All I Got Is Your Photograph

I FOUND IT!

This is the method used to make those awesome psychedelic bumps on Adult Swim! It's called tilt-shift photography. Apparently it results from misalignment of the front lens of a camera, resulting in a gradient of focus. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but I think I can see why I made the assumption that the scenes in said bumps were modeled.

Some people think that learning how something was done, getting a behind-the-scenes look at something ruins their perception of it. In this case, not for me. Now I know that anything I take a picture of can be modeled-even if only in a photograph.

A lovely gallery of this sort of work can be found here. Even though it's digital manipulation used on some of these images, I still can't get over how powerful they are, as a total experience. Understand that we're excluding their music from this discussion.

Technical Difficulties

Please Stand By

Tommorow Morning You'll Wake Up With The White Noise

Has anybody else noticed those strange pre-show intro bits Adult Swim airs after the anime begins? They are really odd. So much so that I've enjoyed watching them as much-if, God forbid, not more-than the actual programming. I can't tell whether they're a photograph or a frame from a film; or whether they're real subjects or models. They feature a scene-it varies wildly; from high above an intersection between several freeways, to trackside on the Alaska Railroad, to inside some hotel with a decidedly industrial-looking freight elevator (I think). They're all slightly disconcerting and deja-vu inducing, filling me with restlessness and heartache. I don't even know why.

The music is good too.

The first picture is one I can more easily dissect than anyone else, I bet. That's an Alaska Railroad GP-series locomotive from EMD, probably a GP40; pulling a Rader Railcar product built for a 'railcruise' company operating trains across Alaska's natural beauty, for which tourists are supplied by means of a cruise ship. Come on, people, there is such a thing as the AlCan Highway. *shoulda been a railroad*The next is a total mystery. This is where I begin to wonder if these aren't skilfully built dioramas, equally skilfully lit and photographed (better than I did with the tevelision, capturing these fleeting images). This 'Last Chance Saloon' is straight out of some Smokey and the Bandit ripoff, I know it; I just know it! Like it was supposed to be blown up in this 'f4k3rz' S&B and they either forgot, made a spare, or never filmed that bit out of sheer apathy. I can't remember what kind of music is playing in either of these; they both seem to have been some kind of spooky lullaby or something, not particularly remarkable but pleasant and evocative of nighttime themed moods. Or mooded themes. I dunno.
Now comes the one with the really cool music; this cool cat has a really nice bluesy jive to it-something I like to call smoky club music. The smog of fifty or so cigarettes; plenty of minor chords on bass and not particularly overdriven guitar and a simple alternating drum line make for an urbanely spooky atmosphere. Probably the reason I think this one represents a hotel. The music seriously ranks up there with 'Have Love Will Travel' by the Black Keys. Cool tools. I think the carpet pattern has something to do with the 'hotel' theory too.


There are a few more of these; one with a big red cargo ship; two, like a hot-air balloon ride over the city, providing views of a shopping district and a major convergence of important highways; one with a battleship; one with a grond level vieew of a highway interchange; one with two backhoes and an aluminum trailer; and one I missed my opportunity in photographing last night, containing a lake in the background, train tracks in the foreground, and between some kind of transmitter tower and a small outbuilding. Gotta get me the rest of these.

What the real mystery is to me is that 'ACTN' logo with all the katakana above it and the odd symbol to the right. A clear closeup of this would be most appreciated, if it's to be found anywhere. The best view of it I have is in the 'hotel' picture. What exactly is ACTN? How does it relate to Adult Swim and Cartoon Network? Why am I geeky enough to pay more attention to the filler between shows than the shows I stayed up to watch? Do these things really have that much meaning to them, or am I just a lonely, empathetic loser? Will our hero be dashed to bits on the jagged rocks below?