Sunday, June 28, 2009

The Neuroscience of Illusion

I don't know if it's an original quote, but George Lucas once said The secret to film is that it's an illusion. And it's certainly the truth. At ColorBurst Video, we are big fans of magic and know a few tricks of sleight-of-hand that we've practiced in addition to the special effects. That's why a recent article on Wired.com caught my attention and I wanted to share it with you. It features incites from Teller of Penn and Teller, along with some video clips of their magic act.

For Teller (that's his full legal name), magic is more than entertainment. He wants his tricks to reveal the everyday fraud of perception so that people become aware of the tension between what is and what seems to be. Our brains don't see everything—the world is too big, too full of stimuli. So the brain takes shortcuts, constructing a picture of reality with relatively simple algorithms for what things are supposed to look like. Magicians capitalize on those rules. Every time you perform a magic trick, you're engaging in experimental psychology, Teller says. If the audience asks, How the hell did he do that? then the experiment was successful. I've exploited the efficiencies of your mind.

See the full article on the Neuroscience of Illusion at Wired.com.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Back to the Future in Typography

If you haven't heard of your favorite movie scenes being redone in typography, then you need to see this one first. There are a lot of these now. I believe that the first one was done with a Pulp Fiction scene. But this version done with Back to the Future is a classic.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Capturing Lightning in Action


~ Fun EZ Photography ~
Originally uploaded by ViaMoi
There have been a lot of wild and active thunderstorms in the last few weeks here in the midwest. I'm interested in methods for catching a lightning bolt on film (er, disk). I think about it every time I see a nice bright flash. I stumbled upon this shot and link and I thought I'd share.
With my last lightning upload, many commented on my speed and reaction time. It's a lot easier than that and I hope you can grab a few like this one after reading below.