title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The visual effects of the first three series of "Primeval" were created by the London-based visual effects company Framestore, who were brought in due to being long-time collaborators with Haines and Impossible Pictures, previously having worked on "Walking with Dinosaurs" and the other "Walking with..." series. Christian Manz was hired as a visual effects supervisor due to the highly ambitious effects required for "Primeval". Each episode required about thirteen weeks of effects work, with eight weeks of animation, six weeks of compositing and three weeks of lighting. Compositing was the most expensive portion, taking up about half of the budget. Usually multiple episodes were worked on at the same time. Framestore employed a crew of 60 people for "Primeval", including fifteen animators and fifteen compositors, about the same number of people as the crew that shot the series. The large crew was necessary in order to be able to produce the effects on time since production of "Primeval" was often very fast; the effects work on the first series began during filming in April 2006 and was finished in September.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The producers did not initially have a clear idea for how the anomalies were supposed to look; in his scripts, Hodges simply described them as "shimmering in the air". The design was created by Haines and the effects team, with the goal to make it quite beautiful. The crushed glass-like final design drew on the idea that they were a fragmented version of what was on the other side―in scenes where people are depicted as going through them, the fragments gradually get bigger until they finally step into the world on the other side.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Framestore were initially announced as also working on the fourth series, but ended up not partaking in its production. In their place, the visual effects of the fourth and fifth series were created by the visual effects company The Mill. According to Haines, the production team opted to work with The Mill due to shooting in HD, an area in which The Mill had a "superb track record". The pratical effects of "Primeval", including puppets and animatronics, were created by Crawley Creatures, a company which had previously worked with Impossible Pictures on both the "Walking with..." programmes and on "Prehistoric Park".


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Dominik Scherrer was the lead composer for the first three series of "Primeval". Scherrer spent ten days composing tracks and an additional three days to record and mix them for each episode. He opted to create music that was a hybrid between electronic and traditional orchestra, noting that the urban nature of the setting and the attitudes of the characters were an influence. Scherrer said that the CGI nature of the show was a creative challenge, as the themes he scored for the creatures were often based on incomplete images. He noted "sometimes a drawing of the creature, or just a description from the director may help me get a feel for the creature. The final look and texture can be very influential on the music". On creating the theme song of "Primeval", Scherrer stated that "the central feel is that of majesty and adventure, reflecting the momentous occasion of mankind linking up with the pre-historic past and also the majesty of the creatures themselves – they are dangerous and wonderful." 75 minutes of Scherrer's original score for the first three series was released by MovieScore Media both digitally and on CD on 20 September 2011 under the title "Primeval: Original Television Soundtrack".


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: For the third series, composer James Hannigan also wrote new music to accompany Scherrer's themes. Angus Moncrieff worked as orchestrator, synth programmer and trumpet player for the first two series and also composed, produced and mixed 35-40 minutes of new music for four episodes of the third series. Stephen McKeon was the lead composer for the fourth and fifth series.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Though the prehistoric creatures featured in "Primeval" were fundamentally rooted in science they were intentionally not fully scientifically accurate, often being exaggerated in size and made to look scarier. They were also often for cinematic purposes made more intelligent than their real-life counterparts to give them more character, such as predators deciding who and how to attack. The decision to not adhere to strict scientific rigour but to rather use science as an "inspiration for creative thought" was made by Haines, who after working on the "Walking with..." programmes (which had to adhere more strongly to scientific fact) wanted to be free of such restrictions. Fictional design details included decisions such as giving gorgonopsids four rather than two saberteeth. In addition to featuring real prehistoric creatures, "Primeval" also introduced several fictional creatures, some from the future. The decision to include future animals was made during pre-production of the first series, with the idea being that if anomalies connected the past to the present they could logically also connect the present to the future. The most iconic of "Primeval"'s future creatures are the recurring future predators, giant flightless predatory bats.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Though fictionalised, prehistoric creatures in most cases still greatly resembled their real counterparts, not only a design decision but also a decision made to make it easier for animators; real creatures were always easier to animate since their biomechanics could often be figured out and animated convincingly more easily than fictional designs. Scientific theories on the animals featured were also often used for deciding the behaviour and abilities of creatures. As an example, certain genera of therocephalians might have been venomous, a theory which was used as the basis for also making the therocephalians featured in "Primeval" venomous.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The process of creating the creature models involved first creating concept artwork; many of the creatures were designed by Daren Horley. Horley was involved with the project very early on, before it was commissioned by ITV, and had produced some concept sketches for Haines's initial pitch of "Cutter's Bestiary" to the BBC. Horley also designed the texture maps for the finished models. Though his designs continued to be used, Horley ceased to work on "Primeval" after the third series.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: After Horley had created concept artwork, sculptors made maquettes out of clay based on his designs. These were then scanned into the computer using a very high resolution laser scanner.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The first series follows the efforts of Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) and his associates, friend and colleague Stephen Hart (James Murray), student Connor Temple (Andrew-Lee Potts) and a zookeeper Abby Maitland (Hannah Spearritt) as they investigate the appearance of anomalies that allow the passage to other times and places, allowing often-dangerous creatures from the distant past or future to threaten the lives of citizens. The British government's Home Office, under the supervision of James Lester (Ben Miller) and Claudia Brown (Lucy Brown), becomes involved after a gorgonopsid travels through one such anomaly and wreaks havoc in the Forest of Dean. Professor Cutter's wife, Helen Cutter (Juliet Aubrey), presumed dead for eight years, is revealed to have been travelling in time through the anomalies.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: After returning from the past at the end of the first series, Cutter discovers that Claudia Brown has been erased from time and that the team now operates out of a large structure called the Anomaly Research Centre (ARC). In Claudia's place an assertive and quite different PR agent named Jenny Lewis (also played by Lucy Brown) joined the team. Though Abby and Connor are drawn closer to each other, Abby is also forced to contend with Connor's new girlfriend Caroline Steel (Naomi Bentley), a woman with a hidden agenda. Claudia's former position has been taken by Oliver Leek (Karl Theobald), who secretly works with Helen and plans to use creatures from the anomalies, particularly future predators, to gain political power.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The third series sees Cutter continuing to investigate the anomalies, hoping to find ways to predict their appearance. Following the death of Stephen at the end of the second series, the team is expanded with Captain Becker (Ben Mansfield) and Sarah Page (Laila Rouass), a professor employed at the British Museum. James Lester has to deal with his old government rival Christine Johnson (Belinda Stewart-Wilson), who aspires to use the anomalies and future predators for military purposes. Helen invades the ARC with an army of clones and kills Cutter, whereafter he is replaced as team leader by Danny Quinn (Jason Flemyng), a former police detective who became involved after discovering his brother had been killed by a creature from the future.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The fourth series takes place around a year after the third, and features many new team members following the deaths and disappearances of large parts of the team in the third series. The updated ARC includes, alongside Captain Becker, new team members Matt Anderson (Ciarán McMenamin), a man with a hidden agenda with the ARC and the anomalies, Jess Parker (Ruth Kearney), a coordinator for the field team and Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig), an entrepreneur funding the ARC in a public/private partnership with the government. Connor and Abby also return to the team after having spent a year stranded in the Cretaceous. The fourth series also sees the appearance of a group of time travelers, including the mysterious Ethan Dobrowski (Jonathon Byrne), who is a serial killer, and Emily Merchant (Ruth Bradley), who is from the Victorian era.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The fifth series sees Connor recruited by Philip for his new secret project "New Dawn", which aims to extract energy from the anomalies and use it to solve the world's energy crisis. Matt, knowing New Dawn will lead to the end of the world, recruits Abby to attempt to learn what Connor and his new assistant April Leonard (Janice Byrne) are researching, all the while they are forced to deal with new anomalies and creature incursions.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: "Primeval" met with enthusiastic reactions during its original broadcast, becoming both a critical and an audience hit. The series was also successful with international audiences, airing in over 30 countries worldwide and for instance becoming very popular with audiences in both the United States and South Korea. "Primeval" has repeatedly been commended for not pretending to be something it is not and for its homages to classic science fiction."" On the review aggregator website Metacritic (using a scale of 0–100), "Primeval" scored 72, indicating generally favourable reviews. Though some later commentators saw "Primeval" as never fully realising its potential, the series remains fondly remembered as one of the greatest British science fiction series. It has often been described as a cult series.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Though some reviewers found the characters of the first series to be insufficiently developed and some of the scripts to be "clichéd", "Primeval" succeeded in overcoming early dismissals of being a ""Doctor Who" ripoff", with critics agreeing that the series was something unique in its own right. The first series garnered praise for its overall story arc and not being repetitive. Opinions differed on the quality of the special effects. Rob Hunter of "Film School Rejects" gave the series high praise as the "best monster-of-the-week show since "The X-Files"". Reception for the second series was more lukewarm, with opinions differing on whether the effects were superior or inferior to those of the first series and on the quality of the writing and character development. Reception of the later episodes of the second series, in particular the two-part finale, was more universally positive.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The third series of "Primeval" met with high praise, with reviewers concluding that its greater number of episodes allowed for more extensive characterisation and character development, that it had a greater sense of thrill and suspense, that the actions of characters had consequences, and that its expanded central story was good. Several reviewers favourably compared the third series to the Jon Pertwee era of "Doctor Who" (1970–1974), owing to its altered team dynamic,"" and several considered it the strongest year of "Primeval" yet. In contrast, the fourth series received a more mixed response, with reviewers criticising the introduction of the new characters, the speed of the central story arc, and its resolution. The effects of the fourth series received praise as the best of "Primeval" so far. The fifth and final series was praised by critics as "Primeval" "going out on a high"; particular praise was given to the final two episodes.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: "Torchwood" creator and "Doctor Who" head writer Russell T Davies commented on the "Primeval" after the airing of its first series in 2007, stating that although he thought the series was "excellent", its "lack of ethnic casting" was "shameful". Davies's criticisms were met with some backlash as he had only recently cast Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones for "Doctor Who"'s third series; Martha was the first non-white companion in "Doctor Who" history and commentators pointed out that similar criticisms could be raised at previous series of "Doctor Who". In a review of the first episode of the fourth series of "Primeval" for "WhatCulture", Dan Owen also pointed out "Primeval"'s "curious lack of racial diversity in its all-white cast" and worried that the antagonist Philip Burton, played by Sudanese-born Alexander Siddig, would be painted as a stereotypical "Asian villain". Siddig's performance was however later praised by critics as "avoiding too many clichés". Naomi Bentley was cast for "Primeval"'s second series, but she was revealed half-way through the series to be a secret antagonist. "Primeval" then rectified its lack of non-white main protagonists in the third series with the introduction of Sarah Page, played by Laila Rouass, though Rouass could not return for the fourth or fifth series on account of their lengthy periods of filming.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: "Primeval" has also faced some criticism for its portrayal of female characters. In his review of the first series in "Strange Horizons", Iain Clark criticised "Primeval"'s female characters as "strong, but only to a point" and that "when it comes to the crunch it's always the men who do the saving; even the nerdy men". Clark conceded that Helen Cutter was a strong character "who remains consistently independent and interesting" but also noted that she was also portrayed as "unlikeable right through to the finale". The first series was also criticised for contriving the plot to have numerous scenes of Hannah Spearritt in her underwear. According to Spearritt, the scenes were filmed in one block and then spread out over the series; both she and the producers were reportedly shocked when watching it back and noticing how many such scenes there ended up being; no such scenes were filmed for subsequent series. Both Spearritt's Abby Maitland and the later introduced Emily Merchant, played by Ruth Bradley, were more positively received as strong female characters in later series.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: "Primeval" was nearly consistently met with good ratings. The first and most watched episode of the series was watched by over seven million viewers, over a million more than the usual viewing figures of its slot on ITV. Although "Primeval" was commissioned by ITV due to the success of "Doctor Who" and several commentators saw it as ITV's attempt at creating a rival series, the cast and crew of "Primeval" did not envision the series as a "Doctor Who"-competitor. Douglas Henshall stated in a 2007 interview that "Primeval" had a completely different format and instead compared it to "The A-Team", with influences from "Jurassic Park" and "Indiana Jones". In a 2021 interview, Henshall stated that it would have been impossible to seriously compete with "Doctor Who", a sentiment echoed by Adrian Hodges, who stated that although it would have been great if they had been able to beat "Doctor Who", he "just wanted to do well". Though both Henshell and Hodges believed that "Primeval" would have done better if it had aired a few years later, Andrew-Lee Potts believed "Primeval" to have aired at just the right time based on its success. "Primeval" was for its first two series not far behind the viewership figures of contemporary "Doctor Who", with the first series having an average of 6.39 million viewers (compared to "Doctor Who"'s 7.55 million) and the second having 6.29 million (compared to "Doctor Who"'s 8.05 million).


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The third series averaged about five million viewers per episode; although this was down more than a million from the previous two series, the numbers were still considered successful both by commentators and by ITV itself. The series created after "Primeval"'s cancellation and revival saw more seriously dropping viewing statistics. The fourth series averaged around four million viewers, which was considered somewhat disappointing. The fifth series first premiered on the digital channel Watch, where it averaged around 500,000 viewers. Although much less than on the terrestrial channel ITV, the numbers were a great success in comparison with other digital channels and "Primeval" was Watch's biggest series of the year. When the fifth series was later broadcast on ITV it had a considerably more disappointing run, with the first episode being watched by 2.55 million viewers and the last only by 1.38 million, the lowest ratings in "Primeval"'s history.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: "Primeval" was accompanied by both novelisations of episodes of the series and by original novels with new stories. The original novels took the team from the series and placed them in new locations and situations and were in many cases stories the producers had wished to do for the TV series but which would not have been achievable with their budget. The book "Extinction Event" by Dan Abnett was in particular a storyline that they had wished to film but which would not be possible without a feature film-level budget. The storylines explored in the novels were created through a combination of the producers telling writers stories they had wanted to do and the writers pitching storylines themselves. Although the novels were written to not have any large-scale impacts on the plotlines of the TV series, the writers made an effort to keep them within the overall continuity.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: A Canadian spinoff series of "Primeval", "", was announced on 15 September 2011 as being in development for the Canadian television channel Space. "New World" was a co-production between Omni Film productions, Impossible Pictures, and Bell Media. Production began in Vancouver, British Columbia, in the winter of 2011. "New World" was not a continuation of the original series, though it continued its mythology and saw some cameo appearances, and was envisioned as an "older, darker and scarier" version of the programme. "New World" was cancelled after only a single thirteen-episode season due to poor ratings.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Plans for an American feature film adaptation of "Primeval" were announced on 15 May 2009, with Warner Bros. reported to have acquired the screen rights in a "six-figure deal". The film was announced as combining the "dinosaur element of "Jurassic Park" and the time travel element of "Lost"" and slated to be produced by Akiva Goldsman and Kerry Foster. The script was to be written by Jeff Pinkner; Haines and Hodges reserved the right to cancel the deal if they did not approve of the treatment. Unlike the TV series, the film was to be set in the United States and it would not be part of the same continuity, instead "start[ing] its own mythology" based on the themes and ideas of the series. All of the characters would be new but they would have similar roles and responsibilities to the characters of the series. Although Warner Bros. reportedly planned production of the film to begin in 2010 its script was still being revised in 2011. Ultimately, a film adaptation remains as of yet unproduced.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: The first and second series of "Primeval" were accompanied by a line of action figures, created by Character Group PLC and Design Works. The actors were all photographed from various angles to ensure that the figures were faithful depictions. The toy line included all main characters and some of the creatures.


title: Primeval (TV series)

text: Cubicle 7 released a role-playing game based on the first three "Primeval" series on 11 May 2011, with a 288-page rulebook written by Gareth Hanrahan. The expansion "Companion", based on the fourth series, was released on 18 December 2013 with a 128-page book. "Companion" was followed by a second expansion, "Evolution", based on the fifth series. "Evolution" was released on 2 July 2014, also with a 128-page book.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: Charlotte is a 2015 Japanese anime television series produced by P.A. Works and Aniplex and directed by Yoshiyuki Asai. The anime aired 13 episodes in Japan between July 5 and September 27, 2015. An original video animation episode was released in March 2016. Two manga series were serialized in ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki G's Comic". The story takes place in an alternate reality where a small percentage of children manifest superhuman abilities upon reaching puberty. A focus is placed on Yuu Otosaka, a high school boy who awakens the ability to temporarily possess others, which brings him to the attention of Nao Tomori, the student council president of a school founded as a haven for children with such abilities.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: The story was originally conceived by Jun Maeda, who also wrote the screenplay and composed some of the music, with original character design by Na-Ga. Both Maeda and Na-Ga are from the visual novel brand Key, and "Charlotte" is the second original anime series created by Key following "Angel Beats!" in 2010. Maeda had thought up the concept for "Charlotte" long before he was approached in early 2012 to work on another anime series after "Angel Beats!". Maeda narrowed down the number of main characters compared to "Angel Beats!" and attempted to put more of a focus on their behavior. Instead of employing the same staff that had worked on "Angel Beats!", the aim for "Charlotte" was to bring together a staff that would add a new variety to the creative process to prevent being influenced by the work done on "Angel Beats!".


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: "Charlotte" was praised for its unpredictability and evocative moments, but its pacing and structure have been criticized as inefficient. It has been described as approachable for a wide audience and for defying the ""moe" anime" stereotype. Although the comedic elements have been called dumb and corny, they have overall been lauded for offering some relief from the serious moments, which one reviewer likened to a palate cleanser. P.A. Works' production was praised for its beautiful animation sequences and expressive cinematography.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: "Charlotte" takes place in an alternate reality where a short-period comet called Charlotte passes near Earth once every 75 years. As this happens, it spreads dust onto the Earth, which causes a small percentage of preadolescent children who inhale the dust to manifest superhuman abilities upon reaching puberty. In Japan the story follows the protagonist Yuu Otosaka, a boy who awakens the ability to temporarily possess another person for five seconds. Although hoping to use his ability to fraudulently live a carefree high school life, he is unexpectedly exposed by Nao Tomori, a girl who can make herself invisible to a specific target. She forces him to transfer to and join its student council, of which she is the president. Also on the student council is Jōjirō Takajō, a boy who can move at uncontrollably high speeds. The student council's main objective is to ensure the safety of ability users from organizations who seek to exploit their powers. In doing so, the student council warns ability users of the potential danger of using their abilities openly. This leads the student council to Yusa Nishimori, a pop singer who has the ability to channel the spirits of the dead as a medium. Yusa's dead older sister Misa frequently makes use of this ability to freely possess her at any time, which allows Misa to use her own ability, pyrokinesis. Nao soon arranges for Yusa to transfer to Hoshinoumi Academy and join the student council.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: Yuu's younger sister Ayumi unexpectedly awakens an ability to cause anything around her to suddenly collapse, which results in her death. Yuu falls into a deep depression as a result and isolates himself, but Nao successfully manages to pull him out of his depression and gets him to return to the student council. While attending a concert of the post-rock band Zhiend with Nao, Yuu recollects previously suppressed memories of his older brother Shunsuke, who has the ability to time travel. Shunsuke had used this ability to establish Hoshinoumi Academy and an affiliated organization attempting to develop a vaccine to prevent children from developing abilities before they manifest, but his repeated use has left him blind. Yuu learns that the true nature of his ability enables him to steal another person's ability by possessing them. Yuu takes Shunsuke's ability to go back in time and ultimately prevent Ayumi's death by stealing her collapse ability before she can use it.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: A terrorist group manages to abduct Nao and Kumagami, one of Shunsuke's closest friends and aides, and holds them hostage in exchange for Yuu, who attempts to rescue them. However, the operation does not go as planned, which results in Kumagami's death and Yuu being gravely injured. After Yuu recovers, he resolves to protect all of the ability users around the world by stealing their abilities as per Nao's suggestion. As Yuu travels the world stealing abilities, the more powers he takes on soon takes its toll on him as he starts losing his memories and sense of self. However, he still manages to steal everyone's abilities throughout the world before collapsing. Shunsuke rescues Yuu, bringing him back to Japan among friends and family. Yuu is left with no memories, but Nao tells him she is his girlfriend. Yuu and his friends look forward to the memories they will make from now on as Yuu continues to recover from his ordeal.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: The original creators of "Charlotte" are Jun Maeda and Na-Ga of Key, and "Charlotte" is the second original anime series created by Key following "Angel Beats!" (2010). Yōsuke Toba of Aniplex approached Maeda in early 2012 with an offer from P.A. Works president Kenji Horikawa to do another anime series with the studio. Maeda was surprised by this, as he never expected to work with P.A. Works again. Horikawa explained that the production staff could now handle things that were not able to be fully materialized during the production of "Angel Beats!". Maeda did not think he would ever be involved in the planning of another anime series, but he said that he had no choice but to accept Horikawa's offer after discussing it with him. Toba asked Maeda to write a "Key-like story", and Maeda started out by applying his prior experience of working on "Angel Beats!". He went through a trial-and-error process to work out what kind of setting and story would work well for an anime series.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: Long before working on "Charlotte", Maeda had thought up a concept for a story with characters who have imperfect superpowers that must cooperate with each other to resolve any incidents that arise. Maeda originally submitted three separate ideas for a story to Toba, and he asked him which one he liked best. However, after Toba pointed out one of the other two, Maeda made it clear that he wanted to do the story that would become "Charlotte". When writing the story, Maeda also reconsidered how he had done certain things with "Angel Beats!". In particular, he attempted to put more of a focus on the behavior of the characters. Maeda also narrowed down the number of main characters in "Charlotte" compared to "Angel Beats!", which could not put a focus on each and every character. Toba felt that Maeda was influenced by his work on "Angel Beats!", which changed his thought process and what he wanted to depict in "Charlotte".


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: Maeda thought issues had arisen with the large cast of characters in "Angel Beats!", such as overlapping personality traits and not being able to remember everyone, and he used those considerations when writing "Charlotte". Similarly, when designing the characters in "Angel Beats!", Na-Ga had been concerned about designs being too similar among the characters, and went on to make use of that experience with "Charlotte". When developing Jōjirō Takajō, he originally had a different appearance and personality, but over the course of the development process, he eventually became similar to Takamatsu from "Angel Beats!". Maeda decided fairly early on to make Yuu Otosaka a low-life cheater at the start of "Charlotte" because he had never created a character like that before. When trying to choose a title for "Charlotte", Maeda's friend Taisei Nakagawa proposed a title which could be abbreviated as "AA" based on its similarity to "Angel Beats!" abbreviation of "AB". However, Maeda did not like the title, and devised the title "Charlotte" as one that would surpass the original "AA" title. The title "Charlotte" came from the song by the Japanese band Art-School.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: When deciding on "Charlotte" staff, Toba thought it would be better not to have exactly the same team that produced "Angel Beats!". Having already decided to stick with Maeda, Na-Ga and P.A. Works, Toba aimed to bring together a staff that would add a new variety to the creative process, and in doing so would prevent being influenced by the work done on "Angel Beats!". With that in mind, Toba wanted a director who had a good understanding of "Angel Beats!" and who would also be suitable as "Charlotte" director, leading him to seek out Yoshiyuki Asai. Toba took into consideration the storyboarding Asai had done for two episodes of "Angel Beats!", and he thought that "Charlotte" would be a good opportunity to have a first-time series director. Asai was also chosen as someone who could handle both comedic and serious moments. When Horikawa first looked at "Charlotte" incomplete script, he told Maeda that it did not feel like it had the same kind of zeal that "Angel Beats!" had. However, once he saw the whole script, his concerns with it were dispelled, much to Maeda's relief.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: While the entire script was still in the draft phase, Maeda revised lines that felt unnatural after asking others for their opinions on it, including Na-Ga. When writing the script, Maeda made a conscious effort to write "Charlotte" in the framework of an anime series, as opposed to when he wrote the script for "Angel Beats!", which he admits he wrote more akin to the framework of a video game. In this way, Toba felt that "Charlotte" was Maeda's effort to write a story in its purest form that could not be made into a video game, unlike "Angel Beats!". Toba also noted that the characters in "Charlotte" are not written for a video game scenario, especially the protagonist, and went on to echo Horikawa's sentiment that "Charlotte" is akin to an I novel for Maeda. Toba explained that this is a result of Maeda's effort to remove the restrictions that come from writing the scenario for a video game.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: Kanami Sekiguchi was chosen as the character designer after Horikawa took notice of her work as the animation director of episode nine of "Angel Beats!", and Toba was eager to see how she would render Na-Ga's original designs. When it came time to choose an art director, Kazuki Higashiji was chosen for his zeal in the workplace and Horikawa's confidence in his artistic talent; Higashiji had also been the art director for "Angel Beats!". Similarly, Satoki Iida was brought back to work on "Charlotte" again as the sound and music director, and he also helped with the proofreading of the script as he had done for "Angel Beats!". Iida was largely chosen for his good communication with Maeda, and so that he could make the best use of his experience working on "Angel Beats!". When writing the music for How-Low-Hello, Maeda reused some older songs he had composed as a student in the 1990s that he felt were selective of his best songs from that period. At the time, his concept when composing the songs was "early B'z", but Maeda notes that this is no longer the case with the completed songs.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: A four-panel comic strip manga, illustrated by Haruka Komowata and titled , was serialized from the May 2015 issue of ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki G's Comic" sold on March 30, 2015 to the May 2017 issue sold on March 30, 2017. Three "tankōbon" volumes for "Charlotte The 4-koma" were released between September 26, 2015, and May 27, 2017. A second manga, illustrated by Makoto Ikezawa and Yū Tsurusaki, is titled "Charlotte" and was serialized from the September 2015 issue of "Dengeki G's Comic" sold on July 30, 2015, and the February 2019 issue sold on December 27, 2018. "Charlotte" is also available on Kadokawa Corporation's ComicWalker website. Six "tankōbon" volumes for "Charlotte" were released between August 27, 2015, and January 26, 2019.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: The 13-episode "Charlotte" anime television series is directed by Yoshiyuki Asai and produced by P.A. Works and Aniplex. The series aired in Japan between July 5 and September 27, 2015. The screenplay is written by Jun Maeda, who originally conceived the series. The chief animators are Noboru Sugimitsu and Kanami Sekiguchi, and Sekiguchi based the character design used in the anime on Na-Ga's original designs. Sound and music direction is headed by Satoki Iida. The series is being released on seven Blu-ray/DVD compilation volumes between September 23, 2015, and March 30, 2016, in limited and regular editions. The seventh volume featured an original video animation episode. Three drama CDs, written by Maeda and performed by the anime's cast, were released with the first, third and fifth volumes. In North America, the series is licensed by Aniplex of America, who simulcasted the series on Aniplex Channel, Crunchyroll, Hulu, Daisuki, Viewster, and Animax Asia. The series was obtained by Madman Entertainment for digital distribution in Australia and New Zealand who simulcasted the series on AnimeLab. Anime Limited licensed the anime series in the United Kingdom and released it on Blu-ray on May 29, 2017.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: The anime's music is composed by Maeda, Hikarishuyo, and the group Anant-Garde Eyes, who also provided the musical arrangement. The music is released on Key's record label Key Sounds Label. The single "Bravely You / was released on August 26, 2015 in limited (CD+DVD) and regular (CD) editions; the limited edition's DVD contains the opening and ending videos without the credits. There are two in-story bands: How-Low-Hello featuring vocals by Maaya Uchida, and Zhiend featuring vocals by Marina. One single and one album was released for both bands in 2015. How-Low-Hello's single was released on September 2, and the band's album "Smells Like Tea, Espresso" was released on September 30. Zhiend's single "Trigger" was released on September 9, and the band's album "Echo" was released on October 14 as a two-CD set for both English and Japanese lyrics. The anime's original soundtrack was released on November 4, 2015, as a two-CD set.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: An Internet radio show to promote the series titled streamed 13 weekly broadcasts between July 6 and September 28, 2015, on Niconico. The show was also available via Hibiki Radio Station and Onsen, and was hosted by Ayane Sakura (the voice of Nao). Two CD compilation volumes for the show were released between September 30, 2015, and January 27, 2016.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: In a review by Anime News Network, reviewer Gabriella Ekens praised the series for "sculpting singular, evocative moments", but went on to say that a "problem arises when you try to tie them into a bigger picture." Ekens criticized the pacing and structure of the show, calling it an "inefficient...collection of sprawling narrative ideas" and comparing it to """ suddenly turn[ing] into "Darker than Black"." Ekens also notes that its thematic purpose "seems to be Jun Maeda's opportunity for melodramatic elaboration on the emotional dilemmas posed by "Madoka Magica"." Overall, "Charlotte" was lauded for its entertainment value and unpredictability, but "disappoints as a work of art." Early on, Ekens described the series as having "sharp comedic timing," and by episode four, she praised the comedic elements as "already much funnier than "Plastic Memories"." She went on to say that "it's dumb, but I like it for the same reasons I liked the comedy in "Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign"." Chris Beveridge of The Fandom Post found "Charlotte" unpredictability "engaging" and its animation "beautiful". Ekens praised P.A. Works for their dynamic direction and "expressive cinematography" which offers "a distinct, pleasant aesthetic."


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: In a column on "Mainichi Shimbun" Mantanweb portal, "Charlotte" was praised for the balance it strikes to reach a wide audience, from "core fans" of anime to casual viewers, in regards to its creative use of peculiar characters coupled with a scenario focused on resolving problems. Columnist Ryō Koarai commended "Charlotte" for pulling in the viewer from the first episode due to Yuu's surprising, unorthodox personality in contrast with how he uses his superhuman ability in his everyday life. Writer Seiji Nakazawa lauded "Charlotte" for defying the ""moe" anime" stereotype at first glance and for instead being what he describes as a "human drama". He notes that "Charlotte" is written in much the same way as Maeda's previous works by inserting jokes between serious moments to offer some relief to the viewer. While Nakazawa admits that some may find the jokes in "Charlotte" corny, he finds them acceptable and likens them to a palate cleanser.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: In a review for "Neo", David West praised "Charlotte" for the interesting premise, the cinematography and the animation, but criticized the series for being unable to maintain a consistent tone, noting that the series had an abundance of slapstick and physical comedy, but would unexpectedly take a dark turn, although he praised the dark side of the series for being well realized.


title: Charlotte (TV series)

text: The seven Blu-ray compilation volumes ranked in the top 15 on Japan's Oricon weekly Blu-ray sales chart for animation: Volume one ranked at No. 1, volume two ranked at No. 6, volume three ranked at No. 9, volume four ranked at No. 4, volume five ranked at No. 10, volume six ranked at No. 13, and volume seven ranked at No. 3. The opening and ending theme song single "Bravely You / Yakeochinai Tsubasa" debuted at No. 4 on Japan's Oricon weekly singles chart, selling over 23,000 copies in its first week of sales. How-Low-Hello's single "Rakuen Made / Hatsunetsu Days" debuted at No. 9 on the Oricon singles chart, selling about 9,300 copies in its first week of sales. How-Low-Hello's album "Smells Like Tea, Espresso" debuted at No. 12 on the Oricon albums chart, selling about 9,500 copies in its first week of sales. Zhiend's single "Trigger" debuted at No. 11 on the Oricon singles chart, selling about 14,000 copies in its first week of sales. Zhiend's album "Echo" debuted at No. 4 on the Oricon albums chart, selling about 10,300 copies in its first week of sales. The "Charlotte Original Soundtrack" debuted at No. 9 on the Oricon albums chart, selling about 6,600 copies in its first week of sales.


title: Pi (letter)

text: Pi (uppercase Π, lowercase π and ϖ; ) is the sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless bilabial plosive . In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 80. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Pe (). Letters that arose from pi include Latin P, Cyrillic Pe (П, п), Coptic pi (Ⲡ, ⲡ), and Gothic pairthra (𐍀).


title: Pi (letter)

text: Variant pi or "pomega" (formula_1 or ϖ) is a glyph variant of lowercase pi sometimes used in technical contexts. It resembles a lowercase omega with a macron, though historically it is simply a cursive form of pi, with its legs bent inward to meet. It was also used in the minuscule script. It is a symbol for:


title: Pi (letter)

text: The character encodings in the tables above are intended for use as mathematical symbols. Text written in the Greek language (i.e. words, as opposed to mathematics) should not come from any of the tables on this page, but instead should use the normal Greek letters, which have different code numbers and often a different appearance. Using the mathematical symbols to display words (or vice versa) is likely to result in inconsistent spacing and a clumsy, mismatched appearance.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The CrossFit Games is an annual athletic competition owned and operated by CrossFit, LLC. Athletes compete in a series of events at the Games, which may be various standard CrossFit workouts consisting of metabolic conditioning exercises, weightlifting, and gymnastics movements, as well as a range of activities from other sports such as swimming and cycling. The events generally are not revealed before the Games, can include unexpected elements to challenge the athletes' readiness to compete, and they are designed to test the athletes' fitness using CrossFit's own criteria. Winners of the CrossFit Games earn cash prizes and the title of "Fittest on Earth."


title: CrossFit Games

text: The competition started in 2007 and has been held every year since, normally in the summer. The first competition was held at a ranch in Aromas, California, with small groups of participants and spectators, but the CrossFit Games rapidly grew, and within a few years, the competition was moved to larger venues at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, followed by the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The first qualification stage for the Games, the Open, is billed as the largest participatory sporting event in the world, with over 415,000 athletes signing up to compete in 2018. The Games were sponsored by Reebok from 2011 to 2020, and by Nobull starting 2021. A few athletes have dominated in the Games' history; they are Rich Froning (four wins) and Mat Fraser (five wins) in the men's competition, and Tia-Clair Toomey (six wins) in the women's.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The CrossFit Games has its origin in early 2007 when the then director of training of CrossFit Dave Castro invited CrossFit founder Greg Glassman to his family ranch in Aromas, California, and Glassman suggested holding a "Woodstock of Fitness" at the ranch for the CrossFit community.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In July 2007, the inaugural CrossFit Games, which had the feel of a backyard barbecue with a few sporting events thrown in, took place at the ranch in Aromas. Around 70 athletes and 150 spectators turned up for the first Games. For the first two years of competition, participation was open to anyone who made it to Aromas. The athletes with the best individual combined score in a series of events would be crowned the winners, and an Affiliate Cup was also awarded to the group from one CrossFit gym that had the best combined individual standings. The number of participants increased rapidly, and in 2009, a qualification stage called the Regionals was introduced to select the best competitors for the Games. The CrossFit Games also added a separate set of team-based events for the Affiliate Cup, marking the first use of a designated Team Division, with teams of four (two men and two women).


title: CrossFit Games

text: Interest and participation in the event continued to grow, and in 2010, the qualification was adjusted to include multiple Sectionals, a series of events open to all athletes who wanted to qualify for one of the 17 Regionals. The 17 regions divided Canada and the United States into 12 regions, with the remaining regions roughly corresponding to the five other populated continents. The attendance at the Games also outgrew the ranch in Aromas, and the Games venue was moved to the Home Depot Center (later called the StubHub Center) in Carson, California. The Games also expanded the Team Division to groups of six athletes and added a Masters Division for individual men and women aged 55 and up.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In 2011, the open participation Sectionals were replaced by an online qualification called the Open. In the first year of the Open, 26,000 athletes signed up to compete. Participation in the Open steadily increased, rising from 69,000 in 2012 to 209,585 in 2014. The Open has since been described as the largest participatory sporting event in the world, reaching a peak of 415,000 participants in 2018. The number of registered athletes in the Open declined in the next two years down to 239,106 in 2020, which may be due to changes of the 2019 Games and the scheduling of the 2020 Open, but increased again in the following years, to 293,805 in 2022.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In 2015, the qualification format was reorganized from 17 Regionals to eight "Super-Regionals". Each Super-Regional included qualifiers from two or three of the previously defined regions, with a total of 40 or 50 athletes participating at each event.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Following seven years in Carson, the Games moved to the grounds of the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2017. The next year, the qualifying Regionals were once again realigned to reflect the increasing competitiveness and popularity outside of Canada and the U.S. In 2018, there were nine Regionals hosted among 18 redefined regions, with Europe increasing to three regions, Central America split from South America, and the elimination of the Northern and Southern California regions.


title: CrossFit Games

text: CrossFit, Inc. founder Greg Glassman overhauled the format for the 2019 Games, replacing the Regionals with CrossFit-sanctioned international qualifying events called Sanctionals. As part of the changes, the 2019 Games athletes can qualify by winning one of the Sanctionals, or were the top athlete from one of the recognized countries in the CrossFit Open, or a top-20 overall finisher in the CrossFit Open, or by being one of the up to four at-large athletes chosen by CrossFit. Teams also no longer needed to be created from one CrossFit-affiliated gym and could be formed from any group of four competitors.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In 2020, the qualifying events proceeded as scheduled until March 2020 when the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic caused events to be cancelled amid social distancing requirements and travel restrictions for international competitors. The Games format was then altered, and 30 men and 30 women were invited to compete in an online-only first stage with the top five qualifying for the final stage. As spectators would not be allowed at any venues during the pandemic, the final stage was hosted at its original location at the CrossFit Ranch in Aromas. There were no teams, masters, or teens events.


title: CrossFit Games

text: With the ongoing effects of the pandemic, the 2021 qualification format was made more inclusive during the Open, allowing competitors who may not be able travel to qualifying events to advance in the competition season by participating in a new online Quarterfinal, in a format similar to that previously used for age-group qualifiers. However, the Games also removed the national champion Open qualification to have a smaller field of invitees to the Games. Ten Semifinals that are a mix of the Regionals and Sanctionals were introduced, as well as a final last-chance online qualifier for semifinal athletes who narrowly missed Games qualification. The Games also returned the team format to affiliate-based qualification, and added a new adaptive athlete division.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In January 2022, CrossFit CEO Eric Roza fired CrossFit Games' director Dave Castro after 15 years of programming the event, replacing him with Justin Bergh as General Manager Of Sport and Adrian Bozman as Director of Competition.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Participation and sponsorship have grown rapidly since the inception of the Games. The Games has always awarded an equal sum in prize money to the male and female individual winners, starting with $500 at the inaugural Games, increasing to $300,000 in 2019. The prize purse of the 2010 Games was sponsored by Progenex that provided $25,000 for the winners. The following year saw the largest jump in prize money when Reebok sponsored its first Games, and the prize money for first place in 2011 increased to $250,000. The total prize payout in 2016 was $2,200,000, rising to 3 million in 2020. The prize payout increased again in 2021 when Nobull became the title sponsor of the Games.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The CrossFit Games is the culmination of the CrossFit season that starts with the qualification stage. In the first two CrossFit Games, no qualification for competitors was necessary; athletes who wanted to participate in the Games could register and turn up on the day to compete. However, with an increasing number of participants, a qualification process, the Regionals, was initiated in 2009 to winnow down the number of athletes who could take part in the Games. This was further expanded into a two-stage process in 2010 with the introduction of Sectionals where competitors were first selected to compete in the Regionals. The Sectionals became the Open the following year, and between 2011 and 2018, all athletes had to go through the same two-stage qualification process, the Open and Regionals, apart from a few who received special invites in some years. In the 2019 CrossFit Games, the qualification process was modified, and competitors had three separate ways to qualify: the Open, sanctioned events, and by invitation. In 2021, the Open once again reverted to its role as the first stage of competition that feeds the subsequent rounds in an expanded three-stage continent-based qualification system.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The Open was introduced in 2011 and participation is open to anyone over a certain age limit (14 since 2015) and at any skill level. The Open is held over a number of weeks, and a series of workouts are released weekly for competitors to complete. Athletes who wish to progress further in individual competitions need to perform the workouts as prescribed ("Rx'd"), but others who want to take part only in the Open can "scale" their workouts to be easier to suit their ability, or choose the foundation or equipment-free options introduced in 2021. Each week competitors perform the workouts and submit their scores online before a specified time supported by either videos of their workouts or validations by a CrossFit affiliate. In every event, the competitors are ranked according to their performance with points awarded directly corresponding to their rank (i.e. one point for first, two for second, etc.), and the winner is the one with the lowest cumulative points over the course of the Open.


title: CrossFit Games

text: From 2011 to 2019, the Open was usually held over five weeks in February and March with a new workout released each week, and athletes had to submit their score for each workout usually four days later. For the 2020 season, the Open moved forward to October 2019 as part of the overhaul for Games qualifications so that it took place before any of the sanctioned events. It has been moved back to March since the 2021 season, but the number of workouts have been reduced to three or four to be completed in three weeks.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In 2019, the top athlete from each country (the national champion) and the top 20 overall Open finishers qualified directly to the Games. This was also planned for 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic travel restrictions led to only 20 men and 20 women from the Open being invited to an online competition as the first stage of the Games itself, and no national champion has been invited to the Games since.


title: CrossFit Games

text: For the 2021 Games, the qualification system was again revamped, and a Quarterfinal stage was added between the Open and the Semifinals. Participants in the Open are separated on a continental basis, and only the top 10% on each continent qualify for the Quarterfinal in order to move on to the Semifinals.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The Quarterfinals start around a week and a half after the Open has finished, and are held online similar to the Open. The athletes are required to complete five workouts over 3 consecutive days after the workouts have been released.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Between 2009 and 2018, competitors qualified for the Games through participation at CrossFit Games regional events around the world. The top men and women from the Sectional in 2010, and the Open from 2011 to 2018, participated in the Regionals to qualify for the Games. There were 17 Regionals most years until 2015, when athletes from the 17 regions (later 18 regions) were funnelled into 8 or 9 Regional competitions. In 2011, the events in the Regionals were standardized.


title: CrossFit Games

text: For the 2019 Games, CrossFit, Inc. discontinued hosting the Regional qualifier and instead sanctioned independent fitness events as qualifiers separate from the Open. These events were trademarked as "Sanctionals" by CrossFit, LLC. Most of the sanctioned events were significant CrossFit competitions already widely participated in by CrossFit Games athletes around the world, such as Wodapalooza and Dubai CrossFit Championship, as well as the new Rogue Invitational. Each sanctioned event had its own rules for participation and separately programmed events. If an athlete or team won multiple sanctioned events, the runners-up from the later events would qualify to the Games. Twenty-eight sanctioned events were announced for the 2020 season, but many of them were cancelled due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In 2021, the revamped Semifinals are a mix of the Regionals and Sanctionals, with 10 Semifinals scheduled in 6 continents. A last-chance online qualifier, last used in 2009, was reintroduced for semifinal athletes who narrowly missed a Games qualification. In 2022, CrossFit reintroduced identical workouts but only for two of the Semifinal events.


title: CrossFit Games

text: From 2009 to 2011, special invites were given to the top 5 men and women from the preceding Games as well as the individual champions of all previous games. The special invites for previous champions were removed in 2012, although CrossFit reserved the right to extend an invitation at any stage of the Games to any athlete, a right it exercised for two athletes in 2013. In 2019, the CrossFit Games had the option to invite up to four athletes who did not qualify for the Games in the Open or sanctioned events as an at-large bid.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Athletes at the Games compete in a series of workouts and activities over the course of a few days. The events are generally not announced in advance before the Games; the Games is set up as a test of fitness, and the founder of CrossFit Greg Glassman believes that the fittest athletes should be able to handle any task given, athletes are therefore kept in the dark as to what they may face in the Games. They only learn about the events days, hours, or minutes beforehand, sometimes not knowing the details of the events even after they have started on the event. These events test the athletes on what CrossFit defines as the ten fitness domains: "cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy", so that the fittest athlete can be determined using CrossFit's own criteria. The first Games only had 3 events; in the following years, the number of events gradually increased, and the Games now typically have 12–15 events held over a period of three to five days. Each event is scored individually; since 2011 the scoring system awards 100 points for the winner of every event, with lower-placing athletes receiving fewer points according to a points table. The athlete with the best combined score across all events is declared the champion and the "Fittest on Earth".


title: CrossFit Games

text: The events are mostly an assortment of Crossfit workouts comprising exercises in metabolic conditioning (metcon), weightlifting, and gymnastics, which are the three CrossFit modalities. The standard CrossFit workouts are usually a combination of movements of different modalities, such as handstand push-up, pull-up, muscle-up, burpee, lunge, box-jump, rope-climb, double under, running, back squat and dumbbell push press. Each workout may involve a number of rounds and repetitions (reps) of different movements, for example, a workout may have a rep scheme comprising three rounds of 21-15-9 repetitions of each movement. Workouts with "rounds for time" structure are won by competitors who can finish the rounds of workouts in the fastest time, while workouts in the "as many reps/rounds as possible" (AMRAP) format are won by those who complete the most reps or rounds within a set time. The workouts may be given specific names, for example, "Grace", "Fran", and "Amanda" from "The Girls" workouts, and "Murph" from the "Heroes" and tribute workouts. Events titled "Couplet" are composed of two different movements, while "Triplet" events have three. The "Chipper" events typically involve many different movements performed in sequence, while the "Ladder" events may involve increasing/decreasing number of reps or heavier/lighter weights in each succeeding round.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The Games often introduces some additional surprise elements that are not part of the typical CrossFit regimen to the events. These include obstacle courses, road cycling, ocean swimming, softball throwing, or ascending a pegboard. "Odd-objects" like yokes, sleds, and sandbags may also be introduced to the workouts; some of these the athletes would not have encountered before in a CrossFit gym, examples are the "Snail" (an object shaped like a bale of hay but partly filled with sand), the "Pig" (a heavy block encased in rubber), and the "Banger" (a metal block on a track hit with a hammer).


title: CrossFit Games

text: The marquee events at the CrossFit Games are the men's and women's individual competitions. The first place prize for each paid out $300,000 in 2020, with that amount set to increase to $310,000 in 2021.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Originally, teams were awarded the Affiliate Cup for having the best overall score from the individual athletes that had come from the same CrossFit-affiliated gym. In 2009, the Games began having a separate set of events for affiliate teams and consisted of four to six athletes from the same gym. The next season, the format was finalized to teams of three men and three women. In the 2018 games, each team was changed to four members, two men and two women. In 2019, CrossFit removed the stipulation that team members had to be from the same affiliate. Teams are subject to a similar qualification process as the individuals.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The Games includes age-based divisions for younger and older competitors. Masters divisions were introduced at the 2010 Games. There are currently seven divisions each for women and men: 35–39, 40–44, 45–49, 50–54, 55–59, 60–64, and 65+. Divisions for teenagers were introduced in 2015: the age ranges are 14–15 and 16–17, for both boys and girls.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Rather than regional events, masters and teen athletes qualify for the games by a second online competition following the Open. The top 200 athletes in each division worldwide are invited to compete in this qualifier, of which the top 10 advance to the Games.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Prior to the introduction of these secondary online qualifiers, masters and teens competitors qualified for the Games directly from the Open.


title: CrossFit Games

text: The adaptive divisions were introduced in the 2021 CrossFit Open for competitors with physical impairment. There are 16 adaptive divisions (eight each for men and women) with no separation by age, but all competitors must be at least 14 years of age. Three male and three female divisions participated at the Games, while the rest are tested virtually in the semifinals.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Due to CrossFit's official partnership with Reebok, competitors at the 2015 Games were banned from wearing Nike footwear. Nike arranged for several trucks to be parked near the main entrance to the arena, which served as mobile billboards with the slogan "Don't ban our shoe, beat our shoe". The partnership also prohibits Nike from labeling its "Metcon" shoes as intended for CrossFit – the brand uses the term "high intensity training" instead.


title: CrossFit Games

text: CrossFit's decision to award winners of the 2016 Games with handguns resulted in widespread criticism from members and sponsors. Resulting protests forced the temporary closure of two CrossFit locations in New York City.


title: CrossFit Games

text: On June 6, 2020, CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman was publicly criticized for his social media statements about the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests resulting in many CrossFit-affiliated gyms around the world responded by ending their affiliation, Reebok announcing that they would end their corporate association after the 2020 Games, and several competitors boycotting the Games until he was removed from the company. On June 9, Glassman resigned as CEO and sold the company by the end of the month, leading to the boycotting athletes returning.


title: CrossFit Games

text: Athletes from Taiwan are required to compete under the People's Republic of China flag, rather than the Republic of China flag. SCMP reported that athletes have emailed CrossFit HQ, without any feedback.


title: CrossFit Games

text: In 2011, ESPN began to broadcast the CrossFit Games, with live coverage streamed through ESPN3, and some television coverage on ESPN2. As the event grew, ESPN expanded its television coverage; in 2014, the network entered into a multi-year deal to continue broadcasting the CrossFit Games, and coverage expanded to nine-and-a-half hours on ESPN and ESPN2 by 2015. In 2017, the event began a new broadcast arrangement with CBS Sports, with television coverage on CBS Sports Network, and a total of 40 hours of digital streaming coverage. In 2019, CrossFit experimented with an open-source broadcasting system that allowed various partners to broadcast the Games, but live broadcast resumed on CBS Sports in 2020.


title: CrossFit Games

text: For many years CrossFit had its own media department that was responsible for creating and releasing media content related to the Games, including live streaming of the Games online through Facebook, YouTube and CrossFit websites, and content broadcast on ESPN and CBS. Events such as the Open workout announcements were broadcast live from 2013 to 2018, and featured two or more past CrossFit Games athletes competing head-to-head immediately following the workout description. During the 2018–19 restructuring, CrossFit dissolved its own media crew, relying instead on outside media outlets and production companies for coverage of the sport. For the next two years, Rogue Fitness broadcast the coverage of the Open workout announcement with competing athletes performing the workouts, and provided color commentary for the live stream of the Games. CrossFit resumed live streaming of its Open announcements in 2021. CrossFit's media department also produced a number of documentary films on the Games, and its former employees continued to produce them independently after the department was dissolved.


title: Summer of Sam

text: Summer of Sam is a 1999 American crime thriller film about the 1977 David Berkowitz (Son of Sam) serial murders and their effect on a group of fictional residents of an Italian-American neighborhood in The Bronx in the late 1970s. The killer, David Berkowitz, his murders and the investigation are shown in the film, but the focus is on two young men from the neighborhood: Vinny (John Leguizamo), whose marriage is faltering due to his cheating, and Ritchie (Adrien Brody), Vinny's childhood friend who has embraced punk fashion and music.


title: Summer of Sam

text: The murder investigation and other contemporary events, such as the New York City blackout of 1977 and the New York Yankees' winning season, provide a backdrop to the stories of Vinny, Ritchie, their families and friends. The film was directed and co-produced by Spike Lee, who also co-wrote the film with Michael Imperioli and Victor Colicchio.


title: Summer of Sam

text: It is the summer of 1977, and New York City lives in fear of the ".44 Caliber Killer", who shoots young women and their male companions. The killer, David Berkowitz, later identifies himself as "Son of Sam" in a note left at a murder scene. Berkowitz lives in a messy apartment, where he is driven crazy by the barking of a neighbor's large black labrador, Harvey, the dog of Sam Carr, and has a vision of the dog directing him to kill.


title: Summer of Sam

text: In an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx (likely Morris Park, Throggs Neck, or Pelham Bay), hairdresser Vinny and his pretty wife Dionna go disco dancing at a local nightclub, where they meet Dionna's attractive cousin Chiara. Vinny offers to drive Chiara home while Dionna remains at the club. Vinny and Chiara then park on a residential street and have sex in the car. Son of Sam watches them but is scared off when the couple accidentally set off the car horn during sex and quickly drive away, embarrassed. After they leave, Son of Sam kills another couple who had parked behind Vinny. When Vinny picks up Dionna back at the club, she notices the smell of vaginal lubrication on his face and realizes he had sex with Chiara but does not let on that she knows.


title: Summer of Sam

text: On the drive home, Vinny notices police near the location where he had parked with Chiara and sees the bodies of the slain couple. The religious and guilty Vinny, realizing he could have been a victim, decides that God spared him in order to give him a chance to reform his ways and stop cheating on his wife. Although Vinny loves Dionna, their sex life is suffering because Vinny enjoys anal sex, "69" and other sex acts that he considers kinky, but he cannot bring himself to discuss or perform with his wife. He is also having an affair with Gloria, the owner of the hair salon where he works.


title: Summer of Sam

text: The next day, while Vinny is hanging out with neighborhood drug dealer Joey T and his friends, Vinny's old friend Ritchie, who has been away for some time, reappears, sporting a punk spiked hairdo and clothing and affecting a British accent. Vinny, Joey T, and the others dislike the change in Ritchie and he soon finds himself unwelcome in the neighborhood. Ruby, a promiscuous local girl, is attracted to Ritchie and the two begin a relationship. Unlike other men, Ritchie takes an interest in Ruby as a person, not just as a sexual outlet. She learns that he makes money by erotic dancing and prostituting himself at a gay theater but remains loyal to him and begins to dress in punk fashion herself.


title: Summer of Sam

text: As the Son of Sam killings continue, tension rises in the neighborhood. A local police detective asks the local mob boss to help him find the killer; Joey T and his friends also make a list of possible suspects, including Ritchie whom they regard as "a freak". Ritchie and Ruby invite Vinny and Dionna to come see their punk band perform at CBGB, but once there, Dionna feels intimidated by the punk crowd and refuses to go in. Vinny and Dionna instead go to Studio 54, where they are denied entry and finally end up at Plato's Retreat where they take drugs and participate in an orgy. Vinny becomes upset when he sees Dionna appearing to enjoy the experience of having sex with another man, even though he himself is having sex with other women. He berates Dionna in the car on the way home, causing her to get mad and reveal that she knows he cheated on her with Chiara. She storms off to stay at her father's house. Vinny begins to drink, uses drugs and makes a scene at Gloria's hair salon, causing her to angrily throw him out and then inform Dionna about their affair. Upon hearing from Gloria, Dionna leaves Vinny for good.


title: Summer of Sam

text: Joey T and his gang decide that the latest witness sketch of Son of Sam released by the police resembles Ritchie and attempt to track him down at CBGB. Joey persuades the unstable Vinny, who is high on drugs he has taken to dull the pain of his impending divorce, to help them lure Ritchie out of his house, since Vinny is the only local friend Ritchie still trusts. Unbeknownst to Vinny and his friends, the police have already arrested David Berkowitz, the real Son of Sam. Vinny goes to Ritchie's family home, where Ritchie and Ruby are packing up to leave town, and lures Ritchie out on the pretext of talking about his failing marriage. Once Ritchie is outside, Vinny warns Ritchie under his breath to run, but Ritchie does not heed the warning and is attacked and severely beaten by Joey T and his gang. Ritchie's stepfather, Eddie, emerges from the house brandishing his gun and rescues the badly injured Ritchie, telling the attackers that Ritchie is not the Son of Sam and that the TV news is reporting that the police have just arrested the real killer. Unable to face Ritchie, Vinny walks away.


title: Summer of Sam

text: The role of Dionna was originally written with Jennifer Esposito in mind. The role of Ruby was originally offered to Sarah Michelle Gellar. A cast reshuffle ended with Mira Sorvino as Dionna and Esposito as Ruby. Journalist Jimmy Breslin, to whom the real Son of Sam sent letters during the time of the murders, appears as himself introducing and closing the film. Phil Rizzuto appears in the film as the Yankees' broadcaster and boxer Evander Holyfield makes a brief appearance as a man in a riot.


title: Summer of Sam

text: The film was largely shot during the summer of 1998 and set in the Italian-American neighborhoods of Country Club, Morris Park and Throggs Neck sections of the Bronx, with some scenes filmed in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Although most of the Son of Sam murders actually took place in Queens, the double shooting that Vinny narrowly escapes has been called an accurate depiction of the April 1977 killing of Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani in the Bronx. Marie's Beauty Lounge, the salon where Vinny works, was a real salon on Morris Park Avenue, between Williamsbridge Road and Bronxdale Avenue. The real CBGB club was also used; the band L.E.S. Stitches shown playing there was a contemporary punk band from New York's Lower East Side.


title: Summer of Sam

text: Adrien Brody's nose was broken during the climactic fight scene in which his character Ritchie is brutally beaten by his friends. The sex orgy scene at Plato's Retreat included more explicit shots in the original cut but was edited after the MPAA threatened the film with an "NC-17" rating.


title: Summer of Sam

text: "Summer of Sam" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 1999, and was released in the United States on July 2. It received mixed reviews from critics. The film has an approval rating of 51% at Rotten Tomatoes based on 102 reviews, with a weighted average of 5.50/10. The site's consensus states: "Spike Lee offers intense visuals but his storytelling feels crowded and overambitious". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 out of 100 based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade D− on scale of A to F.


title: Summer of Sam

text: According to film academic R. Barton Palmer in 2011, it continues to be widely viewed as Spike Lee's most controversial film, "issuing a cynical appeal to trashy tastes", which has "prevented some critics from according it more than cursory consideration". Many critics objected to its frankly unromantic, starkly realistic (if hardly pornographic, in the usual sense) handling of sexual themes, as well as for its pervasive street language" and "what some saw as [Lee's] bitterly negative and even defamatory representations of white ethnic culture". Reviewing the film in 1999, Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" stated "Lee is a powerful filmmaker who certainly knows how to have an impact on an audience, but those who survive his ministrations are likely to wonder if in this case the battle was worth the bruises".


title: Summer of Sam

text: More positive was Todd McCarthy of "Variety", who thought "this is the closest Lee has yet come to Scorsese territory!" In the "Chicago Sun-Times", Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars and regarded the screenplay as more of "an analytical outsider's view" of provincial scapegoating rather than "the inside, autobiographical job of a Martin Scorsese film". In the spirit of Lee's best work, "Summer of Sam" "vibrates with fear, guilt and lust", Ebert wrote. "It's not about the killer, but about his victims—not those he murdered, but those whose overheated imaginations bloomed into a lynch mob mentality. There is a sequence near the end of the film that shows a side of human nature as ugly as it is familiar: the fever to find someone to blame and the need to blame someone who is different."


title: Stowe School

text: Stowe School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Stowe, England. It opened on 11 May 1923, initially with 99 schoolboys, and with J. F. Roxburgh as the first headmaster. The school is a member of the 18 member Rugby Group, the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, and the G30 Schools' Group. Originally for boys only, the school is now coeducational, with some ~550 boys and ~300 girls, with 837 students enrolled in the school as of September 2021.


title: Stowe School

text: Stowe charges up to £38,853 a year, (£12,951 per term, three terms per academic year for 2022). However the school provides bursaries and other means of financial assistance to admitted students. A typical Scholarship at Stowe is worth 5% of the School Fee.


title: Stowe School

text: The school has been based since its beginnings at Stowe House, formerly the country seat of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos. Along with many of the other buildings on the school's estate, the main house is now a Grade I Listed Building and is maintained by the Stowe House Preservation Trust.


title: Stowe School

text: Stowe School opened in 1923. Funding for the school came through the Rev. Percy Warrington and the Martyrs Memorial Trust. The school's first architect was Clough Williams-Ellis.


title: Stowe School

text: The first Headmaster was J. F. Roxburgh. He aimed to focus on the individual child and introduce them to beauty and learning; he wanted a civilised school founded on Christian values.


title: Stowe School

text: A Southern Railway "Schools Class" steam locomotive, No. 928, which was built in 1934 was named after the school, and is preserved at the Bluebell Railway in East Sussex.


title: Stowe School

text: In 2016, a "Daily Telegraph" investigator posing as a parent of a Russian pupil was told by the then school registrar that while pupils would always be expected to pass the entrance exam, it would help secure a place if a borderline child's parents were able to donate "about £100,000 or something like that."


title: Stowe School

text: There are 13 boarding houses: 8 boys' houses, 4 girls' houses and 1 mixed Sixth Form house. These boarding houses are mostly named after members of the family of Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. Each house has a number or letter assigned to it.


title: Stowe School

text: Former pupils of Stowe School are known as Old Stoics. Matthew Vaughn is currently the President of the Old Stoic Society. Old Stoics include:


title: Stowe School

text: The first recorded match on the school cricket ground came in 1928 when Stowe School played St Paul's School. Buckinghamshire played their first Minor Counties Championship match there in 1947, when the opponents were Berkshire. Between 1947 and 1982 the ground held five Minor Counties Championship matches, the last of which saw Buckinghamshire draw against Bedfordshire. The ground has also hosted a single MCCA Knockout Trophy match which saw Buckinghamshire play Bedfordshire.


title: Stowe School

text: The ground has also held a single List A match for Northamptonshire in the 2005 totesport League, against Gloucestershire. and has held fourteen Second XI fixtures for the Northamptonshire Second XI in the Second XI Championship and Second XI Trophy.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Sean Patrick Duffy (born October 3, 1971) is an American politician, prosecutor, former sports commentator and reality television personality who is currently a co-host of "The Bottom Line" on Fox Business, as well as a contributor on Fox News. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the U.S. representative for Wisconsin's 7th congressional district from 2011 to 2019.


title: Sean Duffy

text: He first gained fame as a cast member on "", 1998's "" and 2002's "", before going on to serve as district attorney of Ashland County, Wisconsin.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy was born on October 3, 1971, in Hayward, Wisconsin, the tenth of 11 children of Carol Ann (née Yackel) and Thomas Walter Duffy. Duffy has a marketing degree from St. Mary's University, and a J.D. degree from William Mitchell College of Law.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy started log rolling at age five and speed climbing (sprinting up 60 and 90 foot poles) at 13. He holds two speed-climbing titles.


title: Sean Duffy

text: In 1997, Duffy appeared on "", the sixth season of the MTV reality television show, and on "" in 1998, where he met his future wife Rachel Campos. Duffy later appeared on "", which aired in 2002. Both appeared in a filmed segment on 2008's "The Real World Awards Bash", while Duffy served as district attorney.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy has been an ESPN color commentator for televised competitions and in 2003 appeared as both a competitor and commentator on ESPN's Great Outdoor Games. He was named Badger State Games Honorary Athlete of the 2004 Winter Games.


title: Sean Duffy

text: In December 2022 Duffy and Dagen McDowell were named co-hosts of "The Bottom Line", a show on Fox Business scheduled to premiere on January 23, 2023.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy, a Republican, was appointed Ashland County District Attorney in 2002 by then Governor Scott McCallum, and was reelected unopposed in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. Upon assuming the office of district attorney, he succeeded Michael Gableman, a former justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.


title: Sean Duffy

text: On July 8, 2009, Duffy announced his campaign for Congress in Wisconsin's seventh congressional district. Duffy was considered an underdog in the race until May 2010 when 15-term incumbent Democratic Representative Dave Obey announced that he would not seek re-election. Following Obey's announcement, Democratic State Senator Julie Lassa joined the race.


title: Sean Duffy

text: On June 4, 2010, Duffy announced his resignation from the position of Ashland County District Attorney to focus on the congressional race. The resignation was effective three weeks later and Duffy returned to work in his father's law practice. He won the race on November 2, 2010, in a nationwide wave of Republicans being elected to Congress.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Different sources attribute his victory to his ten-month head start on Lassa's campaign, his grassroots organization and fundraising, his experience as a district attorney, and voter discontent with the economy.


title: Sean Duffy

text: In March 2011, Duffy was criticized when a video published by the Polk County Republicans, showing a public town hall-style meeting in his district, was picked up by media commentators. In the video, made in the wake of the passage of a controversial state bill which would have effectively frozen the salaries of state employees, Duffy was asked about whether he would be willing to cut his own $174,000 salary. Duffy responded that he would only be willing to do so as part of a general round of salary cuts for government employees, and insisted that he was "struggling" to get by, despite his salary being nearly three times the average for Wisconsin residents.


title: Sean Duffy

text: On December 22, 2011, Duffy and fellow GOP House freshman Rick Crawford (Arkansas), published an open letter to Speaker Boehner, urging the leader to allow the House to vote on the Senate's two-month tax cut extension compromise.


title: Sean Duffy

text: In 2013, Duffy and Democratic House member Michael Michaud (Maine) introduced a resolution calling for government action to ensure that people be provided with paper-based information along with electronic.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy supported President Donald Trump's 2017 executive order to impose a temporary ban on entry to the U.S. to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries. He stated that "President Trump is fulfilling a campaign promise to re-evaluate our visa vetting process so that the American people are safe from terrorism."


title: Sean Duffy

text: In January 2017, Duffy co-sponsored legislation that would end protection for grey wolves in the Endangered Species Act.


title: Sean Duffy

text: In February 2017, Duffy made controversial statements in an interview with CNN's Alisyn Camerota while discussing the topic of President Trump's immigration and travel ban, which focused on combating radical Islamist terrorists. When Camerota, referring to the Quebec City mosque shooting, asked why Trump made no public statement on the white terrorists who perpetrated that act, Duffy replied, "I don't know, there's a difference. You don't have a group like ISIS or al Qaeda that is inspiring people around the world to take up arms and kill innocents...That was a one off, Alisyn."


title: Sean Duffy

text: In July 2018, Duffy said that Europe, China, Canada and Mexico had committed "economic terrorism in a way" by placing retaliatory tariffs on the United States in response to tariffs enacted by the Trump administration.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy resigned his seat effective September 23, 2019, to care for a newborn daughter with a heart defect.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy proposed legislation to replace the director of the consumer watchdog group, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), with a five-person commission and removing the CFPB from Federal Reserve System oversight so that it "would go through the same funding process as other federal agencies." The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would have been renamed the Financial Product Safety Commission. The bill also intended to make overturning the decisions about regulations that the new commission made easier to do. The bill gave the commission more room to get rid of policies that Duffy believes jeopardize the safety of the US banking system.


title: Sean Duffy

text: In December 2015, Duffy introduced legislation to establish a five-person financial oversight board over Puerto Rico (with members appointed by the White House) in exchange for allowing public entities in Puerto Rico access to Chapter 9 restructuring.


title: Sean Duffy

text: The American Conservative Union gave him a 78% evaluation in 2017 and Americans for Prosperity gave him an 88% evaluation in 2019.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy served on the House Committee on Financial Services. He was appointed Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in November 2014, taking over from Patrick McHenry. He was also a member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government-Sponsored Enterprises. He also served on the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit and the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy is married to Rachel Campos-Duffy, a fellow alumna of "The Real World", and Fox News personality, whom he met when they were co-stars on "". They lived in Ashland, Wisconsin when Duffy was District Attorney for that county. They moved to Weston, a suburb of Wausau, Wisconsin, in late 2011, in order for Duffy to be closer to an airport for his weekly commute to Washington, D.C., where he spent three or four days a week.


title: Sean Duffy

text: As of August 2019, Duffy and his wife have eight children, and were expecting their ninth that October. On August 26, 2019, Duffy announced that because he and his wife learned that their ninth child would experience health complications, including a heart condition, he was resigning from Congress, effective September 23.


title: Sean Duffy

text: Duffy's nephew, Erik Johnson, is an American ice hockey defenseman and alternate captain for the Colorado Avalanche.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Dazzle camouflage, also known as razzle dazzle (in the U.S.) or dazzle painting, is a family of ship camouflage that was used extensively in World War I, and to a lesser extent in World War II and afterwards. Credited to the British marine artist Norman Wilkinson, though with a rejected prior claim by the zoologist John Graham Kerr, it consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colours interrupting and intersecting each other.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Unlike other forms of camouflage, the intention of dazzle is not to conceal but to make it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed, and heading. Norman Wilkinson explained in 1919 that he had intended dazzle primarily to mislead the enemy about a ship's course and so cause them to take up a poor firing position.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Dazzle was adopted by the Admiralty in the UK, and then by the United States Navy. Each ship's dazzle pattern was unique to avoid making classes of ships instantly recognisable to the enemy. The result was that a profusion of dazzle schemes was tried, and the evidence for their success was, at best, mixed. So many factors were involved that it was impossible to determine which were important, and whether any of the colour schemes were effective. Experiments were carried out on aircraft in both World Wars with little success.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Dazzle attracted the notice of artists such as Picasso, who claimed that Cubists like himself had invented it. Edward Wadsworth, who supervised the camouflaging of over 2,000 ships during the First World War, painted a series of canvases of dazzle ships after the war, based on his wartime work. Arthur Lismer similarly painted a series of dazzle ship canvases.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: At first glance, dazzle seems an unlikely form of camouflage, drawing attention to the ship rather than hiding it. The approach was developed after Allied navies were unable to develop effective means to hide ships in all weather conditions. The British zoologist John Graham Kerr proposed the application of camouflage to British warships in the First World War, outlining what he believed to be the applicable principle, disruptive camouflage, in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1914 explaining the goal was to confuse, not to conceal, by disrupting a ship's outline. Kerr compared the effect to that created by the patterns on a series of land animals, the giraffe, zebra and jaguar.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Taking up the zebra example, Kerr proposed that the vertical lines of ships' masts be disrupted with irregular white bands. Hiding these would make ships less conspicuous, and would "greatly increase the difficulty of accurate range finding". However, in the same letter, Kerr also called for countershading, the use of paint to obliterate self-shading and thus to flatten out the appearance of solid, recognisable shapes. For example, he proposed painting ships' guns grey on top, grading to white below, so the guns would disappear against a grey background.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Similarly, he advised painting shaded parts of the ship white, and brightly lit parts in grey, again with smooth grading between them, making shapes and structures invisible. Kerr was thus hoping to achieve both a measure of invisibility and a degree of confusion for the enemy using a rangefinder. Whether through this mixing of goals, or the Admiralty's skepticism about "any theory based upon the analogy of animals", the Admiralty claimed in July 1915 to have conducted "various trials" and decided to paint its ships in monotone grey, not adopting any of Kerr's suggestions. It had made up its mind, and all Kerr's subsequent letters achieved nothing.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: The American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer had developed a theory of camouflage based on countershading and disruptive coloration, which he had published in the controversial 1909 book "Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom". Seeing the opportunity to put his theory into service, Thayer wrote to Churchill in February 1915, proposing to camouflage submarines by countershading them like fish such as mackerel, and advocating painting ships white to make them invisible. His ideas were considered by the Admiralty, but rejected along with Kerr's proposals as being "freak methods of painting ships ... of academic interest but not of practical advantage".


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: The Admiralty noted that the required camouflage would vary depending on the light, the changing colours of sea and sky, the time of day, and the angle of the sun. Thayer made repeated and desperate efforts to persuade the authorities, and in November 1915 travelled to England where he gave demonstrations of his theory around the country. He had a warm welcome from Kerr in Glasgow, and was so enthused by this show of support that he avoided meeting the War Office, who he had been intending to win over, and instead sailed home, continuing to write ineffective letters to the British and American authorities.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: The marine artist and Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officer Norman Wilkinson, agreed with Kerr that dazzle's aim was confusion rather than concealment, but disagreed about the type of confusion to be sown in the enemy's mind. What Wilkinson wanted to do was to make it difficult for an enemy to estimate a ship's type, size, speed, and heading, and thereby confuse enemy ship commanders into taking mistaken or poor firing positions. An observer would find it difficult to know exactly whether the stern or the bow was in view; and it would be correspondingly difficult to estimate whether the observed vessel was moving towards or away from the observer's position.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Wilkinson advocated "masses of strongly contrasted colour" to confuse the enemy about a ship's heading. Thus, while dazzle, in some lighting conditions or at close ranges, might actually increase a ship's visibility, the conspicuous patterns would obscure the outlines of the ship's hull (though admittedly not the superstructure), disguising the ship's correct heading and making it harder to hit.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Dazzle was created in response to an extreme need, and hosted by an organisation, the Admiralty, which had already rejected an approach supported by scientific theory: Kerr's proposal to use "parti-colouring" based on the known camouflage methods of disruptive coloration and countershading. This was dropped in favour of an admittedly non-scientific approach, led by the socially well-connected Wilkinson. Kerr's explanations of the principles were clear, logical, and based on years of study, while Wilkinson's were simple and inspirational, based on an artist's perception. The decision was likely because the Admiralty felt comfortable with Wilkinson, in sharp contrast to their awkward relationship with the stubborn and pedantic Kerr.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Wilkinson claimed not to have known of the zoological theories of camouflage of Kerr and Thayer, admitting only to having heard of the "old invisibility-idea" from Roman times.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: In 1973, the naval museum curator Robert F. Sumrall (following Kerr) suggested a mechanism by which dazzle camouflage may have sown the kind of confusion that Wilkinson had intended for it. Coincidence rangefinders used for naval artillery had an optical mechanism, operated by a human to compute the range. The operator adjusted the mechanism until the two half-images of the target lined up in a complete picture. Dazzle, Sumrall argued, was intended to make that hard, as clashing patterns looked abnormal even when the two halves were aligned, something that became more important when submarine periscopes included such rangefinders. Patterns sometimes also included a false bow wave to make it difficult for an enemy to estimate the ship's speed.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: The historian Sam Willis argued that since Wilkinson knew it was impossible to make a ship invisible with paint, the "extreme opposite" was the answer, using conspicuous shapes and violent colour contrasts to confuse enemy submarine commanders. Willis pointed out, using the dazzle scheme as an example, that different mechanisms could have been at work. The contradictory patterns on the ship's funnels could imply the ship was on a different heading (as Wilkinson had said). The curve on the hull below the front funnel could seem to be a false bow wave, creating a misleading impression of the ship's speed. And the striped patterns at bow and stern could create confusion about which end of the ship was which.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: In 2011, the scientist Nicholas E. Scott-Samuel and colleagues presented evidence using moving patterns on a computer that human perception of speed is distorted by dazzle patterns. However, the speeds required for motion dazzle are much larger than were available to First World War ships: Scott-Samuel notes that the targets in the experiment would correspond to a dazzle-patterned Land Rover vehicle at a range of , travelling at . If such a dazzling target causes a 7% confusion in the observed speed, a rocket propelled grenade travelling that distance in half a second would strike from the intended aiming point, or 7% of the distance moved by the target. This might be enough to save lives in the dazzle-patterned vehicle, and perhaps to cause the missile to miss entirely.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: In 1914, Kerr persuaded the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, to adopt a form of military camouflage which he called "parti-colouring". He argued both for countershading (following the American artist Abbott Thayer), and for disruptive coloration, both as used by animals. A general order to the British fleet issued on 10 November 1914 advocated use of Kerr's approach. It was applied in various ways to British warships such as , where officers noted approvingly that the pattern "increased difficulty of accurate range finding". However, following Churchill's departure from the Admiralty, the Royal Navy reverted to plain grey paint schemes, informing Kerr in July 1915 that "various trials had been undertaken and that the range of conditions of light and surroundings rendered it necessary to modify considerably any theory based upon the analogy of [the colours and patterns of] animals".


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: The British Army inaugurated its Camouflage Section for land use at the end of 1916. At sea in 1917, heavy losses of merchant ships to Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare campaign led to new desire for camouflage. The marine painter Norman Wilkinson promoted a system of stripes and broken lines "to distort the external shape by violent colour contrasts" and confuse the enemy about the speed and dimensions of a ship.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Wilkinson, then a lieutenant commander on Royal Navy patrol duty, implemented the precursor of "dazzle" beginning with the merchantman SS "Industry". Wilkinson was put in charge of a camouflage unit which used the technique on large groups of merchant ships. Over 4000 British merchant ships were painted in what came to be known as "dazzle camouflage"; dazzle was also applied to some 400 naval vessels, starting in August 1917.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: All British patterns were different, first tested on small wooden models viewed through a periscope in a studio. Most of the model designs were painted by women from London's Royal Academy of Arts. A foreman then scaled up their designs for the real thing. Painters, however, were not alone in the project. Creative people including sculptors, artists, and set designers designed camouflage.


title: Dazzle camouflage

text: Wilkinson's dazzle camouflage was accepted by the Admiralty, even without practical visual assessment protocols for improving performance by modifying designs and colours. The dazzle camouflage strategy was adopted by other navies. This led to more scientific studies of colour options which might enhance camouflage effectiveness.