On September 23, 2009, I got the opportunity of visiting the Museum of the Moving Image, located in the backstreets of Astoria. The trip was a required assignment for the Film & Media Studies class I’m taking at Hunter College. Although I was previously aware of the museum’s existence, for some reason or another I never got around to going there.
An educator from the museum accompanied our group of six or seven students to the third floor where the “Behind the Screen” exhibition is currently being held. On display are well over hundreds of film and television equipment, in addition to original relics from as early as the 1800’s. The exhibition contains the work of innovators such as Edward Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey and George Méliès, and historic devices like the zoetrope, zoopraxiscope and mutoscope. The collection of film cameras from the earliest one, circa 1908, and onwards is also noteworthy.
Though we are often fascinated by flipbook animation, stop motion animation, dubbing and chroma key technology when we see them on screen, we are left curious as to how they come to be. “Behind the Screen’s” various interactive features allow people to see how all these actually work. I will never forget how badly I messed up reciting a line from “Babe” in the automated dialogue replacement room! (“She…she just called us all Babe”)
The visit to the museum was definitely beneficial for me as it reinforced everything that I learned in lectures about the history of moving images. Getting to see Gregory Barsamian’s “Feral Fount” sculpture was an added treat. The concept of flashing lights to illuminate a spinning image and the interval of darkness enabling the eye to perceive motion (a la zoetrope) could not have been exemplified any better...
About Me
- Amira
- NY, United States
- Hello there! I’m Amira. I am a film major at Hunter College. I hope to share my unique perspective of the world through the art of filmmaking. No two individuals ever share the same experiences. Similarly, I believe that no two artists ever share the same vision, so there is always room for new contributors. I like to document life, as well as depict people’s imaginations because I feel that fiction and non-fiction are two sides of the same coin with regard to visual storytelling.