OK, for those of you interested in a more user friendly interface when using
the OCR Apps available to us, may I introduce the ScanBox!
1. What is it? ScanBox is, as you might guess, a box designed to enable
scanning. It is a box which collapses flat, to the size of a sheet of
foolscap/A4 size (the tuypical size of a printed letter) It is the work of
seconds to assemble it and it weighs a couple of ounces. It costs somewhere in
the region of 25 Euros/Dollars (a very loose conversion there!) It comes
equipped with a LED light, but you have to connect a battery to this.
Once assembled, the foot print is A4 sized and the height is about 16 inches. I
have only had a chance to play with a prototype which is made of cardboard, but
understand that the finished product is plastic.
2. What does ScanBox do for us? On the top of the box there is a hole, over
which you must position the camera of the phone. With the help of my partner, I
have placed four tactile markers corresponding with the corners of the iPhone
when in the exact position. The box is open on one side, so it is simplicity
itself to slide a sheet of text into the box. In this way, the phone is
perfectly placed for the shot, the paper is perfectly aligned and the distance
is perfect for prizmo to do its stuff! I mention Prizmo because I have only
tried SayText and Prizmo with this box and have to report that Saytext will not
work with it for reasons I could explain, but will leave for now in the
interest of brevity. Probably other OCR packages will work with the ScanBox,
but Prizmo has its advantages for us, so I will stick with it for now.
As you can imagine, 2 of the variables which make the use of the camera
difficult for us VIPs have been dealt with, I.E. the perfect positioning of the
phone in relation to the text, involving no skill at all, especially, once
these corner markers have been attached. So, totally hands-free I can tell
Prizmo to "take picture" and it is done! The only other variable which causes
difficulty for us is good lighting. Because the ScanBox comes with a LED light
set into the top, there should be no problem re ambient lighting, shadows etc.
However, with this prototype version, I have to admit that the light is
woefully inadequate and I have stuck, onto the underside of the lid of the box,
2 LED lights of my own. I should say that a friend of mine in Australia (the
home of the ScanBox) has the final version and reports that the lights that
come with the box work well for her. So, fingers crossed on that one!
In the past, on this list, I have described my own experimentation using a
cardboard box with a hole cut into the top and have reported reasonable results
with same, but who wants to live with a big, ugly, box in their lovely home
environment? Plus, who wants to carry something like that in the off chance
that they might need to OCR a restaurant menu? So, ScanBox does the same thing
while being very portable, foldable and light! It costs more than your
cardboard box and when you first see it, you do think "Hmmm, seems like a lot
for a flat-pack box" but if it does the business well...
I have found it to be excellent using prizmo on single sheets of text, but
below please find an example taken from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (a huge,
hard-back book, which is very difficult to flatten!) The page in question
contains 2 columns of text, no pictures, I think, and it does go a little awry
toward the very bottom, but I didn't hold the page flat, merely holding the
other side of the book virtically to allow the page I was scanning to lay as
flat as possible. The iPhone 4s was sitting happily by itself on the top of the
box comfortably between the four corner markers, my LED ;ogjts were on and I
only had to say "Take Picture!"
So, here is is! Sorry if it is a bit long, but I wanted to demonstrate a
scan which would have taxed me, using my Prizmo skills and which I could not
have achieved without using this ScanBox because scanning from the
Encyclopaedia Britannica ahs always been my yardstick when practising with the
various OCR Apps.
Finally, I must say that not everyone who has tried this box has been
immediately enchanted, but as I now have it set up, I can only say that because
I use it totally hands-free and I apply no skill of judgement at all, it must
be possible for all of us to work it to an acceptable degree of success.
Here's the scan, Enjoy,
Sandy.
kitchen of a lonely farmhouse; as the doomed man's head is held in an oven, and
his hands (the only thing in the picture) convulsively twitch, the sound of
hissing gas dominates the scene. The introduction of sound also made it
possible to use silence with a dramatic effect that is more telling than either
words or music.
Like images, sounds can be used to represent subjective thoughts, indicating
not what the character is saying but what is in his mind. For example, in
Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929), the first English sound film, the words "knife,
knife, knife" are repeated in the thoughts of a frightened gift who thinks that
she has committed a murder.
In terms of montage, sound, dialogue, and music are used in combination not
only with one another but also with the visual image. They can overlap and vary
in intensity in a flexible and €omplex pattern. The finished sound track may
involve mixing together tracks of dialogue, background noises, and music
recorded at different times; the tracks must be matched to one another and to
the visual film. Though the audience may hear it simply as an accompaniment to
what they see, the sound may be the most expensive and difficult part of a
motion picture.
Music. The live music that accompanied silent films varied from a full
orchestra to a honky-tonk piano, according to the size of the cinema. Music was
effectively used on the film set to improve an actor's performance.
With sound, music became an integral part of the picture on the screen. Early
mood music was so expressive that often it now seems overblown. Conscientious
filmmakcrs soon learned the virtue of restraint, using music less frequently
but with more effect. Since the 1960s, electronic music, as in Close Encounters
of the Third Kind (1977), has come to be commonly used.
Music often has an important function in emotional climaxes of motion pictures.
It can be used effectively to relieve or sublimate intolerable intensity--of
grief, pain, or ecstasy. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) by the
Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini reveals how expressive periods of silence
can be, and how great music can ennoble scenes like those of Christ's
persecution and agony on the cross. Music may also be used symbolically.
In Lton Morin, pr~tre (Leon Morin, Priest, 1961), for example, a sequence of
harsh chords represents the German occupation forces, and a dancing bugle motif
represents the Italian troops. Organ music is used in scenes showing the
heroine with the priest in church, and piano music when they are in his flat.
Hurdy-gurdy music represents two gossiping spinsters, and in a climactic scene
louder and louder electronic music represents the heroine's obsessive sexual
feeling for the priest, until she reaches out to take his hand.
Sound engineering. It is the function of the sound engineer to select and
modify sound as the cameraman selects visual images. Since the noise of
crockery, cutlery, or paper or the chirping of crickets would be intolerable
transferred in full volume to the screen, the sound engineer must tone them
down. Treble and bass must be balanced. In other cases, in order to get the
effect needed, sound has to be built up and orchestrated as if it were music.
Again, sound need not correspond exactly with the visual images. Artistic use
can be made of asynchronism; that is, contrasting the sound to the visual
image. Motionpicture sound is capable of remarkable delicacy, richness, and
variety. Sound libraries put most conceivable sounds readily at the disposal of
filmmakers. Instruments and voices can be modified, overlapped, echoed, or
given a resonance and volume that transform them. Dialogue can be crystal
clear, bringing the audience far closer to an actor than in the theatre, or it
may deliberately reproduce the careless enunciation of everyday speech.
The script. Although conventions vary from one coun.
try to another, the script usually develops over a number of distinct stages,
from a synopsis of the original idea, through a "treatment" that contains an
outline and considerably more detail, to a shooting script. Although the terms
are used ambiguously, script, or screenplay, usually refers to the dialogue and
the annotations necessary to understand the action; a script reads much like
other printed forms of more OIt~ll z,t~ .... .
extensive technical details regarding the setnng, me camera work, and other
factors. Moreover, a shooting script may have the scenes arranged in the order
in which they will be shot, a radically different arrangement from that of the
film itself since, for economy, ,all of the scenes involving the same actors
and sets are ordinarily shot at the same time. Some scripts are subsequently
modified into novels and distributed in book form, such as the U.S. best-seller
Love Story (1970) by Erich Segal, and, in the instance of Dylan Thomas' The
Doctor and the Devils (1953), a script became a literary work without ever
having been made into a motion picture. Generally, more elaborate productions
require more elaborate shooting scripts, while more personal films may be made
without any form of written script. The script's importance can vary greatly,
however, depending on the director. Griflith and other early directors, for
example, often worked virtually without a script, while directors such as
Hitchcock planned the script thoroughly and designed pictorial outlines, or
storyboards, depicting specific scenes or shots before shooting any film.
Adaptation from other art forms must take into account Fi differences of
complexity and scale in film. A film often must omit characters and incidents
in the novel from of which it is adapted, for example, and the pace usually w
must be accelerated. Ordinarily, only a fraction of a novel's dialogue can be
included. In an adaptation of a play, the curtailment is less severe, but much
dialogue still must be cut or expressed visually.
Well over half of all fiction films made since 1920 have been adapted from
plays or novels, and it is understandable that certain formulas have been
tacitly accepted to facilitate the remaking of literature into moving pictures.
Adaptation has been thought of as an aesthetically inferior exercise, because
most such films merely illustrate the classics or reshape a literary text until
it conforms to stanchard cinematic practice. The particular qualities that made
the original interesting are often lost in such a process.
Certain films and filmmakers, however, have achieved an aesthetic premium by
accepting the literariness of the original and then confronting this with the
technology and methods of the cinema. Since the 1970s numerous directors have
explored literature in an almost documentary manner. The artifice of the French
director Eric Rohmer's Die Marquise yon O. (1976), for example, aptly expresses
the literary sensibility of Heinrich yon Kleist's romantic, ironic work. On the
other hand, less adventurous, big.
budget adaptations continue to reshape the literary works they are based on
into conventional "Hollywood" movies, as some critics complained about Sidney
Pollack's Out of Africa (1985). The delicate and changing sensibility of the
main character, evident in the prose of the original, was not reflected in the
film's traditional, albeit grand, presentation.
Although many eminent literary authors, including F.
Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, have worked on film scripts, the ability
to write a good original script, especially under strict studio conditions,
frequently belongs to lesser-known scenarists with a strong visual sense. Some
writers, particularly in France, have tried to narrow the gap between the
written and cinematic modes of expression.
Marguerite Duras and Aiain Robbe-Grillet became leaders of a new kind of author
who is able and willing to "write" directly on film. Both have directed their
own films, which they see as equivalent to their novels and plays.
M°tion'l~icture acting, Of all the artists involved in films, the actors and
actresses are closest to the audience.
The public more often goes to see a motion picture for its stars than for any
Other single reason. The divergent techniques of stage and film "
tl~ed there are man,. ! ....
acting are well understood, cauing prayers who excel in both. Bat greatest film
stars have a talent Peculiar to the screen alone. This talent often seems to be
related not to how well they act, but to the so
Film actim, r,,-,,;--- rt of Person they appear to be.
the advice ,~,~..~,,-es restraint "Don't at1 -tl~ink" was I]eingf ~-rue
emin~,,. ,-- " . .............. one,At ~,,, merman director F.W. Murnau.
dramatic literature, while "shooting script" or "scenario" .While stage actors
may be praised for a performance that ~ahmghllYerr°~ugh', film stars usualN m,~
be • . ~-lose-u,.- a .........
t appear to • "~ ~:centuate the more intimate rel
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