Establishing shots in the Rizzoli and Isles opening

Establishing shots are neither subtle nor unique, but they're still the easiest way to show an audience where your movie or TV show is set. When you've got 20 seconds for credits - less than most TV shows, but increasingly common to make way for an extra ad or two - every shot counts.

One of my favorite shows currently on the air is ''Rizzoli and Isles'', which is awesome for reasons I've written about previously. Now that I know Boston pretty well, I decided to attempt to locate the establishing shots in the theme.

In the 21-second intro, there are only three establishing shots. Each shot is on screen for about half a second - enough for our minds to say "Boston" without getting a true grip on where it is. I've managed to track down the locations of all three, complete with a Google Maps street view. (The images were all taken with fairly long lenses; you'll want to zoom in a notch or two on each view.)

The first of these is a cityscape, centered on a small brick building in a concrete canyon:

This is the Old State House, the oldest public building in Boston, dating back to 1713. (It is also, to my knowledge, the oldest building that serves as an entrance to a subway station).

It's fairly easy to identify the location as well. It's a straight shot up State Street, looking west. The Chatham Row sign at right gives us a pretty good location, as do the distinctive green awnings. The tip of the tower is 106 feet tall; from the camera location it is equal in angle to three and a half of the umbrella-carrying figures in the left foreground, or 21 feet. That means the distance from Old State House to the figures (at the corner of State and Broad) is equal to 80% of the distance from the Old State House to the camera. The former is 720 feet; the latter is 900 feet, putting us about in front of 156 State Street:


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The second is an angled upwards view of a similarly famous building:

This is the 1798 Massachusetts State House, located on the edge of Beacon Hill next to the Boston Common. The photograph taken from the sidewalk on the south side of Beacon Street. By tracing a few lines between background buildings and foreground objects, we converge on 32 Beacon Street.


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The final location seems to be a bit more ambiguous, with Boston's characteristic brownstones on a steep hill:

There are a number of steep hills in Boston, with Mission Hill and Telegraph Hill among the most famous. But only one hill has the distinctive close-packed brownstones and numerous trees - Beacon Hill, home of a tony neighborhood sandwiched between downtown and the Charles.

After some trial and error, I found the location on Joy Street. This photograph was taken with a very long lens, which exaggerates the steepness of the hill. The reddish brownstone on the right is located at 37 Joy Street, but the photograph was taken from futher away. The white and green sign is for the Black Heritage Trail and is located at Pickney Street, thus, the photographer was located another half-block up the hill, around 10 Joy Street.

Street View from the camera location:

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Street View from near the subjects:

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Just like they do on CSI

CSI and its ilk love a lot of things. Single-source clues: feathers that only come from ostriches, dirt that only comes from one coal mine. Improbable coincidences. And of course, ridiculous photographic enhancement. They can pull a face from a reflection on a flagpole.

And now, I feel darn special. I just identified a picture via a hidden reflection. Here's how.

This image was uploaded to Commons a few years ago. The author didn't specify where it was taken.

(click for larger version)

Now, it's immediately obvious that this is an MBTA Orange Line train, somewhere in Boston. (The Oak Grove rollsign confirms that). In the background we see catenary wire supports, thus this is a station on the Southwest Corridor between Back Bay and Forest Hills. The inbound (Oak-Grove-bound) train and the Amtrak tracks to the left indicate we're looking south, as do the shadows.

The white curved roof supports are the next clue; Bing Maps shows that only two stations have those support poles with the semi-open design. Those are Roxbury Crossing and Green Street. But there's no way to narrow it down any further; there's no background detail other than trees (which both stations have), and no station signs visible.

But wait. Zoom in on that image again. There's a lot of reflective surface visible: the train windows. And in the second window on the train, you can see a slightly-fuzzy station sign:

Let me flip that around for you, and brighten the image a bit for contrast:

Suddenly, you see it. The "ROSS" of "ROXBURY CROSSING" is visible. This is Roxbury Crossing station.


Lest you think I'm seeing more than I should in that fuzzy detail, I found a corroborating piece of evidence. Take a look at the concrete wall which separates the subway and mainline rail tracks. On the far right of the image, it terminates about at the last white column. At Green Street, the wall continues down onto the open platform.

...All right, I cheated.

...hot glue.

Making more fake liquids

It's been almost a year since I made fake coffee. Now, I'm back with more convincing fakes.

Red wine: Fill a normal-sized wine glass halfway with water. Add 8 drops of red food coloring, and one blue. You may need to dilute this slightly with additional water to make it a bit clearer; you may also wish to add more red.

White wine: Mix 1 drop green with 4 drops yellow in water. You'll need to dilute this a lot; that much coloring makes almost a whole bottle's worth of fake wine.

Olive oil: in about 8 ounces (240 mL) of water, put in 1 drop green, 1 drop red, and 4 drops yellow.

Apple cider: In a 1:2 milk/water mixture, add 1 drop green, 2 drops red, and 5 drops yellow. You may need to futz with this one a bit for it to be convincing.

The most difficult fake so far, though, is orange juice. It's weird, and hard to replicate. It's darker than simply mixing red and yellow can achieve, and not as warm a color.

The trick is to start with green - mix one drop each of red and green plus 4 drops of yellow (use fake olive oil) in 8 oz of water. Then pour out half and replace with water. Do this three times, so just 1/8 of the original liquid remains. Add one drop of red and 4 drops yellow to the pale green liquid, then pour a bit out so you have about 6 ounces of liquid. Then, add an ounce of two of milk. It's not perfect, but it'll fool at a casual glance.

The Great Egg Experiment

In my Government classroom, there's something wrong with the heaters. They are always on high, all the time. It's nice, considering that many of the other classrooms are effectively unheated, but it borders on the ridiculous. It's actually painful to the touch.

So, I did what any other self-respecting mad scientist does with something abnormally hot: I tried to cook an egg on it.

I had a mini pan from a tag sale; I scrubbed it with steel wool and thoroughly cleaned it. With permission from my teacher, I brought it in this morning. It took just two minutes to melt a bit of butter in the bottom of the pan.

The egg, however, was not so successful. It had started to cook by the end of the period, but nowhere near finished. The heater wasn't quite hot enough. So, I brought it to the foods room and borrowed a stovetop to finish it, and I had delicious scrambled egg.

I'll bring in a thermometer sometime so I can figure out just how hot that heater really is.

How to rotate your screen

It works for some Windows computers...

To the right: [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [→]

To the left: [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [←]

Upside down: [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [↓]

And, to return it right-side up: [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [↑]


It's apparently useful for some things, like unusual-mounted computer screens. But it just seems like ripe for pranks.

How to predict the lunar phase

So, you're an astronomy geek like me, and you want to know what the moon will be like during the Perseid meteor shower. Or you're planning a camping weekend and want to have a new moon to better see the stars. Or you're tired of how-many-cool-ways-to-break-a-bottle and you want a new party trick.

You want to calculate the phase of the moon on a given day? I can do that. It's actually pretty easy.

For 2000-2019:
Add 2 to the last 2 digits of the year.
Multiply by 11.
Add the month and day.
Cast out 30s.
The remainder is the number of days since the last new moon.

0 is a new moon; 7 is first quarter, 15 is full moon, 22 is last quarter.

For example: 5 July 2010
2+10=12
12*11=132
132+5+7=144
144-30-30-30-30=24

The moon today is thus 2 days past last quarter. It's a waning crescent and rises between midnight and dawn.

Here's the kicker: Thanks to the Metonic cycle, you can go forward or back 19 years, and the phases are the same. 1981, 2000, 2019, 2038, etc are all the same. This stays accurate for a few centuries either way; it gets off by a day every 219 years. For future dates, subtract one day for every 219 years from the calculated lunar age; for the past, add.

Just don't forget about the Julian/Gregorian switch, a 10-day gap in 1583 for Catholic countries and 13 days in 1752 for Britain et al.

Just an example of how accurate this method is: take November 12, 1594. 1594 is 418 (=19*22) years from 2012.
2+12=14
14*11=154
154+11+12=177
177-(30*5)=27
418 is about twice 219 years in the past, so add two days and it's 29. One day from new moon.

In fact, November 12, 1594 was a new moon and an annular solar eclipse. Over 4 centuries, this little arithmetic trick is accurate to one day.

Originally published in Sky and Telescope magazine, November 2005 issue, p.130. If you want the full text, let me know.

Making Fake Coffee

Fill mug with water. 2 drops red food coloring, 2 drops yellow, one drop green. Looks convincingly like dark coffee.

If you want it to look more like instant coffee, then use 50% milk, 50% water and add 5 drops red, 4 drops yellow, and 3 drops green.