Museum

MOMI in Astoria NY, what a trip!

This is like an amusement park transporting you into the history of film. Film as art, is demonstrated as an explosion of human creative imagination, of image, sound and magic. If you are planning to work in the film industry; this place shows the birth, development and rise of a digital era converging the world wide web into a powerful tool whose main goal is to use strategic computer games to hypnotize brains, planned in such a way that it is part of our daily life, we love it, we enjoy it and we paid to be hooked. When you exit the Museum you feel that you went to the moon and came back to earth disarmed, looking desperately for a cell phone to be wireless or electrically connected. Whitout baterry power you will be lost.

You will find all aspects of film, television and digital media. Costumes, make-up collections such as the Elephant man, the Exorcist, Frankenstein and pictures of famous Hollywood actors: Greta Garbo, Charles Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, etc. The 1st silent block buster “The Great Train Robbery” is 11 minutes and the special effects were painted frame by frame. This was like a magician film, traveling to different theaters because there was only one copy. The Kinetoscope by Edison was the 1st home projector, it runs less than a minute and people used to pay a nickel to see it. The Movies did not make much money but marketing with mini-toys, contest like Charles Chaplin look-alike, Photoplay and Picture Play magazines produced profit to expand and create wonders in this business where innovation is improving so rapidly.

The 3rd floor is really cool because is more interactive, children and adults will love it, it begins with the origins of Moving Image with the Victorian Optical Toys. The Thaumatrope illustrates how motion picture works, (bird in the cage) it has Greek roots that means “magic that turns”. Behind the Magic Lantern you can see the “Persistence of vision”: moment of rest, light and speed.

My next stop was the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) room, where I had hands on experience of being a voice actor. Vioce acting involves practice, rehearsal, record, play back, record. I think every body enjoy it, it was cute and funny. In the next room we chose a video and edited the sound with music to give a sense of scariness, happiness, etc. The movie “Twister” with country music sounds ridiculous. Our guide told us that MOMI used to be the film processing for Kauffman Studios.

The MOMI has this 10 minutes movie: Pioneers of “Stop Motion Animation: Making “King Kong.” The filmmakers used different views of New York, Times Square was a set to work all night long with 400 actors; it creates a view of New York City in 1933, they were supposed to concentrate on the meticulous work. This really impresses me because of the amount of work involved in making the movie. If you were shooting 150 frames-shot for 6 seconds long it takes 6, 7, or 10 hours, depending on how complicated the scene is, it involves technique, photography, persistence and artistic vision.


Peter Jackson in his “King Kong”, researched about the Empire State building, and retrieved the original blue prints of the building. He spend few months trying to research locations from different views using a kind of hypnotized software to rebuild NYC from the air and different views from street level; from tall buildings he could shoot down the street, they have the perfect setting to create magical imagination on the screen.

I really enjoy my visit to MOMI!