Quicksand Fans

Star Wars Rebels: Meet Simon Kinberg, Executive Producer No release dates just yet but nice to see some updates and things appear to be moving along

Star Wars: Attack Squadrons -- Teaser Trailer Looks like technology has caught up with things finally Anyone who ever flew X-Wing or TIE Fighter wanted something like this 20 years ago. This could be good

I recall how blown away I was by the special effects in the original Star Wars. I'm still impressed, but many of the kids I know don't think much of them at all. I've found what blows many of them away is the thought these effects were done without CGI. That's incomprehensible to them.

I tell them they built models of the spaceships and filmed them. Some kids look at me and ask, "Like, what are models?"

It's sort of like my figuring out a math problem in my head. They look at me like, "Dude, like, how did you do that in your head?" I like to reply that the only way to do a math problem before calculators was to figure it out in your head. They give me a look that says both that I'm an old man and I must be real smart if I can do something like that.

May the Force be with those kids. They need all the help they can get!!

bbjohn wrote:I recall how blown away I was by the special effects in the original Star Wars. I'm still impressed, but many of the kids I know don't think much of them at all. I've found what blows many of them away is the thought these effects were done without CGI. That's incomprehensible to them.

I tell them they built models of the spaceships and filmed them. Some kids look at me and ask, "Like, what are models?"

It's sort of like my figuring out a math problem in my head. They look at me like, "Dude, like, how did you do that in your head?" I like to reply that the only way to do a math problem before calculators was to figure it out in your head. They give me a look that says both that I'm an old man and I must be real smart if I can do something like that.

May the Force be with those kids. They need all the help they can get!!

I've run into that same sort of reaction before. Then I tell them I used to be able to do binary and hexadecimal math in my head. Rather than marvel at my now faded Univac like skills they wonder why I would even do that without even knowing or caring what it is. Don't think I'll tell them about the "snowball fights" we used to have with punch card chaff.

Duncan Edwards wrote:I've run into that same sort of reaction before. Then I tell them I used to be able to do binary and hexadecimal math in my head. Rather than marvel at my now faded Univac like skills they wonder why I would even do that without even knowing or caring what it is. Don't think I'll tell them about the "snowball fights" we used to have with punch card chaff.

That might leave them with a brain injury or three trying to figure that out... Hell, try to explain Basic to them...

Being an old hand with film photography trapped in a digital world, I can easily see a day when kids won't know what film or negatives are.

Back in '98, a newspaper I was working for didn't have networked computers, so we would run over to the editor with our copy saved on a five and a half inch floppy disk. We had a high school student in as an intern, and she innocently asked "What is that?" She thought we were kidding her when we told her it was a computer disk. She was used to the three and a half inch disks.

I would have loved to have been there listening to her trying to explain THOSE to the MP3 generation.

Jesus, why didn't you just chisel it out on stone tablets

As far as cameras go, to be fair, I haven't used my OM-1 in a very very very.. long time. Still works perfectly, and even have several lenses for it. Its only remaining advantage would be its very quiet, probably the quietest of the old 35mm except maybe a Leica m4 -- good luck finding one of those, I have tried

I've run into that same sort of reaction before. Then I tell them I used to be able to do binary and hexadecimal math in my head. Rather than marvel at my now faded Univac like skills they wonder why I would even do that without even knowing or caring what it is. Don't think I'll tell them about the "snowball fights" we used to have with punch card chaff.

Sad part is all these kids hot on sci fi today should at least get the concept of math that is different from base 10. Beyond looking like thats something off the ship at Roswell

Yea.....we should just say screw progress and go back to using our Commodore 64's too....Nah. I like my quad core processer, my 12 Gb of RAM and my GTX 580 graphics card thanks.
It used to be that you could argue against CGI from a quality standpoint but even those days are gone, IMHO they ended when Attack Of The Clones came out. After 90 seconds of wondering how they made the Dax puppet move so realistically I realized it was computer animated and damn near shit myself. For a more recent treat go see Desolation of Smaug. Holy fucking dragon Batman....
It's interesting to know what came before but if you're going to live in the modern world you have to put down the flintlock and pick up the AR-15.

Then this week's Hickock stuff will be fun, found an oldie at the National Muzzleloading shoot in 2011 down in Indiana


it is sad though that models were abandoned for CG, since model ships besides looks had better action on the motion control rigs. Ah well, we cant un-invent the wheel. Have to see that new Hobbit movie then Myn, sounds not bad

They're a little expensive to use in movies now but they still have other applications.