Blog #3 - The Museum of the Moving Image

At the Museum of the Moving Image I was able to see many aspects of what happens behind the scenes for films. The first part of our tour consisted of viewing vintage portraits of actors. What was interesting about these photos was the fact that they were themed to a particular actor's role. For example, there was a picture of Shirley Temple looking all innocent with her curly hair and happy smile. These pictures were very important because they could help casting directors see what a specific actor could bring to the a role just at looking at their portrait.

For the next part of the tour, we viewed masks and makeup. Two masks stood out to me the most in the exhibit, Chewbacca's mask and Jim Carey's mask for The Mask. One very interesting fact brought up by our tour guide was how simplified Chewbacca's mask looked was compared to the one worn by Jim Carey. This is so because in Star Wars, Chewbacca doesn't really have any lines of dialogue besides the occasional growl or snarl so there isn't much needed prominent facial features. Jim Carey's mask totally relies on facial features to fully see every expression that he can make.

We then moved on to costume design. There were many outfits on display at the exhibit from Bill Cosby's iconic sweater from The Cosby Show to Robin Williams's Mork outfit from Mork and Mindy. It was very interesting seeing the many costumes and how vastly they varied from one another. One important piece of information our tour guide told us about costume design is that not only do outfits help to give the viewer a sense of the time period a specific character is in, but it also helps to give us a window into the character's personality.

Lastly, we visited a sound recording booth. In the booth our guide was talking to us about automated dialogue replacement(ADR). To demonstrate it's importance, we had three volunteers dub over a scene from Babe. While it was humorous, it did help to give me a better sense of how dubbing works in post-production. Overall this was a very informative trip and I'm glad I came along.