Manual recording

Introduction

The purpose of this page is to act as an appendix, as it were, to the main body of my Firsts pages. It attempts to include a number of types of recording which approach verisimilitude, but in fact are mediated by humans to greater or lesser degrees, and which are in no sense automatic or unmediated.

I think these are still of interest, though there is no obvious unifying theme.

Hybrid recording

physiognotrace, Marey's seagull zoetrope, and Willème's photosculpture

Quasi-recording

 

Trompe l'oeil Trompe l'oeil is an illusionistic painting technique that seeks to create the illusion of 3D, and thus momentarily to trick the observer into thinking it's real. It's impossible to know the extent to which people in the past were fooled by paintings in this way, and the earliest paintings sometimes described as trompe l'oeil would fool no-one today, so it's not easy to pinpoint the earliest works that could still achieve their goal in this way. Additionally, some works may only be trompe l'oeil in a limited way, so that the term isn't fully fledged in this context: examples would include paintings in which it appears that a fly has landed on the surface of the artwork. Among the most convincing are the numerous paintings referred to as quodlibets, often featuring everyday items such as paper letters tucked behind ribbons on a wooden board. A good early example of these is Wallerant Vaillant's Letter Rack, possibly dating from 1658.

Unflattering portraiture The famous story of the painting of Oliver Cromwell's portrait—first recounted by G. Vertue in 1721 (G. Vertue, Notebooks, Wal. Soc., XVIII, 1930, p91) tells that "For when he sate to him Oliver said to him Mr:Lilly I desire you woud use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me & not Flatter me at all. But (pointing to his own face) remark all these ruffness pimples warts & every thing as you see me. Otherwise I will not pay a farthing for it." In the view of the National Portrait Gallery the portraitist was probably Samuel Cooper, not Lely, who seems to have painted his full-scale portrait using Cooper's sketch miniature as the model. The quote can't be attributed to a contemporary source. If it was said at all, it was more likely to Cooper.

Ancient sculpture This truly exceptional sculpture dates from around 2500 BCE. The subject is an Egyptian scribe or priest by the name of Kaaper or Ka'aper. Catalogued as CG 34 in the collection of the Cairo Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, the sculpture is 112 cm tall and carved in six or more sections from sycamore wood. The head and face are striking realistic, the sculpting of the face being truly sensitive. The eyes, made from rock crystal with small copper plates, gaze across the millennia.

Dogumentarism

Dogumentarism was an addendum by Lars von Trier to the previously formulated Dogme 95 for fiction films.

The documentarist code for 'Dogumentarism', comparable to Dogme 95's 'Vows of Chastity', stated the following:

1. All the locations in the film must be revealed. (This is to be done by text being inserted in the image. This constitutes an exception to rule number 5. All the text must be legible.)
2. The beginning of the film must outline the goals and ideas of the director. (This must be shown to the film's 'actors' and technicians before filming begins.)
3. The end of the film must consist of two minutes of free speaking time by the film's victim. This victim alone shall advise regarding the content and must approve this part of the finished film. If there is no opposition by any of the collaborators, there will be no victim or victims. To explain this, there will be text inserted at the end of the film.
4. All clips must be marked with 6–12 frames black. (Unless they are a clip in real time, that is a direct clip in a multi-camera filming situation.)
5. Manipulation of the sound and/or images must not take place. Filtering, creative lighting and/or optical effects are strictly forbidden.
6. The sound must never be produced exclusive of the original filming or vice versa. That is, extra soundtracks like music or dialogue must not be mixed in later.
7. Reconstruction of the concept or the directing of the actors is not acceptable. Adding elements, as with scenography, is forbidden.
8. All use of hidden cameras is forbidden.
9. Archived images or footage that has been produced for other programs must never be used.

Although a workable code, no significant dogumentaries seem to have been made.

Pseudo-recording

Naturalistic photography; f/64

In the 19^th century Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936) was the first to insist that photography should be as naturalistic as possible, always using sharp focus. Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, his first album of photographs, published in 1886, included 40 platinum prints in line with this approach. In 1889, to promote his ideas, he published the influential Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art. He was later, however, to abandon this viewpoint, believing instead that its even-handed emphasis on everything seen by the camera lens failed to reflect the way the human eye saw the world.

Peter Henry Emerson, 'Quanting the Gladdon', from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads.

The 20^th century saw a comparable trend exemplified by Group f/64, a number of San Francisco photographers including Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston, who held an exhibition in 1932 to showcase work in keeping with their manifesto. This declared that "The name of this Group is derived from a diaphragm number of the photographic lens. It signifies to a large extent the qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image which is an important element in the work of members of this Group." Similarly "The Group will show no work at any time that does not conform to its standards of pure photography. Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form."

Ansel Adams, 'Still Life, San Francisco', c. 1932.

Gelatin silver print. The Lane Collection. © The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.

Pure, or straight, photography itself, though promoted by Alfred Stieglitz and others after 1904, while a specific aesthetic typified by higher contrast and rich tonality, sharp focus, and aversion to cropping, in practice allowed the use of many common darkroom techniques to enhance the appearance of their prints.

All black and white photography, of course, is at a significant remove from true realism, in its absence of colour.

Photorealism and hyperrealism

Photorealism and hyperrealism in painting project an intense, heightened realism, but since both are based on an initial photograph the verisimilitude derives more from the latter than from the painting, so I exclude them from consideration here.

Exceptional filmic realism

Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, in 1975, directed a remarkable film about 17th century activist Gerrard Winstanley, and the famous experiment his group, known as the Diggers, made on St George's Hill, Cobham, where they occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures and dug them over to plant crops.

Attention to authentic historical detail was painstaking. Much of the dialogue was derived directly from 17th century originals then held at the British Museum. An ancient barn from Essex was dismantled and reconstructed at the Surrey location. Peasant shoes were specially made modelled on a surviving example from Nottingham. Actual contemporary suits of armour as worn by Cromwell's soldiers were used, on loan from the Tower of London. Cattle were similarly on loan from the Rare Breeds Society.

The film was made in black and white, which in one way is clearly counter-realistic—but conversely to have made in colour a film set in the 17th century would have actually added an illusion of realism.

[WinstanleyPK; sleeve notes to the 2009 Blu-ray restoration]

CGI

CGI has developed over many years, and it's not easy to pinpoint where and when exactly it reached the point that you genuinely can't tell a CGI image from video image of a real subject. For me that point came with the 2012 film Life of Pi, with lengthy footage of a tiger that is indistinguishable from the real tiger it was based on.

Earlier films used CGI wholly or in part, but the effect wasn't used to simulate reality.

The best online source for the history of CGI is the History of Computer Animation. This includes a fascinating YouTube video on the making of Life of Pi.

Dogme 95

Dogme 95 was a filmmaking movement started in Paris in 1995 by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the 'Dogme 95 Manifesto' and the 'Vows of Chastity' (Danish: kyskhedsløfter). These were rules to create films based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. The movement disbanded in 2005.

The first of the Dogme films (Dogme #1) was Vinterberg's impressive 1998 film Festen (The Celebration).

The ten rules of Dogme film-making, the 'Vows of Chastity', were:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in: if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found.
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa; music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable: if there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut, or a single lamp must be attached to the camera.
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action; Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.
7. Temporal and geographical displacement are forbidden, i.e. the film takes place here and now.
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm.
10. The director must not be credited.

Of these rules, the 9th seems dated, now, but the others still carry weight in terms of aiming for verisimilitude.

Automata

I focus here on just two types of automaton, which strike me as very successful achievements in verisimilitude: singing birds, and writing automata.

Recreated recording

Trumpeter Landfried

Perhaps the earliest, and almost certainly the best-known, recreation of a sound from history is by the trumpeter Martin Landfried (1834–1902), who sounded his bugle to call the Charge of the Light Brigade on 25 October 1854, and later recreated the event on 2 August 1890, as recorded on an unissued Edison brown wax cylinder, now held by the US National Park Service. On the record Landfried played a bugle that had been used at the battle of Waterloo.

Fake recording

This 1994 film featured the first extensive use of digital manipulation of historical and stock footage to integrate characters into the action. The pioneering company Industrial Light & Magic was responsible for the film's visual effects. Using CGI techniques, it was able to depict the lead character meeting long-deceased 20th century individuals (including US presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, as well as Elvis Presley and John Lennon), and shaking their hands. The star, Tom Hanks, was first shot against a blue screen along with reference markers so that he could line up with the archive footage. To record the voices of the historical figures, voice actors were filmed and special effects were used to alter lip-syncing for the new dialogue. Hanks was integrated into archival footage with the help of such techniques as chroma key, image warping, morphing, and rotoscoping.

In July 2017 Supasorn Suwajanakorn, Steven M. Seitz, and Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, of the University of Washington, published a paper entitled 'Synthesizing Obama: Learning Lip Sync from Audio', announcing that

Suwajanakorn's video is dated 12 July 2017. Much better known, though (19.8 million views), is an April 2018 video, also of Obama, made by Jordan Peele and Buzzfeed, and intended to alert the public to the potential of the new technology: You Won't Believe What Obama Says In This Video!