Watch the Earliest Surviving Filmed Version of The Wizard of Oz (1910)

in Books, Film | March 28th, 2016

The Tech­ni­col­or Oz that greet­ed Judy Gar­land in 1939 seems a far less col­or­ful place than the one in 1910’s silent short, The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, above. (A ver­sion with music added can be found below.)

Adapt­ed in part from a 1902 stage ver­sion, this Wiz­ard — the ear­li­est to sur­vive on film — feels quite close to the spir­it of author L. Frank Baum and illus­tra­tor William Wal­lace Denslow’s orig­i­nal cre­ation.

Audi­ence mem­bers who had no famil­iar­i­ty with the source mate­r­i­al must’ve been very, very con­fused. There’s a lot of bang for the buck, but title cards aside, not much in the way of con­text.

No mat­ter. There are plen­ty of spe­cial effects and a crowd-pleas­ing cho­rus of gra­tu­itous beau­ties in tights and bloomers, just as in Georges Méliès’ sem­i­nal A Trip to the Moon.

It’s con­ceiv­able that Jack Haley and Burt Lahr, the MGM version’s Tin Woods­man and Cow­ard­ly Lion, might have been tak­en to see the 13 minute short as chil­dren. (Scare­crow Ray Bol­ger was a mere babe at the time of its release.)

Despite the pres­ence of all the well-known char­ac­ters, includ­ing two Totos, for my mon­ey, the project’s true star is Hank, the scene steal­ing mule.

I think the actor in the mule suit like­ly agreed, though Hank’s role in the Oz pan­theon is minor at best.

It’s unclear to me if the Wizard’s dark make­up is meant to be black­face. Accord­ing to Robin Bernstein’s Racial Inno­cence: Per­form­ing Amer­i­can Child­hood from Slav­ery to Civ­il Rights, the stage play that inspired the film fea­tured min­strel songs and pop­u­lar black­face actors Fred A. Stone and David Mont­gomery as the Scare­crow and Tin Woods­man.

The film cast’s iden­ti­ties have been lost to his­to­ry, though a rumor per­sists that the young actress play­ing Dorothy is fre­quent Harold Lloyd co-star, Bebe Daniels. The orig­i­nal piano score is unknown, but like­ly hewed close­ly to Paul Tiet­jens’ music from the play, which is what we hear in the online ver­sion.

Five years lat­er, the movies returned to Oz, with the Baum-pro­duced and ‑script­ed fea­tures, The Patch­work Girl of Oz, His Majesty, the Scare­crow of Oz, and The Mag­ic Cloak of Oz.

The Wiz­ard of Oz (1910) will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

You can also down­load the com­plete Wiz­ard of Oz Series, as free eBooks and free audio books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

A Trip to the Moon (1902): Where Sci Fi Movies Began

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She was shocked to find out how much her child­hood Oz books are worth, but has thus far resist­ed part­ing with them. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Software Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Animation Studio Is Now Officially Ready to Download

in Animation, Software | March 27th, 2016

miyazaki-gif2

FYI: Ear­ly last week, Col­in Mar­shall gave you a heads up that Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, the ani­ma­tion stu­dio behind Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neigh­bor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spir­it­ed Away, was prepar­ing to release an open source ver­sion of the ani­ma­tion soft­ware used to cre­ate its films. This week­end, the software–called OpenToonz–officially became avail­able for down­load. And we can now tell you where to find it. Open­Toonz is avail­able on Github, in ver­sions made for both Win­dow and OSX. This link will jump you straight to the down­load area.

If you make any­thing great with it, please share it with us.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Google Makes Its $149 Photo Editing Software Now Completely Free to Download

in Photography, Software | March 25th, 2016

nik software

Google’s Nik Col­lec­tion, a pho­to edit­ing soft­ware pack­age designed for pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers, once retailed for $149. Today it’s absolute­ly free to down­load, for both Win­dows and Mac users.

Here you can read Google’s announce­ment, which includes more infor­ma­tion on the soft­ware pack­age and its capa­bil­i­ties.

Today we’re mak­ing the Nik Col­lec­tion avail­able to every­one, for free.

Pho­to enthu­si­asts all over the world use the Nik Col­lec­tion to get the best out of their images every day. As we con­tin­ue to focus our long-term invest­ments in build­ing incred­i­ble pho­to edit­ing tools for mobile, includ­ing Google Pho­tos and Snapseed, we’ve decid­ed to make the Nik Col­lec­tion desk­top suite avail­able for free, so that now any­one can use it.

The Nik Col­lec­tion is com­prised of sev­en desk­top plug-ins that pro­vide a pow­er­ful range of pho­to edit­ing capa­bil­i­ties — from fil­ter appli­ca­tions that improve col­or cor­rec­tion, to retouch­ing and cre­ative effects, to image sharp­en­ing that brings out all the hid­den details, to the abil­i­ty to make adjust­ments to the col­or and tonal­i­ty of images.

Start­ing March 24, 2016, the lat­est Nik Col­lec­tion will be freely avail­able to down­load: Ana­log Efex Pro, Col­or Efex Pro, Sil­ver Efex Pro, Viveza, HDR Efex Pro, Sharp­en­er Pro and Dfine. If you pur­chased the Nik Col­lec­tion in 2016, you will receive a full refund, which we’ll auto­mat­i­cal­ly issue back to you in the com­ing days.

We’re excit­ed to bring the pow­er­ful pho­to edit­ing tools once only used by pro­fes­sion­als to even more peo­ple now.

Once you’ve down­loaded the soft­ware, head over to the Nik Col­lec­tion chan­nel on YouTube where you’ll find video tuto­ri­als, includ­ing the one below called “Intro­duc­tion to the Nik Com­plete Col­lec­tion.” It’s a good place to start.

PS: Some read­ers have asked whether this soft­ware can work as a stand­alone pro­gram, or whether it needs to run with a pro­gram like Pho­to­shop. Here’s what PC Mag­a­zine has to say about that:  “Though you can run the sev­en dif­fer­ent plu­g­ins in the col­lec­tion as stand­alone prod­ucts, they tend to work bet­ter when you inte­grate them into an exist­ing image edit­ing pro­gram, like Adobe’s Pho­to­Shop. ‘(On Win­dows) You can make short­cuts to the indi­vid­ual .exe files on your desk­top and then just drag stacks of images onto them,’ sug­gest­ed one Google+ user.” In short, you have some options.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Muse­um of Mod­ern Art (MoMA) Launch­es Free Course on Look­ing at Pho­tographs as Art

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Down­load Free NASA Soft­ware and Help Pro­tect the Earth from Aster­oids!

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 48 ) |

Download Beautiful Free Vintage Easter Cards from the New York Public Library

in Art, Design, Letters, Life | March 25th, 2016

NYPL Easter 3

‘Tis the sea­son when bun­nies tem­porar­i­ly upend cats as rulers of the Inter­net.

There are scores of vin­tage snap­shots in which inno­cent chil­dren are pas­sive­ly men­aced by hideous, full body bun­ny cos­tumes—hope­ful­ly an inac­cu­rate reflec­tion of the adults encased there­in…

“Medieval rab­bits that hate East­er and want to kill you”…

Some edi­ble DIY fails…

And mer­ci­ful­ly, a bit of sweet nos­tal­gia from the New York Pub­lic Library, who is mak­ing its robust col­lec­tion of East­er greet­ings avail­able for free down­load.

NYPL Easter 2
NYPL Easter 1

Each card comes with pub­li­ca­tion infor­ma­tion. Images of the flip sides reveal that the sender often con­sid­ered the pub­lish­ers’ preprint­ed sen­ti­ments cor­re­spon­dence enough. (It’s some­thing of a relief to real­ize that social media did not invent this kind of short­hand.)

NYPL Easter 4

Bun­nies are not the only fruit here… sea­son­al flo­ra and fau­na abound, in addi­tion to more explic­it­ly reli­gious iconog­ra­phy.

NYPL Easter 5
NYPL Easter 6
NYPL Easter 7
NYPL Easter 8

View the entire col­lec­tion here. Down­load as many as you’d like and do with them as you will.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Hayao Miyazaki’s Sketches Showing How to Draw Characters Running: From 1980 Edition of Animation Magazine

in Animation, Comics/Cartoons | March 25th, 2016

Miyazaki Running 4

Ear­li­er this week, we let you know about the ani­ma­tion soft­ware used by Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li com­ing out in an open source ver­sion free to down­load. While this makes avail­able to you a piece of the tech­nol­o­gy used in the ser­vice of such mas­ter­pieces as Princess Mononoke, Spir­it­ed Away, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, it won’t, alas, get you any clos­er to pos­sess­ing the artis­tic skills of the Ghi­b­li team. To attain those, you’ve just got to engage in the same long, cycli­cal process of obser­va­tion, repli­ca­tion, and refine­ment that you would when mas­ter­ing any­thing.

Miyazaki Running 3

Luck­i­ly, Miyaza­ki has pro­vid­ed plen­ty of exam­ples to work with, and even, now and again in his long career, bro­ken down his tech­niques for all to under­stand. Here we have four of his sketch­es, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in a 1980 issue of Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine (月刊アニメーション), which pro­vide visu­al expla­na­tions of how to ani­mate a char­ac­ter run­ning — not an uncom­mon task, one imag­ines, for the Ghi­b­li ani­ma­tors in charge of what the Cre­ators Project calls “the con­stant run­ning Miyazaki’s films are known for.” If you’ve ever tried to ani­mate run­ning your­self, you’ll know that what might at first seem like a sim­ple, every­day phys­i­cal action requires a great deal of sub­tle­ty to get right.

Miyazaki Running 1

The ear­ly motion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ead­weard Muy­bridge gave the world a sense of this when he cap­tured the mechan­ics of both men and hors­es run­ning back in the 1880s, but to take those real-world obser­va­tions and ren­der them con­vinc­ing­ly in ani­ma­tion — much less with the char­ac­ter­is­tic Ghi­b­li smooth­ness — takes things to anoth­er lev­el alto­geth­er. “Only Miyaza­ki man,” said ani­ma­tor LeSean Thomas when he tweet­ed these images. “Such effort­less lines and sil­hou­ettes. Years of hard work & learn­ing on dis­play in these sketch­es!”

Miyazaki Running 2

To those who wish to fol­low Miyaza­k­i’s method of ani­mat­ing run­ning in order to go on to mak­ing the kind of lav­ish cin­e­mat­ic sto­ries he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors have, best of luck; to those who’d rather not put in the decades, well, you can still learn his method of mak­ing instant ramen.

via LeSean Thomas

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

How to Make Instant Ramen Com­pli­ments of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Quentin Tarantino Picks the 12 Best Films of All Time; Watch Two of His Favorites Free Online

in Film | March 24th, 2016

Every decade, when the British Film Insti­tute (BFI) announces the out­come of its Sight & Sound Poll of the Great­est Films of All Time, cinephiles lis­ten; no less a seri­ous movie per­son than Roger Ebert called it, among the count­less polls of great movies, “the only one most seri­ous movie peo­ple take seri­ous­ly.” When the BFI con­ducts the poll, it divides those polled into two groups: one for crit­ics like Ebert, and one for direc­tors like, say, Quentin Taran­ti­no, whose thor­ough knowl­edge of cin­e­ma and absolute seri­ous­ness as a movie per­son almost makes him a crit­ic as well, albeit one who does his crit­i­cism in the form of movies.

In the 2002 poll, Taran­ti­no named these as the great­est films of all time:

You can watch two of Taran­ti­no’s 2002 picks, the for­mal­ly exper­i­men­tal caper com­e­dy Hi Did­dle Did­dle as well as His Girl Fri­day, the cap­stone of the screw­ball com­e­dy sub­genre, for free online. Once you’ve enjoyed the both of them, why not have a look at Taran­ti­no’s selec­tions a decade on, for the 2012 Sight & Sound direc­tors poll, to com­pare and con­trast, with the new titles bold­ed:

Taran­ti­no’s 2012 selec­tions reveal a clear increase in appre­ci­a­tion, or at least will­ing­ness to vote his appre­ci­a­tion, for high-pro­file pic­tures of the 1970s — Apoc­a­lypse Now, Jaws, Taxi Dri­ver, The Bad News Bears — a decade whose cin­e­ma to which the direc­tor has made no lack of homage. We’ll have to wait six more years, until the 2022 poll, to get a full sense of how Taran­ti­no’s idea of the canon has changed. Will the grim, satir­i­cal, and lurid films of the 70s con­sume most of his list by then? Will he favor a dif­fer­ent era of film his­to­ry entire­ly? I’d only put mon­ey on one thing for sure about the pref­er­ence of this film­mak­er who loves dia­logue even more than vio­lence: His Girl Fri­day isn’t going any­where.

You can find His Girl Fri­day and Hi Did­dle Did­dle on our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

Quentin Tarantino’s Top 20 Grindhouse/Exploitation Flicks: Night of the Liv­ing Dead, Hal­loween & More

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992

Watch His Girl Fri­day, Howard Hawks’ Clas­sic Screw­ball Com­e­dy Star­ring Cary Grant, Free Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 9 ) |

A Young Jim Henson Teaches You How to Make Puppets with Socks, Tennis Balls & Other Household Goods (1969)

in Television | March 24th, 2016

By the time he filmed this video archived on Iowa’s Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion’s YouTube chan­nel, Jim Hen­son was just about to strike gold with a new children’s show called Sesame Street. The year was 1969, and he already had 15 years of pup­petry expe­ri­ence under his belt, from children’s shows to com­mer­cials and exper­i­men­tal films.

On the cusp of suc­cess, Hen­son, along with fel­low pup­peteer Don Sahlin (the cre­ator and voice of Rowlf) ven­ture to teach kids how to make a pup­pet out of pret­ty much any­thing you’ll find around the house. Such vision appears easy, but it real­ly shows the genius of Hen­son, as he and Sahlin make char­ac­ters from a ten­nis ball, a mop, a wood­en spoon, a cup, socks, an enve­lope, even pota­toes and pears. (There a lot to be said for the inher­ent com­e­dy of goo­gly eyes, and the impor­tance of fake fur.)

An unknown assis­tant takes some of these pup­pets and brings them to life while Hen­son and part­ner cre­ate more–funny voic­es, per­son­al­i­ties, even a bit of anar­chy are in play. Sur­pris­ing­ly, Ker­mit does not make an appear­ance, although his sock ances­tor does.

The man who saw poten­tial pup­pets in every­thing is in his ele­ment and relaxed. Check it out, smile, and then raid your kitchen for sup­plies for your own pup­pet show. And although Hen­son promis­es a fur­ther episode, it has yet to be found on YouTube, or else­where.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Twin Beaks, Sesame Street’s Par­o­dy of David Lynch’s Icon­ic TV Show (1990)

Jim Henson’s Ani­mat­ed Film, Lim­bo, the Orga­nized Mind, Pre­sent­ed by John­ny Car­son (1974)

Watch The Sur­re­al 1960s Films and Com­mer­cials of Jim Hen­son

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Hulking 1959 Chevy Bel Air Gets Obliterated by a Mid-Size 2009 Chevy Malibu in a Crash Test

in Technology | March 24th, 2016

The auto indus­try con­tin­ues to take steps for­ward, some­times big, some­times small. They’re tin­ker­ing with elec­tric and dri­ver­less cars, and they’re find­ing ways to improve the safe­ty of every­day vehi­cles already on the road. How much incre­men­tal progress have we made? Just watch the video pro­duced by the Insur­ance Insti­tute for High­way Safe­ty. A 2009 Chevy Mal­ibu crash­es into a colos­sal 1959 Chevy Bel Air at 40 miles per hour. And despite its “Safe­ty-Gird­er” cru­ci­form frame (a safe­ty inno­va­tion Chevy devel­oped dur­ing the 1950s) the big­ger Bel Air did­n’t fare well at all. The same applies to the dum­my inside.

Here’s how the Insti­tute described what hap­pened to the Bel Air to The New York Times:

This car had no seat belts or air bags. Dum­my move­ment wasn’t well con­trolled, and there was far too much upward and rear­ward move­ment of the steer­ing wheel. The dummy’s head struck the steer­ing wheel rim and hub and then the roof and unpadded met­al instru­ment pan­el to the left of the steer­ing wheel.

Dur­ing rebound, the dummy’s head remained in con­tact with the roof and slid rear­ward and some­what inward. The wind­shield was com­plete­ly dis­lodged from the car and the dri­ver door opened dur­ing the crash, both pre­sent­ing a risk of ejec­tion. In addi­tion, the front bench seat was torn away from the floor on the dri­ver side.

The Bel Air got a “Poor” rat­ing in every safe­ty cat­e­go­ry; the Mal­ibu a “Good.”

Although a lot of Amer­i­ca seems stuck in reverse, car design is one area where we’re mov­ing for­ward, hope­ful­ly with even bet­ter days to come.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

Jack Nichol­son Puts His Star Pow­er Behind “Green” Cars, 1978

Young Robert De Niro Appears in 1969 AMC Car Com­mer­cial

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.