The Creation of Benjamin Button

Benjamin TED Talk     

     In movies when it came to characters aging, special effects were limited. Instead of using complete computer generated special effects, movie producers hired different actors to play the different ages of one character. Although, in the newest movie starring Brad Pitt, movie productions had a whole new challenge they wanted to tackle. Their challenge? How to make the main character, Benjamin Button age while still looking like Brad. That, had never been accomplished in the movie industry. 

      If it was something that the movie industry had never accomplished, then they would have to think outside the box. They could not just simply place Brad's head on another actor's body. No, they had to alter his face so that layers of wrinkles are shown, droopy eyelids, and a crinkly forehead of an eighty-four year old Benjamin Button would appear on forty-three year old actor Brad Pitt. This was an experiment, without knowing if the outcome would be favourable or not. 

      They had to face their problem, they had to pull together something for the movie board, to show them that yes, they would be able to get the special effects down, and capable of creating a character that goes through his entire life in the movie. Their hypothesis? 'We've got a problem.' How could eighty or so of the movie crew finish shooting half of the movie without using all of Brad Pitt instead of just only his facial features? Their only way out... was to bring everyone together and have numerous meetings... thinking outside the box... They had to break down the steps, analyze, gather data and go beyond anyone's expectations.

     What these people could not find within the movie industry, they searched for possible answers elsewhere. Where could to find technology they could use to help age Benjamin Button? They had to gather materials and create an analysis and constantly experiment. They had a breakthrough though, when they completely remade and upgraded a motion

 capture device for the face. The device could capture hundreds of little movements a human face was capable of making. They used this handy technology and placed in on Brad to capture the expressions Benjamin Button would make in the movie. Successful experimenting and analyzing? Yes.

     With this advancement, the people behind the movie could take this technology and go somewhere with it. They could now use four actors of different stature and build, looking nothing like Brad and make them appear like Brad as he aged. Therefore, this was the basics of what they were looking for. This was the building block, the very structure of what t

hey needed to advance further into the challenges they faced. Next, more experimenting and analyzing. Lighting? Camera angle? And of course, excellent acting skills.

     Their prospect of whether to go with production of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had been floating around with executive producers wondering if such a technological equipped with mounds of special effects based project would be possible. They had their little what ifs.. they admitted they had a problem, they drew a hypothesis, they gathered their materials and they experimented, and analyzed. A group of people, with the hopes to bring motion capture of a novel to an on-screen movie reached a conclusion and successfully brought The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to the top of the box office, with 13 Academy Award nominations including Best Pictures.

Submarine SMASH Day Reflection

1. Summarize

2. Reflect

3. Tips and Suggestion  ca

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1. 

     On Tuesday, February 10, 2009, we had SMASH Day.

 After hearing the very popular song by the Beatles, 'The Yellow Submarine,'  we immediately jumped into our monthly challenge. Our mission was to able to build a periscope to identify seven items or 'treasures' located in the cardboard box or 'the island.' We were provided with materials, which we put to use to complete our mission. The materials were multiple pieces of paper, long pieces of tape, and a big piece of cardboard, and also with four compact mirrors. With less than a hour, we had to make a homemade working periscope and identify the seven treasures. 

2.

     The way we approached this task was that we first drew a diagram, which we used as a hypothesis. In our diagram, we drew out how we thought with the materials provided, and how we could create a periscope with reflecting mirrors. We aimed to use the mirrors to reflect images so that from underwater in my group's submarine, we would be able to use the reflected imagery to see the 'treasures'. 

     Although, we did come across several problems that caused my group and I to modify the design. Since we were using cheap, recyclable scrap paper, we thought to give it firmer support, which the first model did not have. For a firmer support, we used cardboard because cardboard is relatively firmer than paper. We were able to communicate and modify because we all realized that without there being an adjustment, our periscope would not be upright. And also due to the fact that our periscope turned out to be long... It resulted in a little bit of floppiness. So, with fellow teammates there, we were able to lend each other a hand and help lift the periscope up. We were able to spot mistakes and then modify the design after experimenting. 

     

3.

     For future teams that work on this, I advise them to think simple... We modeled our design after an after periscope, but were not able to make the mirrors reflect off of each other so that from below the table or 'underwater', we could view the objects in the cardboard box or 'the island.' Surprisingly, the big winners were a group of people who kept it simple. So, the future teams who are faced with the challenge should definitely think outside the box. 

Energy Bar Test #1

The Way You Is 

An energy bar by Vivian, Vincent, Augustine

We made our first energy bar with the following ingredients: marshmallows, oatmeal, raisins, dried bananas, and red bull. What we did is, is that we first heated the marshmallows with a heated pan over a fire. Then we added a small amount of red bull into the melted marshmallows and then added the rest of the ingredients. Since red bull is liquid, our product was sort of in a liquid form. So, we let the liquid evaporate a little in the added heat, over the fire. But eventually we decided that we weren't going to bake it, but we would try freezing it instead. So we put it in the freezer after forming a general bar shape (a rectangular prism) and placed it in the freezer. The next day when we took out our frozen bar, it was indeed frozen and remained it's rectangular prism form, but after leaving it out in room temperature, although it remained bar form, it was squishy. 

 

We decided that we will alter the recipe a bit. Since our biggest concern was that the texture of the bar was squishy rather than a firm texture, we think we need to focus more on how to keep a bar form. So, we are going to use gelatin as a factor to help maintain to form. And maybe try blending the ingredients in a bender. 

 

We are still in the laboratory testing... 

Debate Continuation: Is a car living or non-living?

If you look at my previous posts, I have already laid out my facts and which side I am on. And to continue the debate we started in class about whether a car is living or not, the argument of evolution of life came up.

The evolution of life; here's my definition. The evolution of life began with prokaryote organisms then to what we have now on Earth with ever growing organisms, having evolved. It's a big ginormous timeline of Earth.

Living things, when they evolve, they pass on traits that are helpful in their survival. So their evolved life form will possess the good traits in their generation. And that's what living things are capable of doing! Non-living things can't pass on these traits through reproduction and noo, the car in the factory argument does not work out. What happens in a reproduction is two different sets of genetic information coming together to form one.

And about the bee with the flower when the topic of reproduction came up; concerning that, a bee does not provide the genetic information! Another flower does. All a bee does is help carry the pollen to another flower. The bee acts as an assisting reproductive helper, basically not directly part of the reproduction process for flowers. So I do not believe that the bee with flower example can clarify that a car is in fact living but rather my belief that it is non-living.

What is the 'rule' for living things??

Mrs. Smith is the coolest teacher ever. Let me tell you why:

1. She is beautiful

2. She is the funniest person on Earth

3. She has a cute cat

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Here's what I think about the 'rule' for living things. There are the standardized rules like reproduction... excretion... etc. But in my opinion, even if it is probably wrong, to be alive would be to have an existence on this earth. And if you're going to contradict what I say by saying cars are alive, then you should probably understand first of all what I mean by existing on Earth. 

Organisms like plants and even one-celled organisms like bacteria, they follow the 'rules' of being alive. They have a circle of life. They can die, and they can grow and multiply. Here's how I decide if something is non-living or living. Besides the breathing part for humans... animals... e.g., is it possible for this something to die? No, this does not mean by making a transition from living category to non-living category. It has to be alive in the first place. 

To be alive means that it has once been alive or is still alive. On the contrary, non-living means that it has never been living in the first place. For example, a laptop is not alive. You can say that it was manufactured and that it was built from pieces... and therefore given 'life', but that's practically a metaphor! Because you can't say that a laptop is alive, just like a car is not alive. 

To categorize something into non-living, it's not able to reproduce, to multipy, to make excretion...e.g. Let's take the car as an example again... You can say fumes are a car's excretion, and you can say building a counterpart of the car counts as multiplying or reproducing, but remember what a car is made out of? Actually, I am not all that clear, but metal is some part of it. And metal was not alive and is not alive. If the metal the car was built out of was not alive, then the car is not living either. Some non-living things, like the car have living characteristics, that is true, but it is still considered non-living. It can be confusing since a car (the example I keep using) does appear to look like it is 'alive' when it is up and speeding off on roads.

I would love to think that a car is alive, that it's going to transform into a giant robot and save my life or something. Or maybe that my laptop is alive and can do my homework for me. But they aren't because they can't do what a living thing can. I can't tell my laptop to reproduce or do such a thing like grow from a white Macbook to one with a refrigerator built inside.