Super 8

The history of motion pictures dates back to the second part of the 19th century with photographers like Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, who, among others, were the first to take several images per second in one effort—all for scientific purposes back then—to study the locomotion of birds, animals, and humans. For example, Muybridge was the first to take a series of photographs of a galloping horse in order to prove that in one single instant of time all four horse legs are not touching the ground. More or less at the same time on another continent, Marey created a shotgun-shaped camera capable with one trigger pull of capturing 12 images in a row within one single second and storing them all on the single 90 mm film. He used his gun to study various motions of animals, fish, and insects within his so-called 'animated zoo', including dropping cats from different heights and filming them always landing on their feet.

ELMO Super 106, 8mm movie camera

It was not long after initial chronophotography efforts and enthusiasm in the 19th century that the 'evolution' of motion pictures diverted heavily into entertainment and cinematography. The history of films and fun started almost with the start of the 20th century, but in the spirit of today's title, 'domesticating' films within ordinary people and human homes waited another 65 years for the invention of Super 8, or, to be precise, the improvement of Kodak's standard 8mm film from 1932 into a more efficient surface with a bigger width for the frame itself and significantly smaller perforation on the film's right edge. After they introduced it at the 1964-65 World's Fair, Super 8 instantly became the very first home video format with light cameras capable of filming 18 frames per second and more than 3 minutes of the movie per small film cartridge.

To say that my father was a film enthusiast in the second part of the sixties and the entire seventies would be an understatement. It was natural for him to go the step further and, in addition to the several analog SLR cameras and darkroom equipment for developing photos, to invest in home movies. Spending time in the darkroom and hanging photos on the wire were some of the most thrilling experiences of my childhood, but when Super 8 came, another world opened. I was too young to operate the camera, but on the occasion or two I remember, I did hold it and press the red button, especially during our vacations in Greece. Well, aside from those rare moments, most of the time my job, with being a kid and all, was to be in front of the camera and not behind it.

Tondo Super 8 Projector and LG Nexus 5 in action

But to cut the story short, this month I did something I was delaying for a long time. During the last two weeks, every night I was descending into my own customized darkroom equipped with a tiny Super 8 projector and digitalizing our family films. Twenty of those survived over time, and with a speed of two per day, I projected them on the wall and filmed them all with my smartphone. It was far from being an ideal setting, but this was the best I could do. I tried different approaches, filming from different distances, using different settings, and using my DSLR Nikon in the beginning. I even tried to project the film directly into the DSLR, but all my efforts failed due to not having proper lenses and objectives, and in the end, the smartphone was the chosen solution, and it did a better job in the dark than the Nikon.

With more expensive equipment, I am sure the results would be much better, and probably the weakest link was the cute and old Italian Tondo projector, which was my father's portable cinematic projector. I did try with a bigger 'player' first, but despite all my efforts, I couldn't manage to repair the old and superb Crown Optical Co. Ltd. Auto-P, a silent Standard and Super 8 film projector, our primary projector capable of displaying big and crisp screens on the large walls and with much better quality. To be honest, it's more than half a century old and built with nowadays rare parts, especially the missing lamp that is hard to find these days, but I didn't give up, and perhaps in the future, if I stumble on some solution (read it: an eBay sort of solution), I will repeat the effort, at least for those videos filmed indoors.

Nevertheless, all twenty rolls now come with twenty MP4s, and for this occasion I decided to create two movie collages with six movies each. They are all filmed in the late sixties, during the seventies, and in the early eighties with an ELMO Super 106 camera from the first image. The first one, embedded above, contains six films from our early vacations in Greece, and in chronological order, they are filmed in the Acropolis of Athens, Zeitenlik, the World War I memorial park in Thessaloniki, vacation resorts in Kamena Vourla, Asprovalta, Katerini Paralia, and two vacations in the vicinity of the port city of Volos.

The second collage is from our home and village in Niš and Guševac in Serbia. Mostly it focuses on my sister's and my babyhood and early childhood, birthday parties, family gatherings, and excursions. Also our old house that is now gone and the old shape of our country village front yard. This video also contains one of the rare black-and-white films from our collection that probably originated from different cameras and settings.

This entire effort triggered lots of memories and emotions from almost forty years ago, and seeing people live, especially those that are not alive today, is something extraordinary that regular photography cannot induce. Perhaps we today, with all of our pocket gadgets, are taking video clips and home photography for granted, but before, in the Super 8 era, this was a completely different experience. What we today do with just two taps on the screen, before you had to do in a more complex manner, including purchasing film cartridges, carefully planning (directing) filming sequences for a 3-minute film, sending it to development, organizing cinematic sessions...

One thing is for sure: Super 8 was the origin of what we have now in our homes. It was eventually replaced with VHS tapes in the 80s, but at the dawn of the 21st century, the analog period came to an end, and old-fashioned home gadgets were replaced with home digital camcorders first and, in the very last decade, with smartphones. To tell you the truth, it is nice to have a camera in your back pocket, it is, but somehow, with me, as I witnessed the origin of the entire process in my early childhood, the nostalgia for the analog days gave me another layer of the entire experience. Something special and extraordinary for sure.

'Super 8,' a sci-fi movie by J.J. Abrams

Perhaps for the best conclusion for this post, it would not be fair not to mention one of J.J. Abrams' greatest movies from 2011. Simply named 'Super 8', it tells a main sci-fi story about an alien encounter, but everything is perfectly wrapped within a background story of school kids trying to film a short movie for a Super 8 festival. It was really a great movie, and if you liked E.T. before, this is definitely a decent sequel and one of my favorites.

Refs:
http://www.kodak.com/id/en/consumer/products/super8/default.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats
http://www.retrothing.com/2009/09/tondo-super-8-projector
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/super-8-jj-abrams-says-194908

Cyclops of Peloponnese

Another 'Greek' vacation came to an end after we chose to take and risk a little, probably the longest drive toward the ancient civilization cradle in the history of all of our summer vacations. Driving in a row for 14 hours was not exactly as fun as expected, but in the end, when I put all the 'pros' and 'cons' together after a couple of years of planning and anticipating our first visit to the famous Peloponnese, it was worth the wait. But before a story about sites we visited, I'd like to share some thoughts about the journey itself. This year it was the weakest link of our entire vacation, and little 'pros' can be taken out of it. First of all, it was too long, and with 40+ degrees Celsius outside, it was far from being pleasurable and relaxing. If you add to the 'cons' list too many moments with driving poor roads and unnecessary waiting time on borders and tolls, especially within the transiting country of Macedonia (FYROM), I am not far from the decision that next time we will be choosing a different route for the travel to Greece and most likely booking the plane instead or, for smaller trips, checking out the new highway the European Union is currently building in Bulgaria.

Fortunately, all the 'cons' ended with the journey alone, and all the good mood and perfect vacation spirit recovered fast as soon as all the 'pros' overcame in days of one full week of our second vacation south from Greek Macedonia and our first visit to the Greek capital, its municipality area, the Corinth Canal, and ancient Peloponnese.

Perhaps the most exciting time we spent during the first couple of days was filming the remaining scenes for our short film "Game of Life" (embedded below), which we were playing with all summer long. It all started pretty benign and just like another father-son playtime, but somehow it evolved into a real project with a decent storyline, filming scenes on four major locations, and also using chroma keying technology with a green background for dialogues. With the last scene taken in Greece, we now have 90+ video files in total. Anyhow, this was one of our best plays so far, and we both enjoyed it very much with all the bloopers and improvisation. Most importantly, this film would not be possible without a lighthouse, as it plays a major role in the story, and we found it just 20 kilometers from our hotel with tremendous views of the entire Corinthian Gulf. We spent three days on the site and nearby beach and finished all the 'Greek' scenes. In the above photo, Viktor, with our 'nerf' portal stone preps, is posing in front of 'Faros Melagavi', built on the rock near the 'Vouliagmenis' lake where we filmed the last portal scene and also just next to the ancient archaeological site of 'Heraion of Perachora'—a sanctuary occupied by a real oracle, just like the one in Delphi, dedicated to the goddess Hera and built in the 9th century BC. Here, just next to the old ruins of the temple of Hera, I found a stone perfect for a green screen scene we already filmed in our living room 'studio' and more or less successfully merged it into the film's main dialog.

In a way, we were, sort of, pioneers in exploring Corinthian vacations from Serbia. This was actually only the second year for travel agency "Balkan Fun" to organize a stay in Loutraki, a seaside resort located in the Gulf of Corinth and just a couple of kilometers from the western exit of the Corinth Canal. It is actually a thermal spa center known from ancient times with natural water springs with multiple healing abilities. If you bought bottled water in Greece anytime in the past, the chances are that some of them are from Loutraki Spa. We stayed in the hotel 'Mon Repos', a very nice old hotel with a genuine 'Otis' elevator from the middle of the previous century. If you watched 'Kate and Leopold', you probably know what I mean. The town is not perfect for families per se; the beach is not sandy and wide, and deep water comes very soon from the rocky part, but if you are in your twenties, with the famous hotel Casino and numerous nightclubs, you are in the right place. If you are older and with small kids, don't forget to come here with the car so you can be able, like we did, to explore the neighborhood.

Anyways, we chose to come here with 'Balkan Fun', not only because they were the only agency offering Loutraki for the fair prices, but also because of their numerous bus excursions to Athens and the Peloponnese. Anja Bačanin, our travel guide, did a perfect job organizing the tour, and with her 'radio host' voice in decent buses, she perfectly provided all the information needed. I admired her for her ability to tell a story with thousands of years of ancient times perfectly wrapped into just five or ten minutes. Not all travel guides can do that, and with these words, this is our thanks for all her efforts during our stay and especially for the two excursions we shared with the group.

And from two excursions on the Greek mainland, one was a visit to the ancient Acropolis of Athens, which was one unforgettable day. Especially for me, as this was my second visit to the site, with the first one being when I was younger than my son today. I still have a scanned image of me in the Acropolis some 40+ years ago, and all my efforts to find the same amphora where my old photo was taken failed, probably due to the fact that a new museum opened in the foothills of the site since then and all small artifacts are probably moved there. Still a couple of 'déjà vu' memories triggered in my mind, especially at the gate. Too many years passed, I guess—I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and it is not easy to remember things from that distance in time. I am still happy I experienced a couple of flashes of familiarities and resemblances.

The second excursion was named 'Discovering Peloponnese', and it widely justified its name. To be honest, quietly I was all in for this vacation this year, just because of this trip and especially for a chance to visit the Mycenae fortress. Within the second millennium of BC, Mycenae was one of the major and only centers of Greek civilization, and if you ask me, all the ancient Greek times later, including 'Classical Greece', which flourished for a couple of hundredyears and started somewhere in the 5th century BC, have to thank their origin in Mycenae. It was populated all the way from Neolithic times, ever since probably the last ice age, but the most prosperous times were around 1350 BC, at its peak when the entire site was built in a famous Cyclopean masonry style with massive limestone boulders and no use of mortar of any kind. In Greek mythology, Cyclops, the one-eyed giants, supposedly lived before the last ice age and, in ancient times, were the only ones capable of lifting stones, and some of them we saw on site were larger than two meters in height and probably weighed tons. Well, if you ask me, the Cyclop builders in this and any other case were probably elephants, strong horses, and "expendable" slaves, but still, the ingenuity of the old masons never disappoints. Their ingenuousness and beautiful museum with alien-like artifacts are something I will remember for a long time.

The peak of Mycenae dated just a couple of centuries after the devastating volcanic eruption of Thera, or the well-known Minoan eruption of the island today known as Santorini. I wrote more about it in the posts Aegean Sea and Atlanteans, but in a nutshell, there is a theory that survivors of the old Minoan civilization (Atlanteans?) or at least some of their ancestors, after the eruption, came here and founded Mycenae in the first place or mixed with natives. Artifacts found that resemble Minoan deities are one of the pieces of evidence that it might be true, along with similarities in the written language used. That's the history and scientific hypotheses, but as far as mythology says, Mycenae is founded by legendary Perseus, a demigod, the son of the ultimate god Zeus and mortal woman Danaë, daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. If you didn't see "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans" with Perseus played by Sam Worthington, go ahead and "rent" them; they were not that bad movies at all, despite all my reservations, and best of all, the script of the second movie offers the answer to the ultimate question of how and why gods from Olympus ended their presence on Earth.

Of course, the excursion was not only about the ancient Greeks—we were privileged to visit the Corinth Canal itself, the legendary sanctuary of Epidaurus with an amazing amphitheater, probably bigger than the one in the ancient Hierapolis of Pamukkale in present-day Turkey, and most of all, the old capital city of Greece—Nafplio, an amazing city with a colorful history that one time in the middle ages was ruled by the Republic of Venice. It was the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and of the Kingdom of Greece in the early 19th century, and its mixed architecture is still visible today. Viktor and I visited their small and wonderful war museum that is hosting many items and stories about the last millennium, including a model of the Venetian warship from the time.

Sometimes I wonder if one lifetime is enough to visit all of Greece and its ancient and modern sites and cities. Probably not. One thing is for sure. More summers are waiting ahead.

Anyway, this vacation gave us lots of knowledge and experience, and I am sure with this year there are fewer and fewer sites still waiting to be explored and seen. Aside from a couple of Aegean islands still on my to-do list, regarding Peloponnese, I still have a couple of regrets, especially if I think of Sparta and ancient Olympia. Speaking of Sparta, what we didn't miss and stopped to see during our journey was the "ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ" monument, next to the highway and old site where the famous battle of Thermopylae happened. Leonidas I, as I wrote in the posts Fishermen and Pirates of Evia and Warfare Then and Now, led a small army to defend Greece from Persian invasion in August 480 BC. He failed to defend Greece from Xerxes' large army at Thermopylae, but even today, after 2500 years, his bravery will be remembered as the greatest last-stand battle ever recorded. Not to mention the movie and famous line "This is Sparta", which is not only artistically perfect but also not too far distant from the facts as well.

ps.

I rarely publish on the blog personal photos that are not ours, especially not selfies, but this post deserves an exception. The following image is made by Anja, our guide. Great colors and style. Well made. I mean it. We are somewhere in the picture, and not just us; behind the group to the left is my backpack, which I accidentally forgot to bring with me, and coincidentally, where it stands is the exact spot where the first image from this post was taken.

As for the rest of the images in the post, this time I chose to include only selected photos that are following the story, but there are more, and all of them are in the album named, well, you probably guessed, Cyclops of Peloponnese. Needless to say, I recommend the entire destination, travel agency, and all the excursions.

Image refs:
https://goo.gl/photos/rLdZuPdaApQTCv5N8

Refs:
http://www.visitloutraki.com/
http://www.nafplio.gr/en/sightsmenu/stateandprivatemuseums/warmuseum.html
http://www.fungroup.rs/
https://www.facebook.com/anja.bacanin

Thassos Island Today and Before

The age of this blog is both old, in the sense of the fast maturing of the internet and IT technology in general, but also very young if we are counting human age in the old-fashioned way. When we first visited Thassos Island a dozen years before, the internet and social sharing technology were about to enter their unstable teenage years, so to speak. It was the time when I bought my first digital camera, the HP PhotoSmart C850, with its state-of-the-art optics and digital technology from the time. Pictures from Thassos back then in the summer of 2003 were probably my first attempt to take more artistic landscapes from our Greece vacations, and today is perhaps the time to compare both what changed in photography gadgets and also Thassos itself after a full 12 years.

Let's start with images first. After 12 years in time distance, I decided to choose the same number of images for this post—half of them shown above, all taken with the HP Photosmart C850 with a 4-megapixel CCD sensor, and half below, taken from this summer vacation with the Nikon D5200 and CMOS sensor with approximately 20 megapixels more than in the old HP. It is insufficient to say that 12 years of maturing of technology in optics, hardware, and software is easily noticeable.

As for Thassos Island, very little changed over the years. Local people are still the same, very hospitable and friendly; beaches are the same as they probably were hundreds of thousands of years before; the Aegean Sea is still crystal clear, just like in the time of Zeus; the company and the sun are the same hot, like in all Julys in previous millenniums and eons.

What is a little different are the people who are visiting Thasos—this year there were more tourists from Eastern European countries, like Romania, Bulgaria, Moldavia, Ukraine, and Russia, and fewer from Western Europe, which is probably the result of the anti-Greece media campaign due to the political conflict between the Greek government and the EU and the financial crisis in Greece these years. I have to say that at least during our stay on Thassos I couldn't notice any crisis or any problems whatsoever. Man-made crises are always like that; they always have profusely enhanced exposure in media, and the truth is never on either side in conflict and never in media. I know it is a cliche, but you have probably heard the phrase "trust no one", and if you ask me, it is always the ultimate truth when it comes to raw propaganda and news in media, especially if it is related to some political affairs like the current one in Greece vs. the EU (and by EU you can freely read Germany).

http://www.thassos-island.com/