Something From Nothing

I do not recall in which of the Superman movies it was, but one of the characters took a special pen, drew a butterfly on the floor and watched as it instantly came to life, took off and flew away. In Star trek one would simply instruct the computer to provide a cup of "Early Grey. Hot", and the beverage would instantly materialize for your drinking pleasure.

I once saw an ingenious invention where the user would input a diagram or digital image of a mechanism into the machine and it would build a 3D representation of it using sand and glue. For example, you could feed the machine a diagram of a ball and socket. The machine would start whizzing away and build a working 3D model of it for you. Naturally, it took a really long time to produce such a thing, layer by layer. Also, the accuracy was not perfect and it was limited in its complexity. The 3D model was also not particularly sturdy, given the materials it was made from, but the idea that you can draw a two-dimensional picture and turn it into a physical reality so quickly is amazing.

Now, you might say that this is not so fantastic. After all, take any carpenter, for example, who would sketch a table on a piece of paper and turn that design into a real piece of furniture. An architect does the same sort of thing. However, the difference here is that anyone, without any skills to create something with his own hands, can actually partake of both the design and creation process. It is an exciting concept.

One of the oldest toy companies in America, FAO Schwartz (est. 1862), provides a similar activity for elementary school kids They have a service called “Imagine it”, where the child sits down at a kindergarten-sized table and, using nothing more than a Crayola Crayon, scrap paper and the world perception of a six-year-old, designs their own clothes. The drawing is then passed on to an eagerly awaiting staff of expert tailors who then proceed to create a life-size real version of the child’s drawing. Nifty.

The problem with this is that kids have wonderful imaginations. A third-grader would never design an outfit comprising blue-jeans and a T-shirt. Boring. They are more likely to draw a gaudy, glittering, colorful outfit which, if brought to life, would render them the school’s laughing stock. Come to think of it, that’s probably how fashion was designed in the 1980s.

I had to check this out, so I took a look at the FAO Schwartz website and came to the following conclusion: normally you would sit your kids down to draw pictures as a way of passing time, entertaining them and releasing their creative juices. Drawing can be a wonderful learning experience and fantastic for a child’s development in many ways. But for $900 a dress, you might want to consider reading them a story, instead.

Snippets of Conversation

One of the most often used opening scenes in movies is when the camera follows a man walking along a street. The man inevitably crosses the road, enters a shop or gets into his car just as the main characters appear. The camera stops moving so that it can concentrate on the main characters, leaving the man in the opening scene to move off camera, never to be heard from again. He was merely an excuse for the camera to get from its starting position to where the main characters are located.

I wonder what the "opening scene man" is thinking as he plays his part. Is he measuring his strides? Is he trying desperately to walk the route without tripping over? Well, he certainly isn't trying to remember his lines. After all, the "opening scene man" never talks.

It could be that the "opening scene man" is not thinking anything in particular. Perhaps he is a professional "opening scene man" who has done this opening scene many times and just wants to finish it so that he has enough time to get into character for his next opening scene for another movie in another sound studio somewhere else.

But, really, the "opening scene man" is just an irrelevant snippet of the movie. He plays no important role, his presence has no effect on the plot and he is only there because the viewer needs to get perspective before the movie starts. But that is precisely why the "opening scene man" is vital to the film. Without him you won't easily be able to determine the time-period in which the movie is set, the location and so on. Without the "opening scene man", the start of the movie would be like walking into the middle of a conversation without knowing the context.

Have you ever done that? I mean, have you ever walked into the middle of a conversation but you don't have a clue what the background to the conversation is? A variation on this theme can often be found in movies, especially if one of the characters is walking through a party scene. Inevitably there will be a group of people in the background listening to someone tell the end of the joke. The audience in the film laughs raucously and the viewers are left wondering what the joke was. Sometimes it ruins the whole movie for me, especially if I spend the rest of the film wondering what could possibly have been so funny.

If I come across good ones, I collect them and write them down. Some of them are very amusing. Here are a few:

"...even though it's short, he puts it on at night"
"...so stop breathing"
"...then the doctor said, "Oh, I thought it was a fish!"
"...or your head will feel like an inflated latex watermelon"

Actually, I picked up this gem today "...It's very dangerous. I mean, all you can do is eat the peach". For hours I wondered what they could possibly have been talking about. I guess I'll never know.