At the Museum Of Moving Images, I like many of the displays that were shown. I saw the Mutoscope which was an early motion picture device. It worked on the same principle of a flip book which was pretty cool for that time it was made. The Mutoscope featured Charlie Chaplin the silent film comic actor. The Mutoscope was hand crank driven where you would crank the handle in order to see the pictures move and the faster I cranked it you could see progress of images tell a picture story visually. The single image frames were in black and white flexible opaque cards instead of a booklet of a flip book.
Another display at the museum that I saw was the Thaumatrope. It was a card with a picture on each side that was attached to a string. When you would twirl it quickly you saw the image move. The Zoetrope was a really cute and nice display at the museum too. It was a device that produced an illusion of movement from a fast succession of static pictures. In addition, it consisted of a cylinder with slits cut vertically and inside the inner surface showed an image in motion when you would spin it whole looking through the slits. I think one of the most captivating and awesome displays at the museum was the Feral Fount. It functions similar as the drawings in a Zoetrope or frames of an animated film. The sculptures are mounted on a rotating armature and the strobe light flashes thirteen times per second, illuminating the sculptures. Also, there is an interval of darkness between each flash of the strobe light, you don’t see a blur as the sculptures spins by, but perceive a moving image instead to the human eye. It was really hypnotizing to see the faucet turning into a bomb then into a paper airplane and landing in an exploding dishpan.
I also checked out the Screen Actors Guild section of famous actors and actresses at the museum which showed black and white photographs with their autographs on them. It was pretty cool to see a lot of the famous stars photos such as Jack Nicholson, Shirley Temple, Jackie Gleason and Anthony Perkins. I saw the short 1903 film “The Great Train Robbery” it was pretty cool considering the early film making techniques used at the time. The last shot in the film was kind of cool when robber aims and fires his gun to the audience. It’s said to be very startling for viewers at the time when they first saw it. I saw some of the costumes on display worn by actors and actresses in movies. I saw the many types of motion picture cameras used in film production through out the years on display, which I did not realize how big they were in person. Overall, my trip to the Museum Of Moving Images was an enjoyable experience, fun and informative as well.
