A Spellbinding Supercut of the First & Final Frames of 70 Iconic Films, Played Side by Side

Film­mak­er Jacob T. Swin­ney’s First and Final Frames, Part II, above, is a rare sequel that upholds the qual­i­ty of the orig­i­nal.

As he did in its pre­de­ces­sor, Swin­ney screens the open­ing and clos­ing shots of dozens of recent and icon­ic films side by side, pro­vid­ing view­ers with a crash course in the edi­to­r­i­al eye.

What is being com­mu­ni­cat­ed when the clos­ing shot replicates—or inverts—the open­ing shot?

Will the open­ing shot become freight­ed with por­tent on a sec­ond view­ing, after one has seen how the film will end?

(Shake­speare would say yes.)

Swin­ney is deeply con­ver­sant in the non­ver­bal lan­guage of film, as evi­denced by his numer­ous com­pi­la­tions and video essays for Slate on such top­ics as the Kubrick Stare and the facial expres­sions of emo­tion­al­ly rev­e­la­to­ry moments.

Most of the films he choos­es for simul­ta­ne­ous cra­dle-and-grave-shot replay qual­i­fy as art, or seri­ous attempts there­at. You’d nev­er know from the for­mal­ism of its open­ing and clos­ing shots that Jim Jarmusch’s Mys­tery Train at the 1:00 mark is a com­e­dy.

To be fair, Clint Mansell’s uni­ver­sal­ly applied score could cloak even Ani­mal House in a veil of wist­ful, cin­e­mat­ic yearn­ing.

Giv­en the com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty Swinney’s brought to such super­cuts as a Con­cise Video His­to­ry of Teens Climb­ing Through Each Oth­ers’ Win­dows  and a Tiny His­to­ry of Shrink­ing Humans in Movies, I’m hop­ing there will be a third install­ment where­in he con­sid­ers the first and final moments of come­dies.

Any you might rec­om­mend for inclu­sion? (Hold the Pink Flamin­gos, por favor…)

Films fea­tured in First and Final Frames, Part II in order of appear­ance:

Sun­shine

Snow­piercer

Biu­ti­ful

21 Grams

The Pres­tige

All is Lost

Take Shel­ter

The Impos­si­ble

Unit­ed 93

Vanil­la Sky

Ex Machi­na

Inside Llewyn Davis

Dead Man

Mys­tery Train

Melvin and Howard

Fury

Full Met­al Jack­et

A Clock­work Orange

Eyes Wide Shut

Eraser­head

The Ele­phant Man

The Fall

The Thin Red Line

The New World

Road to Perdi­tion

Snow Falling on Cedars

The Bourne Ulti­ma­tum

The Imi­ta­tion Game

Flight

Hard Eight

Inher­ent Vice

World War Z

Wild

The Dou­ble

The Machin­ist

Born on the Fourth of July

Brideshead Revis­it­ed

Maps to the Stars

The Skele­ton Twins

Mom­my

A Scan­ner Dark­ly

10 Years

Milk

Lost High­way

Box­car Bertha

Bad­lands

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samu­rai

Rat­catch­er

Ida

Raise the Red Lantern

Gat­ta­ca

Kun­dun

Bring­ing Out the Dead

A Most Want­ed Man

The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton

The Social Net­work

Jack Goes Boat­ing

Sub­ma­rine

Half Nel­son

Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind

Babel

Djan­go Unchained

True Grit

Ver­ti­go

Old­boy

Apoc­a­lyp­to

Dawn of the Plan­et of the Apes

Glad­i­a­tor

Mad Max: Fury Road

World’s Great­est Dad

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mes­mer­iz­ing Super­cut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

Watch 7 New Video Essays on Wes Anderson’s Films: Rush­more, The Roy­al Tenen­baums & More

How Aki­ra Kuro­sawa Used Move­ment to Tell His Sto­ries: A Video Essay

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing at The Brick The­ater in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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

Film­mak­er Hayao Miyaza­ki detests being referred to as the Japan­ese Walt Dis­ney. The great ani­ma­tor and sto­ry­teller admires the gor­geous ani­ma­tion of clas­sic Dis­ney films, but finds them lack­ing in emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty, the ele­ment he prizes above all else.

Miyaza­k­i’s films are cel­e­brat­ed for their mys­ti­cal, super­nat­ur­al ele­ments, but they take shape around the human char­ac­ters inhab­it­ing them. Plot comes lat­er, after he has fig­ured out the desires dri­ving his peo­ple. “Keep it sim­ple,” he coun­sels in Lewis Bond’s short doc­u­men­tary The Essence of Human­i­ty above. An inter­est­ing piece of advice, giv­en that a hall­mark of his 40-year career is his insis­tence on cre­at­ing real­is­tic three-dimen­sion­al char­ac­ters, warts and all.

Amer­i­can ani­ma­tors are also taught to sim­pli­fy. They should all be able to sum up the essence of their pro­posed fea­tures by fill­ing in the blank of the phrase “I want _____,” pre­sum­ably because such con­ci­sion is a nec­es­sary ele­ment of a suc­cess­ful ele­va­tor pitch.

As Bond points out, West­ern ani­mat­ed fea­tures often end with a con­ve­nient deus ex machi­na, free­ing the char­ac­ters up for a crowd pleas­ing dance par­ty as the cred­its roll.

Miyaza­ki doesn’t cot­ton to the idea of tidy, unearned end­ings, nor does he feel bound to grant his char­ac­ters their wants, pre­fer­ring instead to give them what they need. Spir­i­tu­al growth is supe­ri­or to wish ful­fill­ment here.

Such growth rarely hap­pens with­out time for reflec­tion, and Miyaza­ki films are notable for the num­ber of non-ver­bal scenes where­in char­ac­ters per­form small, every­day actions, a num­ber of which can be sam­pled in Bond’s doc­u­men­tary. The beau­ti­ful­ly-ren­dered weath­er and set­tings have pro­vid­ed clues as to the char­ac­ters’ devel­op­ment, ever since the love­ly scene of cloud shad­ows skim­ming across a field in his first fea­ture, 1979’s The Cas­tle of Cagliostro.

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Watch Sher­lock Hound: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­mat­ed, Steam­punk Take on Sher­lock Holmes

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mas­ter­pieces Spir­it­ed Away and Princess Mononoke Imag­ined as 8‑Bit Video Games

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City next month. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

The Falling Water: A Rube Goldberg Machine That Makes a Fine Cocktail

Joseph Her­sch­er, a kinet­ic artist from New Zealand, has a knack for mak­ing some pret­ty imag­i­na­tive Rube Gold­berg machines. Back in 2012, we showed you The Page Turn­er, a device that gives cre­ative assis­tance to any­one still read­ing news­pa­pers in a print for­mat. Next week, we’ll hope­ful­ly get a chance to fea­ture his most recent con­trap­tion. (Stay tuned for more on that.) But for now, as we head into the week­end, let’s admire The Falling Water, Her­scher’s cock­tail-mak­ing machine that plays on the name of a famous Frank Lloyd Wright cre­ation. You can watch it go above. And for those who want to play along at home, here is the recipe for the drink:

- 30mls (1Oz) 42BELOW Fei­joa Vod­ka
— Ch’i or Lemon­ade
— Long slice of seed­less cucum­ber
— Ice

Cut a long thin piece of cucum­ber on a diag­o­nal.
Rest it against the inside of a High­ball glass.
Fill the glass with ice, add 42BELOW Fei­joa.
Top with Ch’i or Lemon­ade.

Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Tour of Falling­wa­ter, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Cre­ations

The Page Turn­er: A Fab­u­lous Rube Gold­berg Machine for Read­ers

F. Scott Fitzger­ald Con­ju­gates “to Cock­tail,” the Ulti­mate Jazz-Age Verb (1928)

Everything is a Remix: A Video Series Exploring the Sources of Creativity

Our vet­er­an read­ers will per­haps remem­ber Kir­by Fer­gu­son’s four-part video series Every­thing is a Remix. Cre­at­ed between 2010 and 2014, the series explored the idea that (to quote from one of my ear­li­er posts) “great art doesn’t come out of nowhere. Artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw­ing on past ideas and con­ven­tions, and then turn these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new.” That applies to musi­cians, film­mak­ers, tech­nol­o­gists, and real­ly any­one in a cre­ative space.

This week, to mark the 5th anniver­sary of the series’ launch, Fer­gu­son has remas­tered and re-released Every­thing is a Remix as a sin­gle video in HD. “For the first time now, the whole series is avail­able as a sin­gle video with prop­er tran­si­tions all the way through, uni­fied styling, and remixed and remas­tered audio.” Find it fea­tured above, and added to our col­lec­tion of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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:

Why Man Cre­ates: Saul Bass’ Oscar-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Look at Cre­ativ­i­ty (1968)

Why You Do Your Best Think­ing In The Show­er: Cre­ativ­i­ty & the “Incu­ba­tion Peri­od”

Albert Ein­stein Tells His Son The Key to Learn­ing & Hap­pi­ness is Los­ing Your­self in Cre­ativ­i­ty (or “Find­ing Flow”)

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Marshall McLuhan’s 1969 Deck of Cards, Designed For Out-of-the-Box Thinking

dewline_cards

Image via EricMcluhan.com

Six years before Bri­an Eno and Peter Schmidt designed their first pack of Oblique Strate­gies cards—a set of ran­dom apho­risms meant to clear cre­ative blocks—communication the­o­rist and philoso­pher Mar­shall McLuhan had designed a very sim­i­lar deck in 1969, this one with a more direct nod to the clas­sic play­ing card deck.

mcluhan cards

The name of the card deck, Dis­tant Ear­ly Warn­ing, was a ref­er­ence to the 3,000 mile long DEW Line, a sys­tem of 63 radar sta­tions that act­ed as an ear­ly detec­tion inva­sion buffer dur­ing the Cold War. And in his 1964 book Under­stand Media, McLuhan explained,

“I think of art, at its most sig­nif­i­cant, as a DEW line, a Dis­tant Ear­ly Warn­ing sys­tem that can always be relied on to tell the old cul­ture what is begin­ning to hap­pen to it.”

And so with help from adver­tis­ing and pub­lish­ing guru Eugene Schwartz, The Mar­shall McLuhan DEW-Line Newslet­ter and its spin­off deck of cards was born. Schwartz saw the newslet­ter much like we see blogs today: a very imme­di­ate way of dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion, deep­er than tele­vi­sion and faster than books. The newslet­ter last­ed only two years, came in sev­er­al forms (one issue was a set of slides, anoth­er a record), and rep­re­sents the height of “McLuhan Mania” in Amer­i­can cul­ture. Busi­ness and thought lead­ers were its tar­get audi­ence.

dew line cards3

Much like Oblique Strate­gies (you can still find vin­tage ver­sions online), the instruc­tions for Dis­tant Ear­ly Warn­ing (also avail­able online here) sug­gest that the user think of a per­son­al or busi­ness prob­lem, shuf­fle the deck, choose a card and inter­pret its mean­ing. Although div­ina­to­ry cards have long been a part of west­ern cul­ture, the idea of inde­ter­mi­na­cy and con­sult­ing the I Ching was very much in vogue through artists like John Cage.

dew line 4

The cards con­tain plays on apho­risms, like “The Vic­tor Belongs to the Spoils” or “Thanks for the Mam­maries.” Some­times they quote Vic­to­ri­an nov­el­ist Samuel But­ler, like “The chick­en was the egg’s idea for get­ting more eggs” or W.C. Fields (“How do you like kids?” “Well cooked,” he said stern­ly), or John Cage (“Silence is all the sounds of the envi­ron­ment at once.”) Many are McLuhan’s own quotes.

dew line 5

McLuhan and Schwartz’ ideas can still be felt in any num­ber of TED talks or when­ev­er a busi­ness leader talks about think­ing out­side the box. Steve Jobs was a walk­ing deck of these cards.

Should you feel like push­ing your brain lat­er­al­ly, check out the full deck here at this Flickr feed, and if you long to own a phys­i­cal copy, it can still be had for Cana­di­an dol­lars at the site run by McLuhan’s son.

via Flash­bak

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Vision­ary Thought of Mar­shall McLuhan, Intro­duced and Demys­ti­fied by Tom Wolfe

McLuhan Said “The Medi­um Is The Mes­sage”; Two Pieces Of Media Decode the Famous Phrase

Nor­man Mail­er & Mar­shall McLuhan Debate the Elec­tron­ic Age

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the 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.

Sarcasm Can Boost Creativity According to Research From Harvard & Columbia Business Schools

bill murray sarcasm

Under­ly­ing image by Gage Skid­more.

Echo­ing Bill Mur­ray, the Urban Dic­tio­nary defines sar­casm as “your body’s nat­ur­al defense against stu­pid,” not­ing that it’s “the high­est form of wit” in coun­tries like the UK, but the low­est in Amer­i­ca, owing to the population’s inabil­i­ty to detect whether or not one is being sar­cas­tic.

Exam­ple:
Idiot: I beat up a ten-year-old today.

You: (with a hint of sar­casm) That’s impres­sive!

Idiot: I know, right!

A new study by Francesca GinoAdam Galin­sky, and Li Huang, of Har­vard, Colum­bia and INSEAD busi­ness schools, respec­tive­ly, sug­gests that the use of sar­casm pro­motes cre­ativ­i­ty for those on the giv­ing and receiv­ing end of sar­cas­tic exchanges.

Gino told the Har­vard Gazette, â€śTo cre­ate or decode sar­casm, both the expressers and recip­i­ents of sar­casm need to over­come the con­tra­dic­tion (i.e., psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance) between the lit­er­al and actu­al mean­ings of the sar­cas­tic expres­sions. This is a process that acti­vates and is facil­i­tat­ed by abstrac­tion, which in turn pro­motes cre­ative think­ing.”

Galin­sky added, the givers and receivers in sar­cas­tic exchanges â€śsub­se­quent­ly per­formed bet­ter on cre­ativ­i­ty tasks than those in the sin­cere con­di­tions or the con­trol con­di­tion. This sug­gests that sar­casm has the poten­tial to cat­alyze cre­ativ­i­ty in every­one.” “That being said, although not the focus of our research, it is pos­si­ble that nat­u­ral­ly cre­ative peo­ple are also more like­ly to use sar­casm, mak­ing it an out­come instead of [a] cause in this rela­tion­ship.”

The evi­dence cer­tain­ly seems sol­id in the hands of mas­ter prac­ti­tion­ers such as Louis CK, Sarah Sil­ver­man, and the staff of The Onion, not to men­tion new­com­er Shirley Jester, an ani­mat­ed Sar­cas­tic Foul-Mouthed Teenage Come­di­an Girl from the Renais­sance.

Things get a bit murki­er when ama­teurs attempt to adopt their idols’ caus­tic pos­es. Tone and intent are eas­i­ly mis­con­strued. Feel­ings get hurt.

Is sar­casm best left to the pro­fes­sion­als?

Not nec­es­sar­i­ly. Gino and Galinksy found that the degree of trust between express­er and recip­i­ent deter­mines how sar­casm is received. In oth­er words, know your audi­ence.

Even at its mean­est, sarcasm—from the Greek and Latin for “to tear flesh”—involves abstrac­tion, a hall­mark of cre­ative think­ing.

Mean­while, you can review Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­o­gist Chris Ful­ton’s “Try that again method,” below, one of many strate­gies for han­dling “sar­cas­tic and sassy teenagers.” Cre­ativ­i­ty be squelched.

Cue a mil­lion teenage eye rolls, and check out Gino and Galinksy’s find­ings here.

via the Har­vard Gazette

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

The Psy­chol­o­gy of Messi­ness & Cre­ativ­i­ty: Research Shows How a Messy Desk and Cre­ative Work Go Hand in Hand

The Most “Intel­lec­tu­al Jokes”: Our Favorite Open Cul­ture Read­er Sub­mis­sions

Coffee Portraits of John Lennon, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe & Other Icons

Coffee Lennon

Paint­ings by Maria A. Aris­ti­dou

As philoso­pher Mar­shall McLuhan wrote in Under­stand­ing Media, “the medi­um is the mes­sage.”

Artist Maria A. Aris­ti­dou’s medi­um is cof­fee, and late­ly, she’s been gar­ner­ing a lot of atten­tion for java-based por­traits of such cul­tur­al lumi­nar­ies as Ein­stein, Darth Vad­er and The Bea­t­les.

The pro­lif­ic and high­ly-caf­feinat­ed artist found her niche when an acci­den­tal spill gave rise to a some­what sullen fac­sim­i­le of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring.

Girl-with-Pearl-Earring

She has since applied her espres­so blends toward the Mona Lisa and one of Baroque era painter Juan de Arel­lano’s flo­ral still lifes, but for the most part, she draws her sub­jects from the realm of pop cul­ture.

Dorm room faves like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe, Bob Mar­ley, and John Lennon are over­shad­owed by fic­tion­al super­stars like Frozen’s Queen Elsa, Nintendo’s Mario, and var­i­ous per­son­ages from Game of Thrones.

My favorite? Kyle MacLach­lan as Twin Peaks’ Agent Dale “Damn fine cup of cof­fee, Diane!” Coop­er. That’s not just medi­um. That’s meta!

Aris­ti­dou is not the only artist find­ing inspi­ra­tion in this non-tra­di­tion­al pig­ment. A recent NPR sto­ry on the trend cites cof­fee artists Angel Sarkela-Saur and Andy Saur and Giu­lia Bernardel­li.

Scroll back­wards to the mid-1800s and you’ll find author—and gift­ed drafts­man—Vic­tor Hugo exper­i­ment­ing with the stuff. Nor was his promis­cu­ous nib a stranger to the artis­tic pos­si­bil­i­ties of soot, coal dust, and blood.

Aris­ti­dou, who holds degrees in Fine Art Print­mak­ing and Arts Health, eschews the tra­di­tion­al artist’s web­site in favor of social media. Not only is she a mas­ter of the hash­tag, she also designs cakes. View her com­plete oeuvre—including sev­er­al car­tons of cor­po­rate logo East­er eggs and some recent fash­ion illus­tra­tions that com­bine water­col­or with java—on her Face­book or Insta­gram pages.

Above you can watch Aris­ti­dou paint por­traits of Ein­stein, the Bea­t­les and R2D2 in quick time-lapse motion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vic­tor Hugo’s Sur­pris­ing­ly Mod­ern Draw­ings Made with Coal, Dust & Cof­fee (1848–1851)

J.S. Bach’s Com­ic Opera, “The Cof­fee Can­ta­ta,” Sings the Prais­es of the Great Stim­u­lat­ing Drink (1735)

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

The Fine Art of Paint­ing Por­traits on Cof­fee Foam

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

Neil deGrasse Tyson Presents a Brief History of Everything in an 8.5 Minute Animation

Patre­on, a crowd fund­ing site where fans can auto­mat­i­cal­ly tithe a set amount to their fave artist every time that per­son uploads con­tent, is a great way for pas­sion­ate, under-rec­og­nized indi­vid­u­als to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty and a bit of dough.

So what’s astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson doing there? He’s already famous, and one would think his gig as direc­tor of New York City’s Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, cou­pled with the pro­ceeds from his books and dvds, would prove suf­fi­cient to any finan­cial needs.

(Is it some sort of Aman­da Palmer thing?)

Nope. Turns out Dr. Tyson is there on some­one else’s behalf, nar­rat­ing an episode of Har­ry Reich’s Minute Physics. The video series often employs white­board ani­ma­tions to explain such sci­en­tif­ic phe­nom­e­na as dark mat­ter, wave/particle dual­i­ty, and bicy­cles.

The lat­est Tyson-nar­rat­ed episode, above, shoots the moon by cram­ming the entire His­to­ry of the Uni­verse (and some com­pli­men­ta­ry Stravin­sky) into an 8.5‑minute frame­work (a neg­li­gi­ble amount when you con­sid­er phe­nom­e­na like light years, but still many times the series’ stan­dard minute).

Thus far, 1075 fans of Minute Physics have anted up, result­ing in a take of $2,992.66 per video. (Click here to see how that amount com­pares to the var­i­ous wages and salaries of Dr. Tyson’s cowork­ers at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry…it’s clear Reich devotes a lot of labor to every episode.)

If you’re feel­ing flush (or ner­vous about the upcom­ing school year), you can join these 1075 fans, earn­ing admis­sion to a sup­port­ers-only activ­i­ty feed where you can ask ques­tions, watch out­takes, pre­view upcom­ing attrac­tions, and pos­si­bly even get your name in the cred­its.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Neil deGrasse Break Down Our Awe­some 3 Bil­lion-Mile Jour­ney to Plu­to

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

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

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