Yvonne Chow 160: MOMI. NOT MOMA.

I was forced to go to a museum at least two hours away from home. This happened last Wednesday. It was at the Museum of the Moving image and everything happened so fast because I was in a hurry to get back to school.

I'm going to break down my trip into three parts:
1. THE GRAND ENTRANCE: White Walls
2. TOUR HIGHLIGHTS: Things I Learned
3. THE QUICK EXIT: Could You Please Stop Talking Now?

First of all, I'm pretty sure I paid a dollar less than I was supposed to because of my terrible but convincing math (I paid $21.00 and got $15.50 in change. The fee was actually $6.50). Win!

1. THE GRAND ENTRANCE
At the lobby, the ceilings were pretty low and everything was white! White walls, white tables, white floor, white stairs, and white people. This is a museum dedicated to movies, but I didn't encounter any mention of foreign films (at least not in the tour). Let me show you what I mean:

That's Ben Stiller. Hi Ben. So these are images of the floor above the lobby, but do you see what I mean?

2. TOUR HIGHLIGHTS: Things I Learned

OKAY PEOPLE. I learned a whole lot more from my 90-minute long tour than I do in lecture and got a lot more exercise too. Parts of the tour were funny, the history lessons were boring because it was all review, so I will have you read about some of the tour highlights that made me raise my eyebrows and nod my head slowly.

Costume:

The first part of the tour was an exhibition of original masks and makeup that were used in famous movies. The majority were laboriously handled and took hours to do.

The actual masks used in Star Trek, Star Wars, and The Mask. No, I couldn't touch them. :(

On the far right is a sweater worn by Bill Cosby on The Bill Cosby Show.

Models:

Model-making is really important when making movies.

This model was built to better visualize the muppet's movements and muppeteers' location.

This is a miniature movie theatre.

This is a robot that could turn it's head 360 degrees on its neck, made because humans can't do it.

This is a miniature of a building with lots of LED lights. It's so finely detailed that you can take close-up shots and think it's a real building.

Franchising:

Movies are successful when you have a potentially great franchise, like Star Wars:

Star Wars action figures

Music:

Music is so important in movies. I saw a scene in Titanic without the music or sound effects, and you could totally tell that everything was done in a studio, not in an actual ocean. It looked so fake. On Final Cut, sound effects were added and it seemed a little more real, but even the sound effects are lies (the sound of snapping cords was a silenced sniper). Then, dramatic music was added to top it all off and the falsity of the ocean and ship got less obvious.

3. THE QUICK EXIT: Could You Please Stop Talking Now?

Even though I was getting really impatient and bored out of my mind near the end of the tour because I was late for a cappella rehearsal back at Hunter College because the tour turned out to be 30 minutes longer than the expected 1 hour, I had to put on my best poker face and wait for my release. At the end of the tour we looked at old cameras and media players, which I would've appreciated more if I wasn't panicking.