By removing the ‘p’ from Part 15 you are left with the word ‘art’. And indeed radio broadcasting is a medium of several art forms.
By removing the ‘p’ from Part 15 you are left with the word ‘art’. And indeed radio broadcasting is a medium of several art forms.
Technical engineering may be a science at its core, but most engineers show their artistry by doing neat and clever engineering that presents the science in a very attractive way.
Radio programming is a dual art, in that simply choosing a string of appealing shows for the daily schedule is “the programmer’s art,” and doing a smart, talented, pleasant show for a happy audience is the art form that made radio popular from the beginning.
Yet the wording in a sentence can be short circuited, like when I called radio itself an art form, to which my father rightly said, “Radio is not an art form.” I was reduced to stuttering “Ya, but..,ah,…” attempts to explain what I really meant. I may have said, “You know what I mean.”
But I still haven’t gotten to the point of this blog, which is “the life span of art.” Take a great painting, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, for example. The Mona Lisa is one great painting that is still one great painting every day and every year. The artist was not required to produce another great painting every week or every day. His kind of art is infinite.
By sharp contrast the radio program art is anti-infinite, it is finite. Even as the radio program airs it is coming into being and disappearing every second. It is timely. It is coming and going. You cannot hang it on the wall for permanent display nor schedule it 24-hours a day forever. That is where I rebel.
Every time I produce my programs, Blare OnAir and The Low Power Hour, I want each one to be THE ONE, which can stand for all time as the penultimate version. Almost no radio programs in history achieve the status of “THE ONE,” with the rare exception being Orson Welles WAR OF THE WORLDS, although it’s reputation is bigger than the show itself, which is not that easy to sit through anymore. Some program series are somewhat celebrated, including The Jack Benny Show, Amos ‘n Andy and…. it’s a short list.
Radio program creation funnels rapidly into a sink hole. Like sand through an hour-glass. No genius has ever been able to avoid disappearing down there.
Lesson learned: wear mining gear when tampering with radio programming. Maybe you’ll be able to climb back out of the hole you get into.
Hey Carl!
I love your shows! You have a wonderful sense of humor,
and your shows help we, the listeners, to think about all
kinds of neat things.
As for the 1938 version of “War Of The Worlds” – when the
top of that first cylinder is unscrewing and flaking off –
I still get the creeps.
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
“Look At That!!”
“As for the 1938 version of War Of The Worlds when the top of that first cylinder is unscrewing and flaking off
I still get the creeps.”
“Strangest thing I ever saw….the way that’s unscrewing!”
I have a resin model of the Martian’s hover ships. I took the liberty of adding a super bright red LED in the “RAY” gun at the top, 2 super bright green LED’s on the edge “SKELETON BEAM” arrays and 4 bright green LED’s in the main cockpit window.
Then about a year later I decided to go one extra step to really freak people out. I added neodymium magnets on the lower belly and an electromagnetic coil inside a small enclosure decorated to look like a section of ground. When fired up, the model will hover over the electromagnetic coil. I added a varying oscillator which shifts in frequency about 120 cycles and allows the coil to produce a varying intensity magnetic field and the model will not only hover, but move a bit from side to side and up and down slightly, adding the effect that the thing is moving around. After that successful addition I then added a small RC airplane servo which rotates 90 degrees, giving the back and forth movement needed for the “RAY” gun.
Only thing I need to do now is break out my DVD of the movie and extract a few sound effects and dump that into one of those digital recording chips and mount it inside the model with a small speaker.
Art and engineering hand in hand at its finest! 🙂
“We can sell enchaladas and burritos and tamales too!”
RFB
Art Exhibit
That really sounds like a slick model, RFB, and I urge you someday during the cold snow months when you can’t do outdoor projects to get a video clip of your WAR OF WORLDS MODEL.
On another thread Neil Radio8Z posted some sample prototype circuit builds, and they are also good examples of art in themselves.
Bruce MICRO Dog 2’s photo of his in-progress Gates Studioette Board is a very neat, clean, work of art.
There is an AM engineer here who refurbished an old station and made all the original equipment look perfectly new with spray painted racks, every screw in place, all wiring neatly cabled and mostly hidden from view and nothing left undone. What an inspiration not seen in most stations.
Video
I did have a video of it some time ago, but the camera I had was not very good at low light shots and the video turned out quite grainy and noisy due to the CCD imager’s amplifiers having to crank themselves up so high they amplified the imaging device noises along with the scenery.
That was a few years ago. I do however have access to a broadcast news HD camera and when I get a chance, and after adding the sound effects module, I will shoot a new video of it.
I may even go all out and make a mini movie where there are visual effects of the RAY gun and SKELETON BEAMS firing. Adding small explosion effects will be quite easy as well.
Many moons ago I was into home movie producing using both 16mm and 8mm film. I and a friend made a war movie using a bunch of small army men and vehicles. For the explosion effects, we used small fire crackers and bottle rockets for missiles and smoke bombs for the smoke effects. The sounds were taken from actual WWII footage and synchronized to the mini explosions so that they sounded huge!
I modified one of my 16mm cameras to film at 5,000 frames per second to capture the small fire cracker explosions so at normal frame rates of 30 frames per second, the explosions had a more realistic sense.
Those were some fun days. About the only thing I really did not like was taking the time to develop all the film and then edit the film together to create the entire mini movie. That was a time consuming process but it sure was a lot of fun!
RFB
Movie Special Effects
You have really triggered the memories, RFB, of the days when my late wife and I produced videos for commercial clients. One effect was one like the one you are talking about.
The title of the movie was something like THE SOMETHING EXPRESS, and of course the idea of “express” brings to mind a railroad train as a symbol for the movie.
We printed a large color picture of the commercial building of the sponsoring company, pasted it on hard-board and stood it up on a ground-like surface……. the main front doorway was cut out with darkness behind it so it looked black…… as the title rolled up the screen a HO gauge electric train came zooming out of the entrance and toward the camera, veering off in a curved path.
All the scenes were spoken by an on-camera executive who always had a train-like window on one side of the screen with scenery zipping by which we had shot from a moving car.
That won us an award.
You are right. It takes a lot of time to do.
For an office scene I ripped the socket out of a nice desk lamp with an extender arm and built in an electret microphone. Still have that mic-lamp.
War Of The Worlds 1953
“Everyone knows when you wave the
white flag you want to be friends, eh!!!”
PHUUSHSHSHSH PHUUSHSHSH BONK BONK BONK BONK
“SEE!!! We welcome you!!!”
BONK BONK BONK BONK
FreeebbbeeeeeebeeeeeeFrebeeebbbeeeeebbbeeee!
Freeebbbeeeeeebeeeeeebeeeeeeebbeeeeeebbreeee!
Yup. That still gives me the creeps too.
RFB, if you are ever in Connecticut, feel free
to stop by my house. But please don’t bring your
magnetic hovering Martian machine model.
I will run out of the house even if the door isn’t open.
Through the wall.
Bruce,
DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
Large Scale Scares
Several months ago a local friend of mine who is also an avid model builder/collector suggested that we build a larger version of the Martian machine. I figured he meant something reasonable, couple times larger perhaps.
No he wants to make a HUGE version, one that you could climb into and sit in the cockpit! He has a very HUGE imagination!
But no small intent. What do I mean exactly by that? Well like me he was very upset when Paramount Pictures auctioned off all the Star Trek props, particularly the large ship models. His favorite is the Klingon Bird of Prey.
He has a balsa wood model of a Klingon Bird of Prey that has a wingspan of 6 feet! It hangs in his model room where the walls are painted like a galaxy. The room also has styrofoam ball planets and a sun. 9 planets and one star. Sound familiar?!
It may sound crazy..but take a look at this:
http://www.electronichouse.com/slideshow/category/703/138
Or how about a virtual version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn2-d5a3r94
Almost like being in a massive construction hanger taking a stroll during construction!
Here is another virtual world video showing the completed ship fully textured:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXUkdrcey-w&feature=related
Don’t know why the video has 1 minute and 20 seconds of a funky pony at the beginning, but the cool stuff starts at 1 minute 28 seconds.
Imagination knows no limits!
RFB
RFB
Well!
We are so on the same page!
I would do what you and your friend are
doing if I could.
I do have a few little models. I have a
nice little model of the Galileo 7 shuttlecraft
from Star Trek. I have a 3 foot long Fireball XL-5
with no place to put it. Even though the Gary and
Sylvia Anderson shows had puppets that couldn’t walk
right, those model builders did a great job.
After Gary and Sylvia Anderson got tired of using puppets
and then used people, they produced a few things that I have
mixed feelings about, such as Journey To The Far Side Of
the Sun, UFO, and in my opinion, the infamous Space 1999.
Still, there was Unbelievable model work! Wonderful stuff!
And then there is Lost In Space, a show that will forever
haunt me, because Irwin Allen didn’t care about science
fiction. After those first five episodes, it just went
down hill from there.
And the dudes that made Clutch Cargo (with Spinner and
Paddlefoot) also made Space Angel. Completely unwatchable
by today’s standards – it looked more like a comic book
on TV, with a few moving cardboard parts. And that
goofy system with real mouths put inside drawings still
makes me crack up.
Being very young, I got interested in space science, and
science fiction from Space Angel, Fireball XL-5, and Lost
in Space. And the Gemini program had a tremendous impact
on me. My love a Star Trek came much later, when I was old enough
to understand the adult story lines.
I could say a lot more, but I have to run out of here.
Great Stuff!
Bruce, DOGRADIO STUDIO 2
Morning Conversation
Guy 1: I love space.
Guy 2: What is space like?
Guy 1: There… do you see what I’m pointing at?
Guy 2: You’re not pointing at anything except an empty area with nothing in it.
Guy 1: That is what space is like. I love it.