[ale] Special effects used while creating a slide show

[aaron]

On 2009, Nov, 29, , at 6:40 PM, Robert Reese wrote:

> Hello aaron,
>
> Saturday, November 28, 2009, 1:45:38 PM, you wrote:
>
>> On 2009, Nov, 28, , at 9:00 AM, Richard Bronosky wrote:
>
>>> What you are looking for is "The Ken Burns Effect".
>
>> Actually, the effect is called "pan and zoom", and it has
>> been around for as long as there have been motion picture
>> cameras.
>
> Except that it was virtually unused on static photographs
> before Ken Burns popularized the process.
>
> Pan and Zoom is still usually relegated to video, while
> "Ken Burns Effect" is almost exclusively meant to simulate
> the Pan and Zoom on static images.

As a lifelong student and 3 decade professional veteran of
the film and video industry, I don't find these claims to
be accurate at all.  Not only have I seen for myself how
the common document pan and zoom techniques have been applied
to still images in a number of popular documentaries that
predate Ken Burns' work by decades, I find the technique
common to film, animation and video productions in general.
As a point of evidence, I'll reiterate that the fact that,
going back many years before Mr. Burns gained notoriety,
there were specialized motion control rigs and, eventually,
software automated systems expressly manufactured and broadly
used for just this purpose of bringing motion to static, hard
copy and photographic images. For a number of years I used
one of them for nationally distributed video productions.


> The differences are subtle, but important in cinematography.

Again, I don't see that there aren't any differences, subtle
or otherwise.

While I would agree that Ken Burns used the well established
photo pan and zoom techniques to great effect, his use of the
process is simply not so unique or original that it would ever
warrant shackling this highly common practice of the cinema
craft should to his name.  The singular reason his name is
being fraudulently associated with common static image pan
and zoom techniques is that the Apple corporation paid for
the licensing rights to manufacture that association for
their iLife product line marketing schemes.  End of story.

peace
aaron


PS:  I'm still serious about the software project if we
can agree to disagree about the dubious value of Ken Burns
contributions to the cinema arts.  ;-)