Book vs Movie: Carl Sagan's Contact

After hearing several friends tell me how awesome Carl Sagan's fiction is, I decided to give it a test drive.  I had heard of Contact before, but I'd never gotten around to neither seeing the movie nor reading the book.  Over spring break I've done both.

Carl Sagan's story focuses on Ellie Arroway, an exceptional woman with a passion for radio astronomy.  While working on the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) program, her and her team discover a signal coming from the star Vega, 26 light years away.  Although cautious at first, this is no false alarm - we've made our first contact with life outside our planet.

In the book, first published in 1985, we meet Ellie at a young age and follow her as she is first showing interest in science.  She is driven to ask "why" and has a remarkable relationship with her father, who dies while she is still young.  Although she tries religion, she is pushed away from the church after being told that she asks too many questions.  However, Ellie triumphs forward; past her stepfather who thinks that, as a girl, Ellie should not pursue the science she loves; past a graduate adviser who sees little promise in her; and past a program will little radio time.

Her discovery of a signal that will irrevocably change the world comes near the end of the millennium.  Although the signal is quickly found to have multiple layers, the lowest layer, which seems to be plans to build something with over 30,000 pages of instructions, seems to be without a primer.  After months of work, the secret to building the machine is finally unveiled, and construction begins.  Although humanity has no idea what some of the parts do, much less the machine as a whole, a crew of five is selected to man the machine.

Because this message seems is such an unexpected shock for everyday people, there is much debate over the nature of the message and whether or not the "Vegans" should be trusted at all.  Some turn to God; to televangelists who fear the end of days.  Palmer Joss, an older minister with an interest in science, is one of the few to push for support for the project.  Ellie and Joss disagree on many things, but both believe that the search for truth is the most important mission there is.

In addition to the religious fighting that comes with the message, there is a question as to who will fund this vast undertaking.  S.R. Hadden, the richest man in the world, agrees that he will help to fund the machine.  Although he appears to be a good (if greedy) person overall, his company has been involved in many ventures that are considered by many to be amoral, including the massive pleasure city of Babylon.

Ellie's relationship with Hadden is as complex as her relationship with Joss.  All three of these characters brings a different core belief to the table, beliefs in science, money, and God that blend together surprisingly well.  That is what makes Sagan's book so powerful: it's not just a book about our first contact with aliens.  It's a book about Ellie.  On the whole, it is more about her realization that faith in something (not necessarily anything religious) is a powerful thing.  Just the phrase "I have faith" can be hard to say but extremely meaningful.

The 1997 movie, starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey, the basis of the plot and theme remains the same.  Of course there have been changes, first to update to the technology to what it actually was in 1997 (and politics, as the USSR is heavily involved in the novel and no longer exists), and second to make the movie "sexier" and more appealing to the masses.  Sure, there will be fiction readers not interested in radio telescopes that will pick up a book by the great Carl Sagan.  But there will be far many more that will go to a movie about alien contact than will ever read a book about it.

One of these appealing tactics was the addition of a Joss/Ellie romantic storyline.  In the movie, Palmer Joss is a smooth talker and immediately takes a liking to Ellie.  Although it adds plot for movie audiences, I disagree that the complete change in Palmer Joss' character were needed.  His character in the book still manages to make an impact on Ellie and affects her profoundly, even though their conversations are short.  Other changes, such as the machine holding one person in comparison to five, only take away if you've read the book.

All in all, I think the book was one of the best that I've read in a while.  The movie was also good, but it really pales in comparison to the book if you're interested in space and astronomy.  I would recommend either in a heartbeat, and will definitely be thanking the friend that first recommended it to me.

Papyrus Cards

The lack of posts has been due to a major event in the life of a college student - spring break.  On our various adventures, we wound up at the Galeria in Dallas.  While walking around, I saw the Papyrus store and nearly gasped.  I didn't know they had stores, I just assumed Target or online was the only place you could buy them.

Cards are something that I really enjoy shopping for.  Yeah, it's weird, I know.  I've never made cards before (at least not seriously), but I think that this something that I'd like to maybe start doing.  I have some blank cards, and lots and lots of scrapbooking supplies.  I know that things are more complicated when you try to do them yourself, but I do feel like I am skilled enough to at least try.

I think the beauty of Papyrus cards is hard to match, though, no matter what supplies you have.  It's that "I love us" quality from 500 Days of Summer.  Someone has to write greeting cards.  And although I'd like to think that I can write quality notes, there's nothing quite like an aisle of cards and ten minutes to browse them.

Vignetting on the Holga 135BC

When I first purchased my Holga, I decided I needed to go for a 35mm one first.  I'll admit it, I was scared of 120, scared of wasting money, and scared to get 120 developed.  So, I went for the Hogla 135BC.  The BC stands for black corners, and it has a mask within the camera that darkens the edges.  Diehard Holga fans may scoff at this "unnatural" vignetting, especially on the first few releases, as it looked hard and dark, not muted and soft.

To be honest, I choose the BC version because it was significantly cheaper than the Holga 135 when I purchased it.  I'm glad that I did now, though, as I fell like it really gives photos more of a lomo feel.

Sometimes the dark corners look great, and sometimes they either seem to not show up or take over the whole picture.  Below are samples of each type.

This picture, to me, is pure Holga.  Kind of blurry, kind of out of focus, but really fun.

When it's good, it's great

Sometimes you can't even tell that it's there, especially in pictures that are dark to begin with, like the one below.

I think the only time it ever bothers me is when you can actually see the mask or if it's off center.

I  do have a few tips on how to ensure that you get at least some vignetting with your 135BC.

1. First and foremost, take care of your camera.  Playing too rough with it could knock the mask out of place.  Now, I'm surprised at how much abuse my camera can take (mostly unintentional, of course), but if you drop it you may need to check the mask when you're done with your roll of film.
2. Pictures in dark light or with the flash aren't as likely to show the vignetting, though it will still be there. It will just get washed out by other elements in the picture.
3. Natural light is the best.  The aperture setting doesn't change that much in your pictures, but I have found that having it on the proper aperture can make the mask look more like "it's supposed to."
4. Taking pictures where you expect a lens flare will probably have very distinct dark corners.
5. Go with it!  It's a Holga, not a DSLR. That's the point, right?

Business Card PSD

Because I enjoy this kind of thing (and I really didn't have too much to do this afternoon), I made a mock up business card.  It's fully editable and the PSDs are in CMYK format at 300 dpi, perfect for printing.  Bleed and safe zones are included.

Below is the preview of the card.  You can download it here!  You'll also need to have the font Franchise if you want it to look just like this, which is downloadable here.

For just being an afternoon project, I'm pretty happy with them.  They should be pretty simple to use, and it includes the three colors shown above.

First roll of 120 film

Over the summer, after getting familiar with film photography through my Hogla 135BC and a Canon AE-1, I decided to take the leap into medium format.  I found a new Diana F+ on eBay for $35.  It seemed to good to be true, as the Lomography website sells them for $95 and the seller said they had included film with it.  I waited for the package to come, and it was perfect.  Unopened, the box contained everything that matched up with the description on the Lomography website and I also got 3 rolls of black and while 120 film (Lomography brand, 100 ASA).

If you're interested in getting a Diana F+, I really recommend either eBay or Amazon.  I got lucky with eBay, but you can get the camera without the flash on Amazon for less than $40 and the camera with the flash for about $80.  Although I love to drool over the lomography website, they're way overpriced.

It took me a while to get through the roll.  A whole semester, in fact.  Part of this was because I had no idea how to use 120 properly.  As I have now seen online, the Lomographic 120 black and white film is just cheap Shanghai brand film repackaged and marked up significantly.  Now there's nothing exactly wrong with the film- but it's not the easiest to use.  The backing paper is black, and the numbers that tell you what frame you're at are silver.  If that's not hard to see behind the little red door, I don't know what is, especially if you're nervous because it's your first roll!

Another problem I had was I loaded my film wrong the first time.  I don't really know how I did it, but I managed to shut the door on the roll of film the first time.  I realized the film wasn't advancing at all, had to open up the camera, and expose the film.  This is why I think I got the very high number of light leaks I did on my roll (there was one on almost every frame).  I finally finished the roll and didn't realize I had done so and tried to take a few more pictures before I realized I had no resistance when winding!  Obviously, 35mm film has spoiled me.

I had thought about processing my film at my local Ritz camera, where I usually drop off my 35mm rolls (only partly to talk to the cute guy that works behind the counter), but I had hear Walmart was significantly cheaper and had fine results.  So, two weeks and $8.23 later, I got 9 usable pictures from my roll of 16.  Not bad for a first try!  I only got 10 or so off of my first 35mm roll because I wasn't used to having to have a separate flash for indoor pictures.

So, on to some results!

My favorite from the roll.

Example of the light leaks I got on most of the roll

I think this picture really shows the feel of a Diana, even with the flash.

Overall, I was pretty happy with my first attempt's results, and I know that my next roll should get more pictures, as I loaded it properly!