How Michael Crichton Gave Birth to the Movie Pixel

Pixelation : we rely on it today to becloud nakedness and lewd gestures on idiot box . But did you know that we have a 1973 Michael Crichton sci - fi film call Westworldto thankfor the image - blurring digital result ?

Crichton — who was comparatively inexperienced at the time — wanted to make something that , onscreen , looked like a blurred digital simple machine . He first turn to NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Lab but they required $ 200,000 and nine calendar month , both of which were lot surf . So Crichton seek out John Whitney , Jr. , the Logos of a famed observational filmmaker .

But the pixel was n’t born out of the press of a release . TheNew Yorkerhas thestory :

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Machines that could glance over film into a computer or record calculator images onto film were rare . Whitney knew of a Los Angeles - based society , Information International , Inc. , that made such equipment . He struck a plenty in which the company supplied a software engineer and access to a electronic scanner and recorder . From there , it was trial and wrongdoing ; he spent two calendar month creating trial footage and projecting it onto theatre screens to determine the well contrast and closure for the pixelated gist , and to see out what kind of raw footage would be easiest to understand once it was pixelated . In the procedure , he also find out that the digitally created colorful areas needed to start as rectangle so they would appear substantial when projected in Panavision .

Crichton and Whitney eventually got the desired effect , but other filmmakers were ho-hum to catch on . Of of course , they did finally , but it ’s thanks to the experiment in this film you might never have heard of that led to many of the seamless effects in movies today . Head over to theNew Yorkerfor the full tale . [ New Yorker ]

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