I know you've been there...you've started just by looking at a funny youtube video that your buddy sent you and then it ends......... and DANG those stupid little previews at the end of each youtube clip!!! Before you realize it, you've watched 3 hours worth of randomness........for me it always starts with something and ends up in a completely different place than I started......earlier tonight a friend of mine sent me a demo of an AMAZING camera that sees light practically in total darkness......
"Rudy works in television so impressive things must be shared with him" seems to be the mantra of many of my non tv industry friends, and so they send me stuff like this every every other day and I must admit...pretty dang cool....although this one I ran into by total chance on Facebook.
So this clip it led to a curiosity induced Google search to read up about how the optics work in digital world format to simulate traditional ISO in contrast to actual film cell etc....... 2 hours of this led to reading up on the evolution and development of actual color film in the early part of the century, although common "in color" film would not become the standard for several decades later, the original color motion picture film was seen by human eyes as early as 1902!!!!! in fact here is a still frame from that particular film ...
So I kept reading on....my mind absorbing this stuff like a sponge...mesmerized by a vicarious excitement of what it must have been like for the first chemist/nerds/explorers that ever replicated a moving image in actual color......I started looking through YouTube for early color films and what I found was amazing... this is thought to be the earliest surviving footage ever captured on film cell....black and white obviously....this is not too long after the end of the civil war folks! yes....a nerd i am.
and then I happened upon this clip....and now I'm blogging...
There were several Kodak test subjects in this clip.....The woman in this clip that I'm absolutely smitten by has surely passed on and probably died a grandmother or more of old age...but the day they filmed her, she had to have been in her mid 20s......pops in at 1:37 into the clip and she's absolutely beautiful. For a second I was completely transported to the probably thoughts of the man who captured her image on this fateful day in 1922 (or at least I wondered what I would've thought had I been the camera man).....nothing more endearing than the image of this beauty being flirty and just beautiful for the sole sake of an experiment in color film acquisition.......its almost as if this guy thought..."I'm crossing a new frontier of technology here......and I want someone nothing short of absolutely beautiful to be immortalized in the cell of this film.....I want her spirit and her youth to live on forever into 100 years from now.....into the next century....into the eyes of a man who will wonder so many things about who she was and what she felt that day in 1922 as the camera caressed her roaring-20s beauty....." Mission accomplished sir......job well done....
Can you imagine? what sense of pride? what sense of accomplishment? to be the man who brought film to life in that dimension? the man or men who said....."that thing she just did? we want to see it once again.....but we want to see her do it again the way our eyes did.....in color! and we want her to see it too".....can you imagine how heroic they must have felt lying in their bed imagining all of the things that their new invention would lead to?.....did they know that Kodak cameras and film would travel to the moon and capture Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin hopping around in outer space and zero gravity?.....probably not....lol.....but I bet you they dreamed big!! could they have known that their technology in that state of infancy would someday not only ride shotgun into outer space but also into the deepest darkest abysses and explore inner space as well?......or what about Chroma Key and Compositing.......surely they didn't remotely imagine epics like Lord of the Ring or The Matrix....but I'm pretty sure many of these guys lived long enough to witness Ben Hur and Charlton Heston's The 10 Commandments (although more than likely at a really old age).........I'm SURE they dreamed big....I'm sure every baby step taken in film technology in their lifetime dug up that sense of accomplishment at seeing the fruit of their labor growing exponentially through the decades...
I honestly don't know much about the men who developed color film.....i started to read up on it but I chose to stop.....I don't want to know......i want (much like the blonde on the film) to leave her and them a mystery........maybe they were motivated by money (and that might hypocritically disappoint my capitalism loving butt).....maybe she was just a stage actress who had no idea what the funny looking box in front of her was as she blew kisses, posed and winked for the camera....I dont need to know nor do I need to de-romanticize destiny/history.....but I can say this...this was my take-away at 3am...
We've all got an innate desire to see things for what they really are....we all want to see in color and not in black and white.....we all want to be part of the experience but watch it in replay too and if pictures speak a thousand words....films and videos speak a million....
Where does this fascination come from? I wonder if it all goes back to that breath of God blown into us in our spirit...i wonder if God in His righteous and holy pride wants for us to see ourselves and each other the way He does.....in full color....in full reality....the Bible speaks of mirrors "Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror and then forgets what he looks like...." James 1:23..... Mirrors have been around for literally thousands of years looking at us in reverse each time we stand in one of them.......Point being...we've always wanted the vantage point of seeing what others see when they look at us!
And so in my insomniac condition this led to more thinking.....I mean REALLY thinking.........."man! what DO people see when they look at me.!?!!?" ........................I thought a lot about this..... that was no fun.........what do I want people to see?.
......over the last few years I've gotten really convicted about getting in the best physical shape that I can get (after ignoring this the majority of my life)....more than for any vanity reason...I don't want to hit 60 (a long time from now!!) and start falling apart.....I want to be around when my kids are in highschool and college....when they get married and make a granpa out of me (again many years from now).....but i can honestly say that vanity has not been the biggest motivator....so I went out there....changed my eating habits and live in the gym.....65 lbs down It's been worth it.......sure I like wearing cool clothes (especially on stage)....but that's such a small part.....as a guy in my 40s I'm the more confident and comfortable in my skin than I have ever been....I have goals set for myself and my family....but its just that....goals for myself and no one else.......BUT....what do I want people out there in the proverbial street to see???....beyond cool clothes and a healthy dude...yes my appearance and image DO matter to me.....but that's not enough!
I guess if I REALLY listen to my spirit....what I want people to see is a real person......in color.....not in black and white.....I want them to see a man who falls on his face everyday and yet realizes that his mistakes do not define him....a man who knows that he is forgiven for every possible shortcoming that he could ever commit and that he does and will, in a perpetual state of being the poster child for grace and trying to do better....I want to let people in, close enough to call them friends and be vulnerable so that they know my weaknesses and let them speak life into me .......let them lift me up if they so feel led.......and even keep me accountable ,if we're ever that close, if I'm going over board in any area of my life........ above else that others hopefully find inspiration for their own lives.......that they may realize that if God loves Rudy Landa enough to sacrifice His Son for the screw-up that he is...that surely God loves them too........and he can forgive people who have committed lesser sins than I have.
Boy if there's someone who's thankful for grace its me......I'm hot tempered sometimes when I see people getting abused especially if its directed at women....verbally or physically....I don't do well with road rage...I've been known to shoot my mouth off at authority figures in the past....I've been known to be in a brawl here or there in my younger crazier days.... (always with a good reason) .....I've been known to do things that I'm not proud of.....but....I've never, never-ever, tried to conform God to my lowest moments nor my sins by saying..."well God's ok with that because this is just how He made me"......no way.......I KNOW enough to know when I've done wrong and I need forgiveness......but I also know that God sees me blameless in His eyes because He sees his fallible and stubborn flunky of a child beneath the reminder of the price that He paid for me...........and infinitely more than my fascination with the blonde on the 1922 Kodak Test footage..... God is in crazy...total and absolute love with the inner ME that says "Father forgive me YET AGAIN because today I don't like what people must have seen, today I wish I had been a black and white silent film because I blew it.......please help me to show the world a better me that reflects who you are and what you want me to be........ and then get up and do it.........in full HD Color.
.... I'm a guitar player....what do I know? :)
