Production still.
Producers have been fretting about how to do feature films in VR, because the format doesn’t lend itself to traditional Hollywood techniques. However, it’s about to be used on one of the best-known tales of all time for Jesus VR — the Story of Christ, slated to arrive in Christmas, 2016, according to Variety. The 360-degree, 4K film will work on all major VR platforms, including the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear and PlayStation VR. Produced by Autumn Products and VRWERX, it’ll tell the story of Christ’s life from baptism to crucifixion.
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The filmmakers behind Jesus VR haven’t said how they’re approaching the story, but appear to be focused on the immersion aspect. … That approach will let the camera operator “be” in scenes and should make for very high-resolution video, though it’ll require a lot of data post-processing to stitch everything together. “The viewers truly feel they are there with Jesus and his disciples,” director David Hansen said. “This is the most powerful story of all time and virtual reality is the perfect way to tell it.”
The most powerful story of all time. Goodness. I think that could be seriously argued against. Personally, I find it to be a weak and pale pastiche of earlier tales, featuring much better and more compelling characters, with great backgrounds. Virtual Reality? No. Virtual Bad Mythology, maybe.
Via Engadget.
He’s white again.
Will his hair be just as luscious in VR?
Also, I’m betting the guy in the background on the right, with his hood up and his face all broody, is Judas Iscariot.
Saad:
Yep. With the requisite long hair and rather sumptuous robes.
Seriously. That looks like a Pope’s robe, just dirtied up a bit. Some fine materialistic embroidery there for the Prince of Peace.
Saad:
High quality linen, too. That stuff is serious expensive, always has been. Not the cloth an itinerant preacher would be wearing. I guess being God’s kid had advantages.
rq:
Naturally, he’s the scary looking ethnic dude in a hoodie.
HisGod’ssomebody’s mum made it for him (wait what?).I was going to say something about the expense of linen and linen-wearing itinerant beggars/preachers (Latvian folk tales seem to be full of these), but this does not apply to the Middle East, since I doubt it has ever been a linen-producing region. So the point stands. :)
At least none of them are openly blonde…
Hahahahaahaha I laugh at myself.
I do wonder, though, at the general cost of linen -- probably due to production, though it seems to have been common and readily available in many places, historically speaking.
Linen is still expensive as hell, and that’s not including the finest linens, merely good quality, which will run you about $26.00 to $30.00 dollars a yard here. Thousands of years ago, processing flax and making linen was an insanely time consuming process, so linen has always been, historically, a fabric for the wealthy.
:) This used to be what my family did, back out in the country. It’s a very labour-intensive process, and time-consuming, as you say. Linen is expensive -- but at the same time, I know that, locally, it was a common form of payment for field labour; so pretty much anyone who worked had at least one linen shirt (though, yes -- you’d only get one per year ;) ). Anyway, this is way, way off-topic. and mostly just me musing on linen and my personal experience with it. Sorry to ramble like that, I’m just looking for conversation in all the wrong places today, I guess.
rq, As you self-corrected, linen made from flax was certainly known in that part of the world at that time, and indeed for thousands of years before. The point which puzzles me is flax is (apparently) a cooler-weather crop, so I’m somewhat puzzled just where the linen used by, e.g., the ancient Egyptians was grown.
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I’ve got a (as in one) linen shirt — which is quite comfortable and cool, albeit seemingly-fragile — and a linen trouser (ditto), which has shown its fragility by developing a nasty tear. Shirt-wise, I prefer silk (also have one), which after some years of service finally developed its own tear. All three were, indeed, not-cheap.
I’m reasonably confident both the conversation and conversing individuals are far more interesting then the probable-dreck of the “VR” “movie” in the OP.
That’s funny, blf, because I associate linen with sturdy fabric (though not heavy or coarse), certainly not fragile (as a general rule -- for lacy, really fancy stuff, yes). :)
If you ever find the ancient flax-fields of Egypt, let me know -- I’m curious, too.
rq:
No need for sorry, linen is infinitely more interesting than yet another white Jesus pic.
Couldn’t have Egypt traded with Greece for linen or flax?
Rick has several fine linen shirts, which he prizes, but you have to be damn careful with them so you don’t wear them out right away. I don’t even bother trying to wash linen, it goes dry clean.
Nope, they grew flax. Also, a picture! :)
Caine, Yes, I assume Egypt traded with somewhere for the flax and/or linen, but haven’t a clew where. (My initial guess would be someplace like the mountains of Lebanon, but that is just speculation(and not very informed at that!).)
Caine@17, Interesting! Either I am mistaken(quite possible!) about the “cool”(which, I note, is imprecise), or proximity to the Nile (which must have some “cooling” influence) matters, or perhaps the flax of time was more heat-tolerance, or some combination of those (and perhaps other?) factors.
I put linen in the regular wash… but I think there’s a marked difference in product, here. The linen I have everyday association with is not necessarily fine, it’s very cotton-y, and it’s considered a hardy fabric -- wash it, wring it, hang it out to dry, no problem. They do tend to go a bit yellow with repeat wear, but I think that’s ordinary for any white fabric. But! This isn’t fine artisanal linen, it’s linen for mortal folk like me, which is where the difference arises (I wash my linen napkins regular cycle, too!). Export-quality linen is probably a whole ‘nother fish, depending on which market it’s going to, and dry-clean is probably the best way to go.
I find linen notorious for wrinkling, though it’s a good fabric to iron -- a rewarding process, since it always comes out nice and smooth, too. And I don’t even like ironing.
Speaking of cost, I recently acquired a 2m x 1.5m (approximate values, I’m not home to check) linen table-cloth for 45 euro… how does that compare with price for yards? (This is an affordable number, but again, it’s a regular grey/white linen table-cloth with a fairly traditional/common-place square-and-rectangle pattern (without the lace).)
I would assume this would be a factor, I think flax needs quite a bit of water (though not necessarily a marsh). And who knows, might be different varieties in different areas, too.
Flax is a big crop here in ND, but it’s for oil, not fiber.
Ok, it seems flax in Egypt “is sown […] about the middle of November, in the plains which have been inundated by the Nile, and it is pulled in about 110 days. It is generally in the boll in February, and pulled in March” (Ancient Egyptian Linen, other sources confirm). That would be during the coolest part of the year (apparently ranging from, on average, c.9–c.20℃), which, self-evidently, is flax-liked.
Amusingly, on the ancient Greece speculation, Flax points out:
As per the quote from Pliny above, there were several(three?) different types of flax grown in ancient Egypt.
rq @ 11
I guess luck and the kind of work one did may have influenced on what kind of linen the shirt was. Flax (pellava in Finnish, both the plant and fiber) produces both finer (aivina in Finnish, I don’t know what that is in other languages) and coarser (rohdin in Fi) fibers.
I’ve got some half-linen shirts, they’re nice and cool for summer, but they tend to get wrinkly quite easily. Nowadays linen is used often here for tablecloths, towels and sauna textiles (bench covers and such) here. Various linen textiles are quite popular as gift items.
Hm, sandy soils, short growing period, cool weather, proximity to water. Huh. Neat!
What are the stronger tissues, then, if the flax of Egypt is the least strong? Or is that just Egyptian flax being least strong among all the other flax out there?
Pliny seems to list four varieties; I wonder if each had slightly varying properties or applications, too?
Ice Swimmer
Language quirk: pelavas (kind of a collective plural) is the remains of what you get after threshing grain (the chaff?). :D Also linen is produced in two different colours, the grey and the white (bleached) and they’re accordingly called pelēkie lini and baltie lini. Both are popular in gift items, clothing (esp. traditional folkwear) and kitchen linens (also sauna textiles, it’s supposed to extra-invigorating to dry yourself with a linen towel due to the coarser texture).
The first link also refers to Pliny (but provides no quote), and lists only three types of flax (albeit with four names), and indicates each of the three-ish types is of different quality and, possibly, usage.
In the first link of blf the coarser outer fibers (even a single plant produces different qualities) are called “tow”. So rohdin would be tow.
My late grandma’s trick to get soft linen towels was to use them as tablecloths for a time so that repeated washing would soften them.
I actually like the roughness, but thanks for the tip! If I ever need soft towels, I’ll go for the linen tablecloths.
Saad@#1:
He’s white again.
… following the new tradition of using the likeness of pope Alexander VI’s son Cesare Borja. (Lucretia’s brother) Cesare was a good-looking fellow until the syphilis claimed his face, and was the model for a lot of papal commissions. Pope daddy later bought Cesare a cardinalship. Machiavelli wrote “The Prince” as a sort of extended analingus to Cesare. He died naked and bleeding, thrust through with a spear, during an ambush attack in one of the incessant series of wars he started. Good riddance. But a good likeness for jesus!
Caine@#22:
Flax is a big crop here in ND, but it’s for oil, not fiber.
OMG I hope they do something useful with the fiber.
I keep having daydreams about going into the business of making bed-linens like they used to make them. I’ve seen some 18th century bed-linens and they’re about as thick and drapy as today’s Irish linen towels. I can’t imagine how awesome it would be to sleep in something like that. All we need is a load of the fiber and a spinning machine, right? (actually, joking aside, probably more like $100k and ship the stuff to Thailand for spinning and Pakistan for finishing…)
Actually, as I read that quote, what he was saying is that the most fragile linen is the most valuable, or at least the most profitable in terms of sales. And yeah, something so sheer as to be almost see through is gonna be fragile. It also deserves the tissue description.
Marcus
You should look into doing the spinning and finishing yourself -- it can’t be that much more complicated. Time- and labour-intensive, sure, but what else are you going to do out there in the wilds of N.Murca?
Marcus @ 31:
I don’t think they do. It probably ends up as silage, but I don’t know for sure. I’ll have to ask around.
The link seems to be borked, so this is from Generalissimo Google’s cache (Flax Production in North Dakota, North Dakota State University):
No mention of linen, other than in a historical context (not included in the above excerpt). Note it seems to suggest the fibre of common flax grown in ND isn’t really suitable for linen, being more useful to make into paper to keep people addicted to nicotine.
Also, Alternative Field Crops Manual — Flax: