Singing

We wanted to commend this YouTube channel to you, if you are interested in music: https://www.youtube.com/@wingsofpegasus

Fil is a musician and a music teacher.

In the past he has looked at music and singers especially, analysed their styles and voices and tried to say what makes them special.

More recently, he has been looking at examples where technology is being used to ‘pitch correct’ singing, even at live events, and other techniques that you might reckon were cheating (eg miming).

The videos all follow a similar style. It’s not surprising that performers are using technology to make them sound ‘better’ singers. What is surprising is the actual scale of it (and Fil must surely only be coving a tiny percentage) and some of the big and famous names. And some performances have been ‘fixed’ even though the singers are long gone.

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Santa visits Chicago

There are places in the world where they really celebrate:

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This is Cinerama

One of the things we miss very much is going to see a film on the big screen. We mean THE BIG SCREEN, not just not television and not the screens you normally get at your local multiplex, but actually something huge and immersive and wonderful. Something that could even be curved!

There are many different systems for wide screen filming: yes, nowadays we have IMAX, but in the old days there was Panavision, Cinemascope, VistaVision, 70mm, Ultra Panavision…

Our favourite, on the very rare occasions we ave seen it in all its glory, was Cinerama. There are still Cinerama theatres in the world. We once went to the one in Seattle.

If you don’t know, Cinerama used three cameras to film a wide screen view, and three projectors to show it back. Films like How The West Was Won appeared using this format (mostly) and you can see where the three strips meet when you watch the tv version.

We thought that this video about restoring Cinerama films was very interesting:

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