Thursday 24 October 2013

Ninth planet of Taya translation progress


I started translating Soviet era diafilms (filmstrips) and even created a new Soviet Diafilm blog. The first filmstrip called "Ninth planet of Taya" and was first released in 1964 in black and white and later in colorized version.

Wednesday 23 October 2013

LOLO!


T1 Cunningham first sample.

Just painted the first sample of T1 Cunningham (early hull and late turret) that was printed and casted by QRF Models Limited. Its a small tank and the model is 4cm long and 2cm tall.


Friday 18 October 2013

Test of Soviet Diafilm translation :)

While waiting for your comments and opinion on my possible English translation of science fiction Diafilms (Filmstrips) from Soviet Union, I decided to make a sample translation of third frame from "Ninth planet of Teya (1980)". 

Here you can see an original and a translated frame. To keep the feel of Russian Cyrillic font (pretty simple and boring font in my opinion, but it is the widest used font in Russia), I choosed regular Arial font. As you can see sentences in English language are much shorter than in Russian. 

3rd frame in Russian.

3rd frame in English.

Thursday 17 October 2013

Soviet Sci-Fi Diafilms in English translation?

Random frames from "Ninth Planet of Taya (1964)"

While discovering the joy of Soviet Diaflims (Filmstrips), I found that some of sci-fi genre filmstrips were produced from 60's to 80's. As for me, who was born in the end of Soviet era, grew up in Modern Russia and now live in Australia for 6 years, I found that old Soviet Sci-Fi was very unique. 

So I thought that some of you may be interested if I translate these old Diafilms into English language? I doubt if any of these diafilms were released outside the Iron Curtain, so it will be interesting journey to see the future  through the eyes of soviets :) 

If you are interested, PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS and I will create a new "Soviet Diafilm Blog" :)

I will try my best with translation, and I don't think it will be very hard, because most of diafilms use simple language. And please, if you'll find any mistakes in my translation (English is my second language), just add your comments in my future Diafilm related posts.

Random frames from "Hunting for Setavr (1980)"

Soviet Filmstrips -Diaflims

Today I want to tell you about very old and interesting thing called Filmstrips.

The filmstrip was a common form of still image instructional multimedia, once commonly used for education or for entertainment, overtaken at the end of the eighties by VHS. In the early 1950s production companies started producing filmstrips for home entertainment. There were a number of films from Disney, and also from other manufacturers. You can read full Wikipedia article here.

In short, the "filmstrips" were illustrated stories that were projected on a canvas or wall. The sequence of images was printed on a perforated film strip and all frames were thematically linked to each other and are usually equipped with text.

In Soviet Union filmstrips were called Diafilms (Диафильм) and before introduction of VHS they were extremely popular among soviet people. Lots of Diafilms of different subjects and different genres were released: educational, fairy tales and even some sci-fi ones.


As for me, I haven't saw much Diafilms when I was a kid (I was born in 1984), and I remembered about them only two days ago, so now I am rediscovering Diaflims :) 

Saturday 5 October 2013

I saw Prince Harry today! - part3

 


Here is my blurry photo of Prince Harry's boat as a proof that I was there :)

I saw Prince Harry today! - part2

Here are better photos made by professional photographers of same event :)












I saw Prince Harry today! - part1

There is International Fleet Review 2013 in Sydney when more than 40 warships from different countries steamed to Sydney harbor. Prince Harry have arrived in Sydney to inspect the fleet and I was on Rocks today to watch airplane show at 2:15.

But the airshow was delayed for an hour and I noticed that more and more cops were coming to the harbor. 

And then I saw royal escort. Prince Harry left his car, had a chat with Sydney fans, came on board of a small ship and steamed out of the harbor.  I was managed to catch Prince Harry arrival on cam, but I need to edit the video it first before sharing it on youtube.

Photos of royal escort after Prince Harry headed to his boat (sorry, no prince on these photos, you need to wait for the video.)

Prince Harry is leaving the harbor.