Orphans Film Symposium 2024 is around the corner and I had the wonderful opportunity to assist Professor Dan Streible to create a landing site for the symposium.
The initial idea was to create a new page on the existing OFS website, but it would limit us to its current theme. Hence, creating a separate site altogether seemed like a more appropriate option.
NYU uses a customized WordPress ecosystem for its web publishing. It does not have the full suite of WordPress features hence we had to pick from NYU’s offerings of stock themes. While the landing site is suppose to be simple, doing it with stock themes made it more difficult. The ‘Twenty Twenty’ theme was the closest to what we want and with a little CSS magic, we could remove unwanted elements that came with the theme.
I have been meaning to go back into t-shirt printing after rediscovering cyanotype at my last summer internship.
I thought of stamps and decided to print one from Palestine as I’ve been deeply concerned about the violence in Gaza.
This stamp was issued in 1927 when Palestine was under civil administration of the British Mandate of Palestine. It depicts the dome of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which is widely considered Islam’s third-holiest shrine. It was built between 691-692 CE and re-built between 1022-1023. Today, it is one of the world’s oldest surviving works of Islamic architecture.
Israel controls all access to Al-Aqsa today and is reviewing possible curbs on access over the upcoming Ramadan fasting month. This compounds the clampdown it has placed on Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.
All suffering must end immediately. On that end, I hope to one day send a postcard from Al-Aqsa.
During my fall 2023 internship at Cineric, Inc., I learned the intricacies of the company’s comprehensive restoration workflow, gaining knowledge in film scanning, digital imaging technology, and color and data management. Assigned to various departments, I observed and shadowed the dedicated staff involved in restoring cinematic masterpieces like Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1966).
Cineric is a highly specialized lab with the capability to scan and restore obscure formats and severely deteriorated photographic materials. The highlight of my experience was delving into the world of wet-gate scanners, witnessing the seamless fusion of photo-chemical and digital technology. Notably, all scanners are bespoke creations by my internship supervisor, Simon Lund, the Director of Technical Operations. With 30 years of expertise, Cineric has developed its own liquid gate technology, producing custom gates to handle diverse formats. The company’s commitment to innovation is evident in the construction of a dedicated scanner for 35mm paper prints. This internship has been immensely enriching, and I extend my gratitude to Simon and the entire staff for their invaluable guidance and mentorship.
Restic is a free and open source backup program available on Linux, BSD, MacOS, and Windows. It works with many different storage types (Local, Network, Cloud) and is designed to create and manage backups.
I needed a simple and elegant solution to playback digital videos for Home Movie Day 2022. I simply did not have budget for BrightSign players and I also did not want to deploy laptops onsite just to loop videos. Fortunately, Rasperry Pis came in as a great alternative.
While it was my first time using a Raspberry Pi, its set up is pretty easy. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has an easy to follow set-up guide that walks you through it. The bulk of the set-up involves loading the desired operating system into the Raspberry Pi with the help of the Raspberry Pi Imager. The Raspberry Pi Imager offers numerous operating systems, but the latest Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) release is generally a good option.
One may utilize VLC media player in the operating system to playback media, however another option is Pi video looper that requires the ‘Buster OS’. The video looper will automatically loop videos (H264, .MP4) found in any USB stick that is connected to the Raspberry Pi. This makes it perfect for art installations, fairs, theatre, events, infoscreens, and advertisements etc. What I like about it is its capability to automatically detect a new USB stick and its contents when it is hot swapped. This allows change of content on the fly.
The entire screen will turn black with a prompt: “Insert USB drive with compatible movies. press ESC to quit” after installation. Now its time to plug in your USB stick with your videos! Enjoy!
Full written guide here.
YouTube video guide here.
