A Night at the Museum

MED150

Media sounds like a very exciting major, in theory. In reality it can be a little repetitive, largely because most major media innovations have only taken place over the past hundred years. Last week I was fortunate to have the opportunity to experience these innovations first hand at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, in a much more interesting fashion then via textbook. Probably the most exciting thing that I was able to see was a working Kinetiscope. If you are not sure what a Kinetiscope is, then you are probably not my media professor. It is nice to imagine that I have another reader, so I will explain that a Kinetiscope is Thomas Edison’s first moving image machine, also referred to as a peep-show (not the kind that you are thinking of). The Kinetiscope allows one person to watch a short film, about forty-five seconds long, through a single viewfinder. The absolute masterpiece, which I viewed, was about a bodybuilder named Eugene. I am probably being a little critical as a spoiled child of the new millennium, but I can imagine the awe of living in 1894 and seeing a moving image for the first time. I was also able to participate in an ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement), having my voice dubbed in for the title character in the movie Babe. Although it was the ADR and Kinetiscope which, really stood out in my mind, it was nice to utilize inventions such as the Lumiere Brother’s Cinemetographe and Marey's Photographic Gun, which I have spent over a year studying. Although many of the exhibits were replicas or reproductions, it was great to have a tangible experience to relate with day-to-day coursework.

Check out the Museum's website - http://www.movingimage.us/site/site.php