WEBVTT - Invention Playlist: The Motion Picture, Part 1 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.080 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:12.040 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and I'm 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:14.720 Joe McCormick. And today we're going to be embarking on 0:00:14.800 --> 0:00:18.640 a sort of second part of our saga of photographic history. 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.080 We just did several parts talking about the camera obscura 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:24.560 and then the invention of photography, and now we're moving 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:27.720 on to the motion picture. And I wanted to start 0:00:27.760 --> 0:00:30.480 with a question that might be a stupid question, but 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.440 it's something that I often think about when I go 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.199 to the movies, and it's that when you go to 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:38.640 the movies, you sit down to see a motion picture. 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:43.040 The basic media that you're viewing is a succession of 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.920 still images that are perceived by the brain, is continuous 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.560 visual motion and audio that accompanies it. And so that 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.760 in itself is pretty neutral, right like that that it 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.360 could show you any number of sights and sounds. But 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:00.959 what we came to view for some reason as the 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:03.600 motion picture, the thing you go see in a theater 0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.679 most of the time these days, is something like a 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.360 visual novel or a visual short story. It's like a 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.000 story shaped thing, and then you watch it for an 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:16.119 hour and a half or two hours and then it's over. 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:18.640 And obviously there are lots of exceptions to this, and 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:21.280 if you want to expand a video you I mean, god, 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:23.840 I mean, there's a whole pool of different kinds of 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:25.520 content out there, But the things we think of as 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:30.360 movies are these stories. And I wonder why that is. Well, 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:31.920 I mean, there's a lot of we said about just 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.320 the importance of storytelling in human culture or something we've 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.480 talked about on Stuff to Blow your mind recently. I 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:40.560 think that's that's a major factor, Like what do we 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.400 what do we do with our art and our technology 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.400 while we do human things? We we tell stories for starters. 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:50.320 But it's interesting when you go back to the earliest 0:01:50.400 --> 0:01:53.760 days of the motion picture, I feel like you get 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:56.880 a sense back then that it wasn't always necessarily gonna 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.520 be this way, because yeah, it's some of the the 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:02.760 examples we're going to discuss in this episode. You see 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:07.400 the more of the scientific direction of motion picture, the 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.560 way that motion picture can be used to to unravel 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:12.840 what is actually going on in the world, to to 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:15.640 slow it down and to better understand it. Yeah, to 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:20.959 either present kind of a non story based visual spectacle 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.799 to just kind of show you a succession of things happening, 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.040 or to study, Yeah, to study the world and get 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:29.840 a closer look at it, maybe to see it in 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.480 a kind of slow motion that you wouldn't have seen before. 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.160 So you're you're wondering if there's perhaps like an alternate 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.160 reality where it, say, documentary is the primary Like when 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:41.720 someone says, hey, do you want to come over to 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.519 our house and watch a movie, you just assume documentary, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.120 and then if it's a fiction film, you're like, oh, 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.359 it's not a documentary, how surprising, or things that might 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:52.200 be called like art films. Now, I mean, there are 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:55.920 a million different ways you could show somebody a succession 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:00.400 of still images simulating motion and accompanying sound, and it 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.480 would not like, you know, there's an infinite variety of 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.400 things you could do there that wouldn't be a story 0:03:06.639 --> 0:03:10.680 that some somewhat simulates the structure of a novel. Yeah, 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:12.359 or or I mean there of course, there are plenty 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.040 of examples of things like say, live sporting events also 0:03:15.880 --> 0:03:20.440 presented via the medium of essentially the moving picture. Yeah, Well, 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:22.840 maybe then this just has more to do with with 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.440 our categories, like the things that we end up calling 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:29.000 movies because as you know, as we mentioned a minute 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.120 ago there there's there's an whole internet full of video 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:37.560 content that you wouldn't call movies, but it's it's something, right, yeah. Uh. 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:40.000 But you know this, this does get to the heart 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:41.680 of what we're talking about here and what we've been 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:46.960 talking about with the evolution of photographic technology. How it 0:03:48.120 --> 0:03:52.080 how we see that the technology grow advance, then spread 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.600 out and and and become you know, not merely the 0:03:55.640 --> 0:03:59.880 technology of elite individuals, but the technology of the man, 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.440 and then how that inevitably changes everything as well. Exactly. Now, 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:06.640 one of the things that we have been talking about 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.200 in our history of photography here is how the invention 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:12.520 of photography was sort of part of a quest for 0:04:12.560 --> 0:04:16.120 ever increasing realism in imagery, right that that was something 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:18.560 that Louis de Guerre was concerned with. He wanted to 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.640 create more and more realistic paintings, first working on his 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.920 panoramas and the diorama, like taking the art of painting 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.919 to two new heights of realism and simulating real scenes, 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.919 and of course the next step beyond that is directly 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:37.159 just transferring the light reflected off of things onto a 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.320 permanent record. But of course, as we were talking about, 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:44.400 fixed images are also sort of a simulation because reality 0:04:44.480 --> 0:04:47.480 is never a fixed image, right, We we see a 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.960 fixed image and it kind of implies motion, right, Yeah, 0:04:51.000 --> 0:04:53.640 there's this this wonderful blurring that kind of takes place 0:04:53.640 --> 0:04:56.440 in our imagination. Yeah. Just I mean, just think about 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:58.360 the ways that people had to be put in the 0:04:58.400 --> 0:05:00.800 Iron Maiden in order to have their portrait taken in 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:03.320 the earliest Guera types, because you know, you had a 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.360 exposure of several minutes and you couldn't move your face, 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:09.799 and so how natural is that a representation of a person. 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.640 Uh So the real way to get reality even more, 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.520 to get even closer to the experience of just looking 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:20.719 at the world, would be to record continuous imagery. Yeah. 0:05:21.200 --> 0:05:25.160 This there's a particular type of video portrait. I think 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.760 probably a number of people have probably seen it utilized 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:33.240 in the film Baraca that came out many years ago. 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:35.120 I haven't seen it, Oh you should. It's a you know, 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:40.120 fabulous and beautiful cinematography. Um just you know, scenes of 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:45.120 life and tradition and ritual around the world. But they're 0:05:45.160 --> 0:05:50.240 these wonderful scenes where it's just an individual staring into 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:54.559 the camera and and you're just kind of locking eyes 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:56.720 with them, and it feels it feels very intimate. It's 0:05:56.880 --> 0:06:00.400 you know, it's essentially a motion portrait. That is interesting. 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:03.599 I wonder why that didn't catch on once we had 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.599 photo and video technology as the new form of portrait. 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.560 You had painted portraiture, then you had photo portraiture. Why 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:12.520 not video portraiture. So up on the wall, there's Grandpa. 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.200 They're just on a continuous loop of about ten minutes 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.080 of looking into the camera. Well that's what they have 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:21.839 in the Harry Potter world. There do not seem to 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:26.719 really be any stationary photographs. All photographs are these motion portraits. 0:06:26.880 --> 0:06:29.880 So their ahead, Yeah, they are aheading. We don't lack. 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:32.160 The technology is just that doesn't seem to be what 0:06:32.200 --> 0:06:36.120 people want when they're in their portraiture. Alright. So yeah, 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.200 as as we've been discussing, some of the predecessors to 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.560 the motion picture are are very much the photographic technologies 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.160 we've discussed before. But but but some things are not 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:51.640 really directly related to that technology. And then we also 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.760 really need to discuss some key phenomena that play into 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.160 the experience of motion picture viewing. Right, These would be 0:06:59.240 --> 0:07:03.800 neurological and brain brain phenomena. Psychological phenomenon also, and one 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:07.400 of these phenomena has historically been referred to though it's 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:09.920 a problematic concept. We can discuss a little bit as 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:13.920 as persistence of vision, and other relevant phenomena that I 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:16.440 think we'll have to mention are known as beta motion 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.840 and the five phenomenon, which we will collectively call a 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:23.239 parent movement or a parent motion. Right, So as we proceed, 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:25.679 we'll we'll kind of like catch up on all of that. Yeah, 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:29.480 but let's let's start with this idea of persistence of vision. Okay, 0:07:29.560 --> 0:07:33.400 so how do we think about motion pictures? Well, when 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.480 when when it's really good, we often don't think about 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:37.120 it at all, do we? Well? Yeah, I mean that's 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:40.000 what they say is the best director of a film 0:07:40.080 --> 0:07:42.280 is the one who creates a film where you don't 0:07:42.320 --> 0:07:45.640 notice the direction, Like you're not picking out technical elements, 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:47.800 I mean unless you're really looking for them. But it's 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.560 the person who creates the film that is pure experience, right, 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:53.160 You just get lost in the action, the emotion, the wonder. 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:55.840 But even if we're say a little bit bored or 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.240 checked out during a movie, or a TV show. We 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.720 may think of these things as well. We might just 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:03.680 think of it as a massive production or a work 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:05.480 of our We might kind of take it apart in 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:07.960 these different directions, right, Like, I wonder how they shot this, 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:10.480 So this is this is a pretty pretty long take. 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.720 I'm bored, but I'm admiring the all the work that 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:17.440 went into making it. But we're probably not thinking of 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:21.200 the film that we're viewing as visual stimuli. That exploits 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:23.920 a loophole in the way that we process images, right, 0:08:23.920 --> 0:08:26.840 But that's exactly what it is. It's taking advantages of 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.000 sort of particular facts about the way our eyes and 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.360 our brains work to make us have the illusion that 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:36.560 we're looking at continuous images when actually we're when we're 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:39.120 looking at a succession of still images that do not 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:42.559 move at all. That's right. So, persistence of vision is 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:45.320 is the retention of a visual image for a short 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:48.120 period of time after the removal of the stimulus that 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.319 produced it. The human brain can only process ten to 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.640 twelve images per second, retaining an image for a for 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.839 up to a fifteenth of a second. If a new 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.320 image comes along within a fifteenth of the second, it 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:03.160 creates an illusion of continuity. Yeah. Now, in the nineteenth century, 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.640 persistence of vision was originally sort of believed to occur 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:11.520 because images lingered on the retina for a short period 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:13.840 of time after you see them. But I think that's 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.440 not exactly believed to be the true cause of the 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.640 experience of persistence of vision. Now, it is true that 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:24.160 fast successions of still images are processed in the brain 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:28.600 as continuous motion or you know, as as a single experience, 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:31.080 and not as a a succession of images, but not 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:35.000 because the retina functions like a camera taking snapshots that 0:09:35.000 --> 0:09:37.440 can be measured in frames per second, where they stack 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.360 up if they come fast enough. I think the idea 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:44.200 there was that you'd sort of blend one frame into another, uh, 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:47.840 that persists as new frames are sensed. But our modern 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:51.360 understanding of vision as as perception is less like a 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.719 camera taking snapshots and more kind of like an integrated 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.400 sensation that involves the brain as much as the eyes. 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.000 So even though the original understanding of persistence of vision 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:04.320 might not be exactly technically correct, I think it's still 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.800 useful as a metaphor for one way that the still 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.280 image seems to flow smoothly from one moment to the next. 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.920 If these still images are projected fast enough, and it 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:18.120 it's ultimately simulates continuous motion. Yeah. And so motion pictures 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.760 were traditionally sixteen frames per second for silent films and 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:24.840 then twenty four frames per second for sound films. And 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:28.080 that seems to be kind of a low threshold of 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.600 what we what is good enough for us to perceive 0:10:30.679 --> 0:10:33.640 is continuous motion. Yeah. Anything anything less than that, and 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:35.959 you're going to get into sort of a herky jerky 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.920 stop motion kind of feel right towards then the herky 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:42.560 jerkyman singing songs of love. Yeah. The the fire effect 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:47.640 was originally defined in nineteen twelve by psychologist mac Max Verdheimer, 0:10:47.800 --> 0:10:50.320 and it's a He looked at it as a type 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.640 of optical illusion of perceiving a series of still images 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:57.280 when viewed in rapid session as a continuous motion. Yeah, 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:00.480 and this is one form of apparent movement. Unfortunately, it 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:05.040 seems to me that these two concepts are apparently constantly confused. 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:08.240 In writings on Photo History, I came across this because 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:10.920 I was getting confused reading about them when preparing for 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:14.319 the episode. Uh So. In in writings on vision Perception, 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:18.240 and film scholarship. The definitions of beta movement in five 0:11:18.240 --> 0:11:20.840 effect seem kind of blurred together, as documented in a 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:24.400 two thousand paper published in the journal Vision Research. So 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:26.400 it took me forever to figure out what was going 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:28.440 on here, and I was glad to find out it 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:32.840 wasn't just me. Now here's the short, simple version both 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:36.440 of these two phenomena, the FI effect and beta movement, 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:40.800 they enable us to see various kinds of illusory motion 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:45.080 in successive still images, but they referred to different speeds 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.320 of projection and types of visual sensation. And to the 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.720 best of my understanding, it appears to me that what's 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:54.040 taking place in our perception of films is more related 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:56.360 to what's known as beta movement. But either way, it's 0:11:56.400 --> 0:11:59.880 the brain's tendency to interpret certain types of changes in 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:04.120 successive static images displayed at the right speed as smooth 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.560 continuous motion. So, for example, if you see successive still 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:11.240 images in which three dots are changing position on a 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:14.520 black background in between the images, if you project them 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.920 fast enough, we don't see images one at a time, 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:21.120 but we see a snake moving around. Basically, you know 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:23.360 what happens when you make a little flipbook out of 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.600 the corners of a of a document. Yeah, so, on 0:12:26.640 --> 0:12:30.800 its own, apparent movement is an extremely interesting phenomenon given 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.640 what it illustrates about the brain. It might be more 0:12:33.720 --> 0:12:36.040 mysterious and more interesting than we give it credit for, 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.439 especially now that we're used to the idea of movies. 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:40.679 But we've discussed it a bit on stuff to blew 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.800 your mind before. In the context of forming a perception 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:47.000 of the present moment in our sense of now, like 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.280 apparent movement cited under the name of the fire effect 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.000 can be demonstrated, for example, by rapidly flashing dots on 0:12:54.080 --> 0:12:57.319 different parts of a screen. Uh. And if the flashes 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:01.360 are timed and positioned correctly, we don't just perceive a 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:04.280 dot flashing here and then a dot flashing there, but 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:09.320 we perceive a single dot that moves between the locations 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:11.880 of the flashes. And this is one of the many, 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.040 many ways for us to realize that our vision is 0:13:14.120 --> 0:13:18.080 not a straightforward objective record of reality, but it's a 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:22.040 world of sensation stitched together in the brain based on 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:24.880 objective light data, but definitely not a one to one 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.680 representation of it. And just as a side note, because 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:30.520 it's too strange and interesting not to mention. One really 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:34.600 spooky effect here is the so called color fi effect. 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:37.040 So what happens if you take this principle of two 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.000 flashing dots perceived as a single dot in motion, and 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:44.840 then you change the colors of the dots between flashes. 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:49.360 If your brain perceived continuous motion when there was none, 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.839 how does it handle the color change between the end 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:55.480 points of this path? You imagine you see the dot 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:59.880 taking right, flashes here, then flashes there, but changes color 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.319 in between. What what? What does the brain do there? Will? 0:14:02.360 --> 0:14:05.840 Studies show that people tend to perceive a change in 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:09.120 the color of the dot about halfway along the path 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:11.800 that it takes. So you flash a red dot, then 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.559 you flash a green dot, and people see a dot 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:17.400 zip from one place to the other and change color 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.800 from red to green about halfway there. But the really 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.000 interesting question is how can you have seen the dot 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.640 change color halfway there if it wasn't actually traveling and 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.440 you didn't know what color the second dot would be 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:33.400 until you saw it. Oh wow, Yeah, that that's that 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:36.720 really forces you to rethink how we're perceiving now, how 0:14:36.720 --> 0:14:39.880 we're perceiving time exactly. It's so strange because it's like, 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:42.440 for a split second your brain was able to predict 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:44.480 to the future, but of course we know that's not 0:14:44.520 --> 0:14:47.600 what happened. In fact, what this seems to indicate instead 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.160 is that not only is our vision a stitch together 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.040 impression in our minds that's not a one for one 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:56.800 representation of reality, our perception of time from moment to 0:14:56.880 --> 0:15:00.600 moment is a stitch together simulation as well, such that, 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.840 like our very perception can essentially be post addicted. What 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:07.280 you think you see in one split second can be 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.680 changed by what you see a split second later. It's 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.120 not until after you see the green dot that your 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:16.880 brain forms your perception of the dot you saw halfway 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:19.840 along its imaginary journey. So this means you're not just 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:23.320 seeing with your eyes, you're seeing with your memory and 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:26.080 with other cognitive functions of your brain. So it's it's 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.720 vision is not reality. Of course, it's an illusion mostly 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:33.320 informed by reality, but it's sort of formed in a 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:37.000 in a in an anti chamber of consciousness that's not 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:40.400 quite there in your sensation, where things are quickly edited 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.320 together for you to perceive. And of course all this 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.600 is crucial in the way that movies work. Movies are 0:15:45.640 --> 0:15:50.200 not merely audio visual objects. They require quirks of the 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:54.160 human brain to make sense and to feel like representations 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:56.760 of reality. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break, but 0:15:56.760 --> 0:15:58.960 when we come back, we're going to continue to discuss 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.120 how of the motion picture works in our brain and 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:09.000 then also some of the earlier models of this technology. 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:14.160 All right, so I've got a kind of weird proposition 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.440 about film technology, and it is that film technology we 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.440 should think of the earliest versions of it that originally 0:16:21.840 --> 0:16:27.880 evolved as a specifically human biotechnology, sort of like a 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.720 medicine made specifically for the human body, rather than as 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:36.520 a pure physical technology, because it has to do specifically 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:40.040 with the human brain and the human eye. That's right. 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.640 This is something that I think is really mind blowing 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.080 to to think about, because given the numbers we mentioned previously, 0:16:46.440 --> 0:16:48.480 you know, the human brain can only process ten to 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.760 twelve images per second um and and you know, and 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.280 then the way that the image will persist for the 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:57.960 fifte the second. You might be thinking, well, what about animals? 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:01.120 What about the various pets it we sometimes have hanging 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:03.760 out in our living rooms while the TV is on. 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.680 You might wonder, well, can some animals not see television 0:17:07.760 --> 0:17:09.400 or films, or at least not see it the same 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:11.199 way we do? Right? And then how do they see it? 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.840 What would that be like just uh, to have different eyes, 0:17:14.840 --> 0:17:17.720 different visual processing. I was wondering about this and I 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:22.200 found an excellent little article in Science Nordic and UH. 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:25.960 In this particular article do dogs see what's happening on TV? 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:29.760 They talked to Auto rope Stad, an associate or at 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:32.800 least then associate professor at the Norwegian School of Veterinary 0:17:32.840 --> 0:17:36.960 Science and UH. He pointed out that he would this 0:17:37.000 --> 0:17:40.560 would probably be like a strobe like torture show for 0:17:40.560 --> 0:17:43.560 for any for for various animals to try and watch 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.240 or be forced to watch television um or a movie 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:50.320 at least on an older television set. So they're they're 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.800 they're being visited by the herkee jerkyman basically. So. The 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.119 article points out that while humans requires in this articles 0:17:57.119 --> 0:17:59.760 at sixty twenty images a second to perceive the illusion 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:04.480 of films, dogs require seventy images per second. So it's 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:06.800 really only been in the past decade or so that 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:10.600 TV has become watchable to the canine audience. So at 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:12.840 least for the you know, the vast majority of canines 0:18:12.880 --> 0:18:16.520 out there. Yeah, my dog has never shown any interest 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:19.200 in TV at all, even you know, our our more 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:21.639 recent TV and I but I think that may just 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.040 be because he's a snob. Because I was looking this 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:27.080 up and uh, there is research indicating that dogs can 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:29.920 recognize images, such as the images of other dogs and 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:32.840 humans on modern digital TV screens. It just seems like 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.840 some dogs don't really care. I also wonder about just 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.879 like the senses and that are important to have given 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:43.080 an organism, because obviously dog can't smell. Yeah, that the 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.480 dog sense of smell is is phenomenal, Like it they 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:50.120 live in a different sensory realm Uh that it's really 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.040 difficult for us to try to even imagine where it's. 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.199 It's really like like odor first, and if you remove 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:58.440 odor from the equation, they're just not going to be 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:01.360 taken in by the illusion. But we're we we put 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:03.960 all of our emphasis on visuals and then you know, 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:07.520 an audio second. Uh, we don't for the most part, 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:10.000 we don't really care what the films would smell like 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.640 outside of you know, a few smell a vision gimmicks 0:19:14.680 --> 0:19:17.160 here and there. For the most part, we're we're fine 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:19.000 not smelling the film. Are we going to do an 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.080 episode on smell a vision one of the most important 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:23.399 inventions of the twentieth century. I think it would be 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.480 cool to do an episode where we talk about all 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:31.080 the sort of failed inventions and innovations of of of 0:19:31.280 --> 0:19:34.159 the movie theater industry. Uh, you know, getting into The 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:39.760 Tingler and whatnot. The Tingler, Yes, fun film, The Tinkler. Um. 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:44.439 But okay, so the dogs seventy images per second. The 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.200 article points out that birds need a hundred frames per 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.119 second to see. And while the article didn't mention cats, 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:52.359 I have read elsewhere that they need a hundred frames 0:19:52.359 --> 0:19:55.480 per second as well. Um and uh, and I have 0:19:55.640 --> 0:20:00.240 noticed that that our cat, she will all lot of 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:02.640 times just not look at the television, but occasionally we'll 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:06.680 put on these these HD bird watching videos on YouTube 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.280 and she definitely perks up and gets into those. Now, 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.879 part of that is listening. Of course, dads have have 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:16.680 you know, amazing hearing, so they are you know, they're 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.800 she's definitely listening to all these birds sounds. But then 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.879 she's also tracking the movements as well. Um. But you know, 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.920 conceivably though this would not have been the case if 0:20:26.920 --> 0:20:31.280 you were playing bird videos in prior decades. Well, I 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:33.160 think one thing we should keep in mind is that 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:37.000 our while we can be fooled in this illusion of 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.200 successive still images being interpreted as motion in our vision, 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:44.520 um that all our sense are different. Senses are not 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:49.000 all synchronized in how they perceive things. Uh, And they don't. 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.199 They don't get fooled in exactly the same way as. 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:53.200 For example, I was reading somewhere that in the early 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:55.920 days of film technology, when you would have like a 0:20:55.960 --> 0:21:00.920 hand crank film playback, people could deal with slight variations 0:21:00.960 --> 0:21:03.840 and speed at which the visual frames were coming, but 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:06.920 they could not deal with variations in which the accompanying 0:21:07.040 --> 0:21:10.520 sound was coming. Yeah, I think back on on the 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:15.160 like the the the varying levels of of video quality 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.760 I've been willing to deal with, such as watching like 0:21:17.840 --> 0:21:20.879 half scrambled episodes of Tales from the crypt you know, 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.360 in in my my childhood. But but when it comes 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:26.600 to audio, if there is audio present, like you needed 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:29.720 to have a certain degree of fidelity. Now, all of 0:21:29.760 --> 0:21:33.320 this we we've discussed, then you can probably guess there 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:36.720 are ways to get to these effects, to to exploit 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:42.359 these phenomena and the human visual processing system without using 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:47.399 motion picture technology. Right, pote photographic motion picture technology, because 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:49.560 I guess you could have different definitions of what motion 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.159 pictures are, but like you could, there were things that 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:54.760 were sort of like a movie before there was ever 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:59.040