I am so furious right now... (1 Viewer)

[Mark Palermo]

I last took some film classes here just 2 years ago, and EVERYTHING was shown on VHS. And if a movie was originally widescreen, it wouldn't be shown that way. This isn't always the teachers' faults, as the education budget sometimes doesn't think it's important to spend money on adequate resources. But how can you teach students about shot compositions when half the image is missing?

 

[ThomasC]

Seriously, did any college ever really spend much, if any, money on laserdiscs and the equipment? Education is a business too, and they cut corners when they can.

 

[David Lawson]

Actually, Miami's business school did spend a decent amount on laserdisc equipment for the "classroom of the future", which may or may not still exist. I only had one class in it, in 1996?

Most of the equipment in the language studies building was quite horrible, though. I spent two years in there studying Mandarin myself.

 

[Seth--L]

Happens all the time - only because many films have been long out of print on VHS, and will never come to DVD.

In some of my film classes, professors will only show films on VHS and DVD when 16 or 35mm prints are not easily available.

 

[ThomasC]

The computer lab has the lovely white iMacs and two decent projection systems, so they've improved. Who did you have for Mandarin?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

At my school [TCU] I have taken a film class, and everything was either LD or DVD -- I think I never saw any VHS or non-OAR material; but somebody gave the RTVF department a huge sum of money, about 10 or 15 years ago, to build a decent movie library and equip the projection rooms with the proper equipment.

 

[Kwang Suh]

I'm not saying it's valid. I'm just throwing out a reason why he watched the movie in English.

 

[David Lawson]

Thomas, I believe the room was somewhere in Upham, but I could be mistaken. The Mandarin teacher at that time was Ping Huang (Jo Arnold).

 

[Seth Paxton]

IUPUI also spent some decent money doing an upgrade about 10 years ago with LD and decent CRT front projectors (non-16x9 unfortunately). Of course DVD was added and it is all integrated into a master touchscreen control.

However, they don't always have access to the latest DVD copy. And of course 16mm is sometimes used for the hard to find stuff, or VHS copies if desperation sets in.

Our film department is very small though so its easy for it to maintain some quality when the few people running it have a personal passion and knowledge of HT.

Now my screenwriting prof, that's another story. I was shocked to find out that he didn't even know about P&S and he would often rely on VHS to show scenes. I would tell him that I would be more than happy to bring in the DVD, which is also easier to pause and navigate to other scene examples, plus would get rid of the P&S. He showed interest but it wasn't a priority.


There is zero excuse for a foreign language film class to show any film outside of its native tongue, except perhaps if it is a lesson on the affects of dubbing itself.

 

[Kevin Leonard]

Thomas, I'm curious: exactly how big is the screen your class watches film on? Perhaps your professor felt it might be hard for students in the back to read the subtitles, so he decided to use the dubbed version.

I'm not defending him, but that might be a possible reason.

 

[ThomasC]

We watch a film every week, and up until this week, they've all been subtitled. The room has a rear projection system set up, but the screen is installed into the wall. The screen itself is about 80 to 100 inches, I think. The room is pretty big, so in the middle of the room, there are two TVs hooked up to the same inputs as the big screen so those farther away from the big screen can watch it on the TV instead.

 

[ThomasC]

There were 16x9 front projectors 10 years ago?

 

[Matthew Todd]

There were 16:9 capable CRT front projectors 10 years ago. It's just a matter of squeezing down the raster from a 4:3 ratio to a 16:9 ratio.

Matt

 

[ZacharyTait]

For those who know how Mandarin should be spoken, do Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh speak Catonese better than Mike Myers and Tia Carere do in Wayne's World?

 

[Yee-Ming]

Errr, do you mean Chow and Yeoh's Mandarin? Think of it as maybe something along the lines of Costner's Brit accent in Prince of Thieves: it can be understood, it's just a bit awkward. Although I don't speak Cantonese, I've heard enough of it to know what it should sound like: Myers and Carrere are unintelligable, at least to me. Maybe a true Cantonese can make sense of it.

As an aside, remember Kate Capshaw singing Mandarin in Temple of Doom? Also un-understandable.