­ly glad to see that, for a career in astron­o­my, you intend to do your under­grad­u­ate work in physics. In this way, you will acquire the essen­tial tools for a wide range of sub­se­quent astro­nom­i­cal endeav­ors.

I would guess from your resume that your inter­ests in astron­o­my are suf­fi­cient­ly deep and your math­e­mat­i­cal and phys­i­cal back­ground suf­fi­cient­ly strong that we could prob­a­bly engage you in real astro­nom­i­cal research dur­ing your under­grad­u­ate career here, if the pos­si­bil­i­ty inter­ests you. For exam­ple, we hope to be bring­ing back to Itha­ca in late cal­en­dar year 1976 an enor­mous array of Viking data on Mars both from the orbiters and from the lan­ders.

I would be delight­ed to meet with you when you vis­it Itha­ca. Please try and give as much advance notice of the date as you can because my trav­el sched­ule is quite hec­tic right now and I real­ly would like to be in Itha­ca when you drop by.

With all good wish­es,

Carl Sagan

Tyson was deeply moved by Sagan’s kind­ness and sin­cer­i­ty. He did ven­ture out to Itha­ca from the Bronx on a snowy after­noon. As Tyson recalled years lat­er, “I thought to myself, who am I? I’m just some high school kid.” In the end, Sagan’s per­son­al plea wasn’t quite enough to con­vince young Tyson to attend his school. As you can read in his response below, dat­ed April 30, 1976, Tyson decid­ed to go to Har­vard.

Dear Prof. Sagan

Thank you for your offer con­cern­ing the Viking Mis­sions. After long thought and deci­sion mak­ing I have cho­sen to attend Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty this Sep­tem­ber. I chose it not sim­ply because of its “valu­able” name but because they have a larg­er astron­o­my depart­ment in addi­tion to the Smith­son­ian Astro­phys­i­cal Obser­va­to­ry, so while I am major­ing in physics I will have more sur­round­ing me in the way of on-going research in astron­o­my.

I want to say that I did enjoy meet­ing you and I am very grate­ful for your hos­pi­tal­i­ty and the time you spent with me while at Cor­nell. I will through­out my under­grad­u­ate years keep you informed on any note­wor­thy news con­cern­ing astron­o­my-relat­ed work that I’m involved in. I do plan to apply again for the Viking Intern­ship next sum­mer.

Thanks again

Neil D. Tyson

You can see Tyson talk about his after­noon with Sagan. 40 years lat­er, he still seems incred­u­lous that it hap­pened.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Carl Sagan Presents Six Lec­tures on Earth, Mars & Our Solar Sys­tem … For Kids (1977)

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an Eight-Minute Ani­ma­tion

Carl Sagan’s Under­grad Read­ing List: 40 Essen­tial Texts for a Well-Round­ed Thinker

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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Orson Welles Tells Some Damn Good Stories in the Orson Welles’ Sketch Book (1955)

in Film, Television | April 21st, 2014

On the first episode of Orson Welles’ Sketch Book, the man who made Cit­i­zen Kane remem­bers an anx­i­ety-induc­ing evening ear­ly in his career: hav­ing some­how already gained a rep­u­ta­tion as an enter­tain­ing after-din­ner speak­er, he found him­self stand­ing before a room­ful of what seemed like every movie star in the flesh that he’d ever seen on the screen. Des­per­ate to impress all these celebri­ties who had so impressed him, he pulled out the only amus­ing sto­ry in his reper­toire, only to real­ize halfway through the telling that he could­n’t remem­ber how it end­ed. Luck­i­ly, one of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s earth­quakes struck just before he reached that for­got­ten end­ing, send­ing the whole Hol­ly­wood crowd out the door and let­ting him off the racon­teur hook. By the time he tells the next tale, of his longer-ago, more stress­ful and much more for­ma­tive debut onstage in front of a decid­ed­ly unco­op­er­a­tive Dublin audi­ence, you’ll won­der why he could­n’t han­dle the after-din­ner speak­ing; if any­one has a nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller’s instinct, he does.

The BBC must have thought so, in any case, when they put togeth­er this series of tele­vi­sion com­men­taries from Welles, none of which need more than his then slight­ly unfa­mil­iar face (with­out, he under­scores, the usu­al false nose he wears for roles), his unmis­tak­able voice, and his illus­tra­tions — tak­en, lit­er­al­ly, from his sketch­book. In these six fif­teen-minute broad­casts, which orig­i­nal­ly aired in 1955, Welles talks about not just the inaus­pi­cious begin­nings of his illus­tri­ous work­ing life but his expe­ri­ences with the crit­ics, the police, John Bar­ry­more and Har­ry Hou­di­ni, the infa­mous radio pro­duc­tion of War of the Worlds (which you can hear in our post for its 75th anniver­sary), and bull­fight­ing (see also our post on his friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way). Though inter­est­ing in and of them­selves, he uses these sub­jects to tie togeth­er a vari­ety of rec­ol­lec­tions and obser­va­tions from his life and career: on the fin­er points of pro­duc­ing Shake­speare with voodoo witch-doc­tors, on media-induced gulli­bil­i­ty, on the inva­sion of pri­va­cy, on the art of line prompt­ing. Not set­tling for sta­tus as a cre­ative genius in film, the­ater, and radio, it seems Welles also laid down the exam­ple for a form that would­n’t actu­al­ly arrive for anoth­er fifty years: vlog­ging.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Orson Welles Remem­bers his Stormy Friend­ship with Ernest Hem­ing­way

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

Orson Welles’ Last Inter­view and Final Moments Cap­tured on Film

Revis­it Orson Welles’ Icon­ic ‘War of the Worlds’ Broad­cast That Aired 75 Years Ago Today

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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“The Periodic Table of Storytelling” Reveals the Elements of Telling a Good Story

in Chemistry, Design, Film, Television, Writing | April 18th, 2014

periodic table storytelling

Dmitri Mendeleev might have designed the orig­i­nal peri­od­ic table – a graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all the basic build­ing blocks of the uni­verse – but artist James Har­ris has done some­thing way cool with that tem­plate — the Peri­od­ic Table of Sto­ry­telling.

That’s right. Har­ris has tak­en all the tropes, arche­types and clichés found in movies (not to men­tion TV, com­ic books, lit­er­a­ture, video and even pro­fes­sion­al wrestling) and syn­the­sized them into an ele­gant­ly real­ized chart. Instead of group­ing the ele­ments by noble gas­es or met­als, Har­ris has orga­nized them by sto­ry ele­ments — struc­ture, plot devices, hero arche­types. Each ele­ment is linked to a vast wiki that gives def­i­n­i­tions and exam­ples. For instance, if you click on the ele­ment Chk, you’ll go to a page explain­ing the trope of Chekhov’s Gun. And if you click on Neo, you’ll go to the page for, of course, the Cho­sen One.

Below the chart, Har­ris has even cre­at­ed sto­ry mol­e­cules for a few spe­cif­ic movies. Ghost­busters, for exam­ple, is the com­bi­na­tion of an atom con­sist­ing of 5ma (Five Man Band) and Mad (Mad Sci­en­tist) and one con­sist­ing of Iac (Sealed Evil in a Can) and Hil (Hilar­i­ty Ensues).

So if you’re in film school or if you have a copy of Robert McKee’s Sto­ry on your book­shelf or if you’re one of the rough­ly three dozen peo­ple in the Los Ange­les cof­fee shop where I’m writ­ing this arti­cle who are bang­ing out screen­plays, you need to check this table out. But be warned: it will suck away a good chunk of your day.

via No Film School

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pixar’s 22 Rules of Sto­ry­telling

Ira Glass, the Host of This Amer­i­can Life, Breaks Down the Fine Art of Sto­ry­telling

World’s Small­est Peri­od­ic Table on a Human Hair

“The Peri­od­ic Table Table” — All The Ele­ments in Hand-Carved Wood

Free Online Chem­istry Cours­es

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

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