Actress Sara Truax with Director Eric Faden		 The Synthetic Philosophy of The Glance derives from a quote by 19th century French writer Benjamin Gastineau describing a new type of perception initiated by rail travel.

Scholar Wolfgang Schivelsbusch noted this new perception--what he called "Panoramic Perception"--was especially suited to new visual technologies like cinema that could effortlessly and instantly move across space and time with a simple cut. The film explores how the railroad and cinema changed human perception in the late 19th century.
Creating Early Cinema in The 21st Century

The Synthetic Philosophy of The Glance plays with the idea that early cinema had numerous functions beyond storytelling and imagines what an early "essay" film might be like. Rather than exclusively repurposing original early films, we simulated early cinema's look and texture by compositing live action video with vintage photographs.

Early cinema looks different due to earlier film stocks, high contrast exposures, slower frame speeds, and the typical associations we have with "old" film--dust, scratches, etc. As a result, creating a credible shot required painstaking attention to detail.

Fig. 1
LEFT: A historic photograph of a Vaudeville theatre.
MIDDLE: Live action video of actor Matthew Benjamin (age 6) with megaphone
(with photography timed to match live action's shadows to historic photograph).
RIGHT: The center image is scaled down, desaturated, and composited into the left image.
 

Fig. 2
LEFT: Green screen live action video of middleground crowds.
MIDDLE: Actress Sara Truax shot against a green screen.
RIGHT: The left and middle elements are composited with the right hand element in Fig. 1.
 


Fig. 3
The final shot. For depth perception, the background plate and middleground layer is slightly blurred. The entire image is then desaturated, blurred more, and has digital grain and dust added. In addition, the contrast is increased, a slight glow given to the "whites" in the image, and the entire image has a digital vertical "shake" added to simulate brittle sprocket holes in the filmstrip. Finally, to compensate for the live action video's faster frame speed, the entire sequence is slown down by four percent and every 3rd frame is removed.

DETAILS
Budget: $259
Cast/Crew: Approximately 30-35 Bucknell students and staff volunteered their time to make this film. Community members in Lewisburg, Sunbury, and White Deer, Pennsylvania graciously volunteered their time and resources as well.
Equipment: The film was shot on a Canon GL2 miniDV camera and edited on a Avid Xpress Meridian. Special effects were done with the GenArts Sapphire Effects Suite.
Schedule: Live action and effects footage was shot in 4 days; editing was about 2 weeks.
Music: Rick Benjamin, conductor of The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra (www.paragonragtime.com), permitted us to use two songs from a 2005 recording session at The Edison Studios on an Edison 1899 laboratory wax cylinder phonograph. The orchestra specializes in early 20th century ragtime music and tours professionally recreating authetic musical experiences of early cinema.