SAR_5_Along_the_way
Above: FP 32K SAR Best-Level-Training on dunetrails and in beachscape. Intertwining wind, rain and high-tide provide excellent dynamic circumstances.
" […]… suddenly it rained, there was a storm. We decided to use it. We grabbed the Steadycam and we just did it. Then the rain stopped. I think we could do it in two takes. That forced us afterwards to get rain on the street because there was only a dissolve and it was supposed to be three minutes later, but that worked in our favour. This is a very old trick. If you wet all the streets you have twice as much light. It doubles all the reflections. It has been used in old gangster movies of the thirties and forties. in our case it just happened and we where forced to do it."
Nestor Almendros about his work on the Three-part-anthology ' New York Stories ', episode -- ' Life Lessons ', directed by Martin Scorsese (1989), in the (unpublished) report ' Framing; A Symposium on Cinematography, 1990 ', edited by Andreas Fischer-Hansen, Igor Koršic and Tina Sørensen (page 81)
SAR_4_along_the_way
Above: Footprint after Today's 32K SAR dune/beach-traning. Not all trainings-days are created equal; some are more handsome than others… The intertwining wind, sun, high-tide provide great touch to circumstances and training-experience.
"The most difficult task for today's director of photography is to "think" in black and white again. He must become mentally color-blind, imagining what each scene will look like on the screen when it loses the colors it has in reality. Because black and white provides less visual information, I [...] use more lights than usual. To "draw" characters and objects, I almost always [ need ] a backlight to avoid confusing the foreground figures with the figures in the background. On the other hand, my work [ is ] made easier because I […] blend lights with different color temperatures without any problem; for instance, I [...] mix daylight with electric light without needing corrective gels.
As I have said before, I feel it is almost impossible for a black-and-white film to be in bad taste visually. The variegated, vulgar colors of contemporary life vanish, and are replaced by an absolute elegance -- like evening dress."
Nestor Almendros: 'A Man With A Camera', page 272 (first published in Switserland in 1980)
Along the Way: The Credits
Above: The Credits -- De Groote Weiver, Wormerveer (last night). Lead-singer Chris Palmen, is a neighbour and seen here whilst playing with the band. Click on photo to start 'Sleepy Time'', tribute to Drakula-actor Bela Lugosi and the 1931 version of the Tod Browning and Karl Freund-film 'Drakula' - clip.
More 'The Credits': www.thecredits.nl
SAR_3_along_the_way
Above: Footprint after todays 32K SAR dune-beach training
"History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain, as quoted today by George Friedman in 'Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape'
"Our feet flattened, our backs straightened, our buttocks strengthened their muscular arrangements to permit us to run. And as more and more we became specialised earthlings, so more and more it became anatomically impossible for us to return to the arboreal life. Such trends take place in an evolving world. A minor alteration of behaviour and body, a change of equivocal value, may command that further genetic alteration beer of increased specific value until a course is determined, and horses are set upon their way, men upon theirs. Now evolution becomes irreversible.
As important as our anatomical adjustments to the terrestrial life were the psychological changes which such life commanded. Shyness is a luxury permitted the mountain gorilla in his high, remote, cloud-softened bamboo thickets. The modesty once demanded of the tiny, primitive mammal in his monster-dominated times retained a value in the lives of jungle primates with profound green tangles of vine and leaf in which they might vanish. But for the ape of the field in those long-gone Miocene times, hiding places might be far from hand. Not unlike the baboon today, the aggressive spirit became a survival asset. Time and again we had no alternative but to stand and fight. And the social necessity, since the time of the true lemur a primate compulsion, doubled and redoubled its survival value."
Robert Ardrey, T'he Territorial Imperative', page 255 (published in 1966)
"The drive to maintain and defend a territory can be regarded not as a cause but only as a condition of human war. One can recognise its workings in the fury of a Finland attacked by a monstrous large enemy; in the madness of Hungarians attempting to reassert their land's integrity; or in the lonely, irrational heroism of the Battle of Britain, when never did so many owe so much to so few.
These were defensive social actions taken in strict accordance with territorial law and deriving from profound instinct the unbelievable magnitude of their energy. But in every case territory was the condition of war, not its cause.
Robert Ardrey, from: 'African Genesis' (1961) as quoted on page 245 of TTI
"For Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Azerbaijan […] there is not yet an emergency. But one could materialize with surprising speed. The Russians are not intrinsically powerful, but they are more powerful than any of these countries alone, or even together. Given American strategy, the United States would be prepared to begin providing aid, but substantial aid requires substantial action on the part of the buffer countries.
The first and second world wars were about the status of Germany in Europe. That was what the Cold War was about as well, although framed in a different way. We are once again discussing the status of Germany. Today it has no western threat. The eastern threat is weak, far away and potentially more of an ally than a threat. The force that drove Germany in two world wars is not there now. Logically, it has little reason to take risks."
George Friedman, 'Borderlands: The New Strategic Landscape'
SAR_2_along_the_way
Above: Footprint after Saturday's 32K SAR
"The effect of the successful adventure [...] is the unlocking and release again of the flow of life into the body of the world." - Joseph Campbell, in THWATF (page 40, 'The World Navel')
