Video DSLR's / Waiting

Usually, DSLR’s only shoot still images. But recently, they’ve started shooting videos too. The Canon 5D Mark II is so far the best – it shoots HD video, with full color and exposure control, and it lets you zoom and focus while shooting. It’s so good, in fact, that independent filmmakers are using it to shoot films.

The only problem, though, is that the audio is weak. It only has one input, so if you want high quality or surround audio, you have to use a separate audio recording system. Plus, it’s a very expensive camera.

It’s tempting to buy one right now, just because the idea of having two in one is so much fun. But the quality of the recording isn’t good enough yet. This is still a brand new medium, and it needs to improve a little bit first. It’s still in its “beta” stage. Sometimes it is better to wait for a new gadget to improve than to buy it when it’s brand new. Otherwise, you get stuck spending a lot of money before you get the item you really want.

LaBlogotheque

It is difficult to connect to your audience so much that they really feel like they are there, in the room. But LaBlogotheque has this mastered.

LaBlogotheque:

luh-BLOG-oh-THEEK

LaBlogotheque is a French group who records sessions with top indie musicians. But they don’t record the musicians performing live shows, they record them performing on the street – or on the subway, or in abandoned buildings, or in buildings with interesting architecture, or in front of very small groups of people…

LaBlogotheque captures musicians in a raw atmosphere, with a raw look. The on-the-street format forces the musicians to break the music down to just its basics – its roots – and perform it simply and from the heart.

LaBlogotheque’s shows capture this by employing recording and editing methods that match the raw feeling. The footage is edited into simple, deep colors – usually a red, blue-green, or yellow, with a film-like level of high contrast. This keeps the film looking messy and unready. This keeps the shows feeling close-to-home.

What LaBlogotheque is best at is capturing a soulful atmosphere and portraying it to their audience. By absorbing the colors, the sounds, and the events of the videos, the audience is able to feel at home with the musicians. The video’s viewer feels like the musicians are letting them hear a secret. LaBlogotheque does a great job of presenting it.

LaBlogotheque’s shows are available on YouTube or on their website.

Andrew Bird / Matching vs. Coordinating

Andrew Bird’s music video for his song Lull is fully animated. But it isn’t animated in a cartoon-like style. It looks like moving bits of paper. Everything is hand-drawn in actuality, but the pieces were moved around digitally – not by stop-motion.

I love this disconnection of styles. Usually, something that exists outside of a computer – something tangible, like a piece of paper – will be animated in a primarily non-digital manner (stop-motion, clay-mation, etc.). And conversely, digital pieces will be animated digitally. But in this video, physical pieces are digitally animated – this is atypical.

This is something like the idea of mix-and-match. Where originally, one thing matches with another thing, a new thing can be matched with the first in a way that coordinates. The difference between matching and coordinating is an important concept to understand in digital media. Mixing and matching allows for so many more options of styles, and for so many more outcomes.

Wait For The Summer - Yeasayer

Yeasayer's video for their song Wait For The Summer is very well-done and interesting. It pulls along a theme of apples and life - its beginning and end - as it explores the seasons and time. It explores the ideas of life through the apples, through the beetles scurrying around, and through the layering of silhouetted humans. They discovered that human silhouettes, when layered on top of each other, can create different shapes. The whole video is very psychedelic, which matches with the sound of the song.



The song itself is fast-paced, but the video moves along fairly slowly. But there are so many details in the video that it works nicely in keeping with the song. The video really works to accentuate the themes of the song.

Kids - MGMT

In January of 2008, a music video for the song Kids by MGMT was posted to YouTube by user jsalmon. It involved a boy and a girl, faces painted, dancing to the song, and clips from old shows of people dancing.

 

A few months later, in April, jsalmon was contacted by Ray Tintori, who has directed several official videos for MGMT. Tintori invited him and his two actors to be in the official video for MGMT's song Electric Feel.



Jsalmon's video has received more views so far than MGMT's own official video for Kids (which was released in 2009), and it is the first to show up in searches for the song. It's crazy how huge this video has become, and even more crazy what came out of it. The Internet is the best place to become well known for doing something awesome, because it is the fastest. We truly have the setup for Andy Warhol's "fifteen minutes of fame."

Exodus Damage - John Vanderslice

John Vanderslice's song Exodus Damage has a very good video. It was filmed with old film video cameras, and it uses time-lapses and also occasional still film shots. It tells a mysterious story that follows a young man (it looks as though it was in the 1990's), roaming around with his iconic Leica, taking photos of large buildings.



The old style of filming goes nicely with the sound of the song. Both the video and the song are very crisp - they have the same feel. And the look of the video clips (and the occasional still photos) - lots of dark black colors against moody colors - emphasizes the darkness of the lyrics. The song is full of creepy, dark things, but masked with a bright melody. The look of the video really enhances that.

Truth or Fail

YouTube has a gameshow. It's called Truth or Fail.

The way Truth or Fail works:
Each week, a famous YouTuber posts a video to the truthorfail account, which is run by none other than John and Hank Green.
The video contains two "facts", one of which is the truth, one of which is not the truth. You click on the one that you think is true, and it links you to another YouTube video.
If you picked the Truth, you are congratulated and told more about the trivia you picked.
If you Fail, then you are booed and again told more about the trivia option you picked.
Then the show continues, and you must pick the fact you think is True again.
This goes on for five rounds.


Beard Trivia with the Wheezy Waiter.

Truth or Fail is an interesting way to make a game on the internet, and more specifically, YouTube. It uses the hyperlink capabilities that the YouTube has (through annotations) to link you through a sequence of videos specific to your choosing. It is much like the choose-your-path books of the 1990's in this way. But this makes you to think about a question being asked, rather than asking you to choose a path. Something like this could, of course, be made in book-form. But having it in an online version is just a later evolution of this choose-your-path idea.

Truth or Fail also has a website that has links to all the videos.

Is This Tom?

John Green has created a new type of storytelling. He takes a conventionally written story and masks it behind riddles, which can be found at the isthistom YouTube channel.


The first video. I've only gotten halfway through the riddle.

The channel is run by Alexander Basalyga, the same man who created the riddle site thisisnottom.com. On YouTube, he posts a video-riddle every week. The video, like Thisisnottom.com, leads you through a series of riddles, and it finally ends with a book chapter by John Green. The YouTube riddle is an even further way to develop the riddle, because it opens up the ability to play with moving images and sounds.

John writes about a girl called YFN, or Your Faithful Narrator, since she has no idea of her identity. She is quite a messed up girl, as it seems. And her story, if it were real – which it may or may not be – is a strange one. The book is non-text-searchable, so don’t bother even trying. But there are hints and spoilers on the book forum. John gives the story behind the story.

Sufjan Stevens: The BQE

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about how Flickr user Ettubrute was using his still camera as a way of making interesting films. This post is about what Sufjan Stevens did in his film The BQE.

Using a very old film video camera, Sufjan made a partially documentary-style film about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, but he did it in a very interesting way. Instead of showing just one screen of footage, he showed three, back to back. Sometimes the images connected, sometimes they didn't. According to Sufjan, the intent of the film is to give an interesting point of view of a part of Brooklyn that he loves, and to develop his photographic eye.

He did exactly that. The film transitions from being mostly photograph-like into a raging geometric maze. He used his video camera to create time-lapsed scenes. But instead of showing them simply as what they were, he mirrored them in the three-across format to turn them into something else.

Unfortunately, the clip with the mirrored videos is no longer available. This is a clip from a different part of the film that uses the three-across format to play on a theme.

ⓒ Asthmatic Kitty Records and Sufjan Stevens. I do not own this.

This is a very interesting presentation, because it is technically and literally a film. But it is set up as photography. In a way, this is a backwards approach to what Ettubrute did. But both accomplish similar things: merging photography and film interestingly.

One thing that Sufjan has over Ettubrute is his incorporation of sound. Sufjan designed the score of the film himself, so it is intended to go with it perfectly. And it does. It goes up and down in intensity and changes at all the right points, making his film even more rhythmic than the patterns of traffic already were. It sounds curious in parts and strong in others.

I've Got Nothing

During the past three months, four YouTubers got together and did something awesome. Jimmy0010, JohnnyDurham19, nerimon, and charlieissocoollike produced a song called "I've Got Nothing" under the name Chartjackers. All of the money made from the singles goes to the UK charity Children In Need. The song was released on November 9, and is only available on iTunes. Their goal is to make it to number 1 in the UK iTunes charts in 10 weeks.

music video, with introduction by charlieissocoollike:


The song was produced by the four YouTubers already mentioned, but it was written and performed by other YouTubers. People submitted lyrical suggestions, then the best was picked. Then the Chartjackers asked for audition submissions, also by YouTube. The best were chosen, and finals were held to determine the two who would sing.

BBC Switch did five minute documentaries each week on Chartjackers' progress and a thirty minute special at the end, which can all be viewed here. The song is currently number 36 in the UK iTunes charts.

This is an incredible example of the power of the internet as a collaborative space. There is no way this song could have been made if it weren't for the very many YouTubers who contributed, and it is because of the amount of contributions that the song is so good, albeit cheesy. Further, it is because of the massive following of these four YouTubers that the song is actually accomplishing its goal. This really just speaks of the power in numbers, and how that power is being applied through the global community of the internet.

Ettubrute / Flickr Videos / Uses of Technology

A little bit ago, Flickr began to allow videos to be posted. While many people have taken this as an alternative to YouTube, others take it as a furthrance of photography. 

 

Glowing Cities Under a Nighttime Sky

User Ettubrute has taken lots of still photos of the window-view of a plane ride and put them all together in smooth stop-motion. A similar effect could have been done if he had taken footage of the entire trip and sped it up. But it is more interesting that he did this with a camera, because this is not how still cameras are usually used.

There are two conflicting theories about the nature of technology usage. One is that technology will always be used how it is intended to be used, and the other is that the users of technology will use it however they want and possibly create new ways of using it. I side with the second theory.

People like Ettubrute like to redefine things, and as technology advances, the old things get redefined very quickly. Ettubrute could have used a video camera, but he used a still camera instead, and it shows his manipulation of the medium in a much more thoughtful way. I think that the subtle pauses between photos really add to the effect of the video. Combined with the piecey music, the style of photography gives the video an ethereal feel. If Ettubrute had used a video camera, this would not have been the case.

Ettubrute uses this style for many videos. The following is also enhanced by the fact that it is done with a still camera instead of a video camera.

Lawnchairs between Fall and Winter

vlogbrothers/vlogging

"Are you from YouTube?" asks a boy.

"Are you wearing a disguise?" says the boy's little brother.

John Green is the author of three bestselling young adult novels: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. He lives in Indiana.

Hank Green is the founder of EcoGeek, a website about environmental technology; he is also a musician and the founder of DFTBA Records, which works with famous YouTube musicians. He lives in Montana.

John and Hank Green are brothers who needed some way to stay in contact with each other. So two years ago, they began a YouTube account and called it vlogbrothers. They created a challenge called Brotherhood 2.0: their challenge was to create a vlog every day for a year in response to each other and to keep it under four minutes. During that year, they were forbidden to communicate with each other textually. If one failed to post a vlog, then the other would choose a punishment for him. This is still the basic format they use, although they don't post every day anymore, and they have added a few extra elements. John does Question Tuesdays, and Hank does song Wednesdays.

first Brotherhood 2.0 vlog, in which Hank explains the rules:

last Brotherhood 2.0 vlog, in which John discusses siblinghood and nerdfighteria:

most recent vlog, in which Hank discusses what he is thankful for:

I think that vlogging is a great way to stay in contact with people. Now that we have the technology to communicate via video, and now that it is convenient, we should use it. Video, as a medium, goes so much farther than photography as a means of portraying information and memories. Vlogging back and forth is a great way to share those memories with someone you love.

CNN's Hologram

Last January, CNN brought two live guests into their studio by hologram. Yes, that's right. By hologram. Live. This incredible technology, which has been dreamed of for so many years (think back to Star Wars and Star Trek), is finally coming about.

This is how holograms work.

This technology is still very new and is still very much being developed, but the fact that it works and was available for CNN to use incredible.
It seems like there has been almost a race to get holograms out. It is something that people have been trying to achieve since it was first imagined. It's taken a long time, but we finally have the capability.

Of course, it's nowhere near ready for commercial use. Live holograms take too much equipment and too much space to create. Although the technology is stunning, there is not much we can do with it right now.

But in a few years, it will be much better. These scientists will keep working to develop hologram capability that can be bought for a high price by small number of consumers. Then, they will keep working, Capitalistic competition will kick in, and holograms will improve and be ready for the general consumer.

It's incredible to see how quickly the future is arriving. I remember so well wishing holograms were real when I was a kid. Now, they are real, and I'm still pretty much a kid.