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.

DJ Paige Railstone

DJ Paige Railstone is an underground DJ and singer/songwriter who became popular in 2003. Her musical style includes rock, country, alternative, and hip-hop, and she plays guitar, keyboard, and piano. But she has never been on TV or in a movie, and she refuses to play in public.

DJ Paige Railstone's mashup of Verve and Eminem

DJ Paige Railstone is not real.

There is a website called 20Q.net which asks twenty questions, then guesses what you were thinking of. If 20Q can’t guess, then it asks you what you were thinking of, and your answers are stored and used to enlarge the database. The Nerdfighters wondered if they could make up a person and have 20Q guess correctly.

So they invented DJ Paige Railstone. Paige is the Nerdfighter who came up with the idea to trick 20Q. Railstone anagrams to “is not real.” A list was made of everything about DJ Paige Railstone, and distributed online to all Nerdfighters. They played 20Q, and eventually, tricked the game.

 There is something inherently fun about tricking something, in figuring it out. The Nerdfighters collectively did this to the game 20Q. For them, the game was to trick the game. They didn’t play the game the way it was intended – they made their own game out of it. This is an example of how everything can be made into a game, depending on the view of the people playing.

I wonder if the makers of 20Q anticipated something like this when they built it.

Audiosurf

First there was surfing. Then there was Surfing USA (Beach Boys). Then we could surf the radio, then the TV, then the Internet. Now we can Audiosurf.

Audiosurf.com is a website based around a game. To play, you upload a song you like, then Audiosurf turns the song into a playable game level.

The game is very simple. You are in a glider, going along a colorful track at a speed relative to your song. As the track twists with the music, you try to catch colored blocks and avoid grey ones. The level intensifies as the song intensifies, and it gets easier when the song gets lighter.

Audiosurf is a fun twist to games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. What Audiosurf has over them is that it allows you to use any song you want.

Audiosurf gameplay to I Fight Dragons' The Faster The Treadmill

iTunes gives you a thirty second sample of a song. But who can tell from thirty seconds if it’s a song they want to buy? iTunes is not the place to find new music, and it definitely does not help people who are just starting out.

Bandcamp is the place for that. Their philosophy is: you can’t sell your music if nobody has heard it. The header from their website gives a great description: “Viral distribution. We give your fans drop dead easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you.”

On Bandcamp, everything is free. You enter your username, email, and bandname. Then you upload songs. Every song can be listened to in full, in high quality, for free. Then, you can sell your songs in any format (Bandcamp does it for you) at whatever price you want. Bandcamp makes spreading and selling your songs very simple.

This is definitely a great resource for independent musicians trying to get into the music industry. Every other creative medium has a way of getting itself out: vloggers have YouTube; bloggers have Tumblr, Blogspot, etc.; photographers have Flickr; artists have Deviantart… Musicians didn’t have anything until Bandcamp.

IMeem

I would just like to take a moment to mourn the loss of a great friend… *ahem* I mean website…

IMeem was kind to all. It gave everyone the opportunity to listen to anything that anyone else uploaded. It didn’t discriminate; it didn’t force you to have a membership. Its music search engine was fabulous, and its interface was sleek. IMeem was the best free online music player around.

But then it sold out to Myspace, and Myspace changed everything. The sleek interface was replaced by Myspace’s slow, clunky one. Songs are no longer uploaded from everywhere, but gathered from Myspace music players – that means no more rare songs, no more covers. The playlists are supposed to be up in a few days, but who knows what’s changed about them.

Why did IMeem sell out? It had a good thing going. It was becoming big. It could have made it on its own. Why did it sell out so soon? Oh IMeem, didn’t you know? The way to sell a website is to wait until it becomes big enough to stand alone. Wait until it is popular enough that when you sell it, nothing will change. And if you were forcdd to sell out due to copyright violations, you should have known better.

Oh, IMeem. You were a great website. You are already missed.

VidCon

John and Hank Green sure are busy – but they’re professional bloggers, so this is what they do.

This year, they are creating a brand new conference for people who are big on YouTube. It’s called VidCon. It will be held in Los Angeles in January 2010. The conference costs $40 per night and runs for three nights. Lots of the top YouTubers are already confirmed on attendance.

New Media is about new things in the world that are influenced by new technology. Five years ago, a conference based on YouTube would have sounded crazy. But now that YouTube is as huge as it is, and since it has had huge effects on some peoples’ lives, a conference about it seems like a great idea. This is what frequently happens in New Media – things change so quickly that within just a few years, an idea can sound completely stupid and then completely brilliant. A conference about YouTube is one of those things.

Wes Anderson / Style

Wes Anderson is the director of three of my favorite movies – Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited. I can always tell when I’m watching a Wes Anderson film because has his own very distinctive style.

1. Most of the shots are extremely wide-angle, showing the barrel distortion from the lens.

2. Most of the shots have a peculiar symmetry.

3. The camera’s movements (when it even moves at all) are very smooth.

4. Every movie has its own color scheme. This color scheme repeats in every scene, all throughout the movie.

It is always a good idea to have a distinctive style (or two, if you’re like Nate Williams). Being consistent with yourself and following the rules of your own design style can help you become more recognized – this helps when looking for jobs or when looking to become well known. All of the great artists (both centuries ago and now) have their own distinct styles. And since film is an art form, each director should have his own distinct style too.

What I love about Wes Anderson’s films is that his style is absurdly recognizable. His style is tremendously different from typical Hollywood films and even from other independent films. His style is by far the most distinctive in the industry right now.

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.

Julia Nunes / Ben Folds

People tend to separate the internet from the outside world. Cyberspace is seen as a bit of life that is not an actual part of life. But sometimes the internet affects the real world in huge ways.

YouTube musician Julia Nunes was a sensation in herself, but when she posted a cover to the Ben Folds song Gone, a big thing happened. The song was a big hit, and Ben Folds was so impressed by it – the cover and her music – that he invited her to go on tour with him. Ben Folds is Julia Nunes’ favorite musician.

There was no contest or competition. YouTube was the only thing in play. Julia Nunes received this awesome opportunity because YouTube made the connection possible.

Julia Nunes' videosong cover of Gone by Ben Folds.

 Julia Nunes performing Gone with Ben Folds

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.

Project For Awesome / Good vs. Bad of the Internet

On December Seventeenth, Youtubers are taking over YouTube... for charity.

Inspired by the Vlogbrothers, December Seventeenth is the day of the Project for Awesome. On this day, millions of YouTubers, most of whom are nerdfighters or who associate with nerdfighters, post videos about charities. They all use the same symbol in their descriptions. Then everyone involved rates everyone else's videos with five stars. This accomplishes two things: it breaks YouTube's algorithms, which is fun; and it makes people aware of many good charities.

One thing that always seems to be true about everything is that there is a bad side and a good side (this concept is similar to the idea of "looking on the bright side" except that I am more cynical and creating large groupings of events and ideas). In this example, The Project for Awesome is the good side of YouTube. The bad side of YouTube is the idiocracy and vulgarity of some of its content. Every time a new internet site is made, it can either be good (and useful) or bad (and stupid). Twitter is working itself out right now. Sometimes Twitter is a stupid means of hyper-individualism. But other times, Twitter is a great resource for instant communication. Twitter can be used well if people decide to do so. Everything can either be good or bad, and that identity is always changeable.

The Tracey Fragments

Sometimes life is a little bit broken.

In the movie The Tracey Fragments, which is based on a book, Ellen Page plays a depressed, mixed up teenager. In the film, she is looking for her younger brother, whom she has hypnotized into believing he is a dog. This movie is bizarre and depressing, but its editing is incredibly noteworthy.

Most movies show you one thing at a time, but The Tracey Fragments is not like most movies. The stage is fragmented, showing bits and pieces of clips at a time.

The entire movie looks like this, and I think that the fragmented clips help add to the movie's main theme. Tracey is a fragmented girl, a little bit crazy, and the editing helps show that. Also, having a film be split into pieces lets more things be shown at once, and it gives the final piece more replay-ability. You can't watch the whole screen at once. You have to move your eyes around, deciding which spot is best. It's almost like a puzzle.

Something like this would have never been able to be done with film. Having the film be digital is the only way that a stage can be split into so many fragments at the same time. But even still, this must have been a terribly difficult movie to edit.