August 2011
53 posts
WatchDistilled Happiness in ‘Hello, I Like You’
This short animation seeks to convey one simple thing: happiness. Commissioned by the F5 Festival, it was created through a variety of animation techniques by Mixtape Club, also known as Michelle Higa, Chris Smith, and Jesse Casey.
WatchHow Hurricanes Are Named
A two-minute explanation of why the next Katrina will be named … Katia. Created by Jeremiah Warren.
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‘Compressed 02’ Explores Cinematic Properties of Ferrofluid and Soap
Kim Pimmel is a designer, filmmaker, and inventor whose Compressed series taps the science of magnetism, capillary action, and fluid dynamics to create gorgeous cinematic time-lapse videos that look out of this world. This video transforms ordinary soap and water into an ominous, alien bubblescape.
Ferrofluid...
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The Glamorous Past and Desolate Present of ‘America’s Dead Sea’
The Salton Sea was once a tourist destination, a “Palm Springs with water.” Now the largest lake in California is an environmental crisis; the water is toxic and the surrounding area abandoned. Photojournalist and filmmaker Jim Lo Scalzo contrasts these two visions, layering archival footage of the...
WatchJurassic Park-Inspired ‘Raptor’
Created by Tal Moskovich, this short film uses stop-motion animation, infographics, and plastic dinosaur toys to illustrate the scene in Jurassic Park in which velociraptors are described for the first time.
(via Motionographer)
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NASA Revisits Satellite Images of Hurricane Katrina
Satellite imaging from August, 2005, reveals the size and strength of Hurricane Katrina in this short video put together by NASA in 2010.
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Directed by John Ford, this Academy Award-winning documentary follows the battle with footage shot by Navy cameramen. Ford served in the U.S. Navy as a commander and documentary filmmaker during the war, and in this excerpt he was actually wounded by enemy fire while filming. He describes the experience in an interview with a Navy historian:
By this time the attack had started...
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A 1992 Look at Steve Jobs and the Birth of Apple
The BBC and WGBH Boston co-produced a documentary series, The Machine that Changed the World, in 1992. This excerpt follows the meteoric rise of Apple, begining with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak selling circuit boards at a 1976 convention for computer hobbyists. At one point, Wozniak reflects on Jobs:
I was not designing a computer with...
WatchHurricane Irene’s Terrifying Scale as Seen From Space
This excerpt of a video from the International Space Station reveals the unbelievable size of Hurricane Irene as it approaches the eastern coast of the U.S. This video was taken from 230 miles above Earth on August 24th, 2011.
WatchHurricane nothing! This music vid for PEPEPIANO by Harrys is all summer sunshine.
Harrys: We wanted to create the effect that occurs when you hang pictures on a wall in a very light-filled summer house — they bleach and fade yet take on a certain beautiful and ghostly quality. We shot the video in natural summer light and didn’t use any additional lighting sources.
Read more at...
Watch Beautiful Digital Rendering of the New 9/11 Memorial and World Trade Center
This architectural animation reveals the finished 9/11 Memorial and Museum, as well as the new World Trade Center, shining in golden afternoon light. The aerial perspective flies over the Manhattan skyline and the five skyscrapers that will surround the memorial. Two reflecting pools fill the footprints of the Twin...
WatchTime-Lapse of 9/11 Memorial Construction 2004-2011
This one-minute time-lapse video documents the construction of the 9/11 Memorial over the course of 2004 to 2011. In it, you can see the twin square pools being constructed inside the footprints of the towers, and a sustainable “forest” spring up around them.
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Exclusive Video: A Look at the National Cathedral’s Earthquake Damage
Joe Alonso, Head Mason of the National Cathedral, assesses the structural damage sustained by the national landmark during the the 5.9 magnitude Virginia earthquake.
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WatchArtists Find Beauty in an Environmental Disaster in ‘One Plastic Beach’
“The opposite of beauty is not ugly. The opposite of beauty is indifference. And we’re trying not to be indifferent about this.”
This charming short documentary follows two artists, Richard Lang and Judith Selby Lang, as they salvage washed-up pieces of plastic from a Northern California ...
WatchAnalogue Is the New Digital in ‘ADA,’ and Interactive Installation
Best party balloon ever.
ADA is an “analogue interactive installation” made of a giant ball filled with helium, covered in charcoal spikes. As the ball drifts around the space, charcoal marks accumulate on the walls. Artist Karina Smigla-Bobinski describes her inspiration in The Atlantic.
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Beautiful New Time-Lapse Video of Earth from Space
This weekend, astronaut Ron Garan tweeted that he was working on a time-lapse photography project and then released a “preview” of the results. That video is embedded above. Maybe it’s not as worldchanging as the original Whole Earth photo, but it’s dynamic and gorgeous.
WatchFirst Drafts: How Sam Abell Makes a Photograph, produced by Alex Hoyt and filmed and edited by Ross McDermott
Since 1970, Sam Abell has worked as a documentary photographer, shooting primarily for National Geographic. Here, in an exclusive video interview, he recounts his year-long quest to find the perfect image of bison skulls for an essay on American painter Charles M. Russell.
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Attack of the Robobees! A Mechanical Bee Tests Its Wings
Honey bees do a little movement called the waggle dance to alert each other to new food sources. Can a robot learn the boogie?
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WatchWWII: U.S. Office of War Information Explains ‘Japanese Relocation’ (1943)
This propaganda film produced by the U.S. government in 1943 explains the reasoning behind the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. It also tries to put a positive spin on the internment camps created for these displaced communities. For photographs of the internment of Japanese Americans,...
WatchProjection Mapping of BELL’s Face in Music Video for ‘Chase No Face’
Projection mapping meets hacking in this awesome music video for BELL. Artist Zach Lieberman talks about the making of the video and … cyborgs in this interview:
Our day-to-day physical and mental lives are increasingly infused with technology and digital media. How long do we have before we are all...
WatchNews Cycle Time-Lapse: BBC.com vs. NYTimes.com
Phillip Mendonça-Vieira set up a program to take regular screengrabs of the homepages of BBC.com and NYTimes.com from September 2010 to July 2011, and created a time-lapse video to compare the two. This excerpt from the full video shows the two pages simultaneously as they covered the events of the Egyptian revolution from January 27th to...
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Watch10 Awesome Videos of Actual Robots Dancing
Yep. Click through for all 10. In this clip, the ATHLETE hexapod moon rover gets its groove on, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.
WatchVimeo Video School’s Behind the Glass: Depth of Field
Vincent Laforet, the first filmmaker to release a short film shot on the 5D, and Blake Whitman, Vimeo’s VP of Creative Development, dress up as a viking and an astronaut, respectively, to demonstrate different shots and tell you everything you ever wanted to know about lenses but were afraid to ask…
Read/watch more at...
WatchFirst Snowfall in Wellington, New Zealand in 30 Years
On August 15th, blizzards brought snow to Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand, for the first time in 30 years. Filmmaker Ro Tierney captured the exuberance of the moment.
WatchMusic Video for ‘Some Hungry Guy’ Breathes Life Into Little Nemo Comics
Filmmaker Benjamin Ahr Harrison and singer-songwriter Jascha Hoffman created this music video by animating still images from Winsor McCay’s famous Little Nemo comic strip, which is now in the public domain. In an interview with The Atlantic, they explain how they did it…
WatchWinsor McCay’s First Animation, ‘Little Nemo’ (1911)
An excerpt from this silent short film dramatizes famous cartoonist Winsor McCay’s first foray into moving images. In this excerpt, we see the artist working in the midst of comically huge stacks of paper and barrels of ink before screening the final short animation for his “artist friends.” The cartoon...
WatchCats on the French Riviera in ‘Bela: L’Homme Chat’
Béla, known as ‘the Cat Man’ travels throughout the south of France to perform on the street with his three adorable cats. This candy-colored documentary follows him for a day as he performs on the French Riviera.
WatchWhat Makes Us Tick (1952)
“Common stock investments have helped to make our country prosperous and powerful. Owning a share in American industry is like owning a share in the future of our nation.” A 1952 propaganda cartoon produced by the New York Stock Exchange promotes the stock market.
WatchKagemu’s ‘Black Sun’ Synchronizes Projected Video With Japanese Dance
Black Sun is a meticulously choreographed projection of motiongraphics onto dance, combining traditional and modern elements of Japanese culture and martial arts. Artist Nobuyuki Hanabusa and dancer Katsumi Sakakura, together known as Kagemu, have since been widely imitated by others, including Beyoncé. In...
WatchBlu’s First Stop-Motion Street Art Experiments in ‘Megunica’
Filmmaker Lorenzo Fonda and street artist Blu traveled through South America to shoot the documentary Megunica in 2008. On the road, they began to create these stop-motion animations, which were the genesis of Blu’s famous animated wall paintings.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Fonda describes the making...
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Travel through India… On a Skateboard
French skate company Oxelo Skateboards took a team to India to shoot this gorgeous skate video, traveling to Bangalore, Dheli, Jaipur, and Agra over ten days.
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Time Lapse of Night Sky Over London Riots
This time lapse of the night sky over Tottenham during the London riots shows helicopters, search lights, smoke, and flares all night before the sun finally begins to rise. U.K.-based culture blog itdrewitself shot the film on a Canon 7D, taking 2.5 second exposures every three seconds all night. Of the riots, they said, “Watching the...
WatchYesterday I promised that there would be NO KITTENS on the new Atlantic Video Channel. Today, I break that promise. I challenged our Twitter followers to find “an intelligent, thought-provoking kitten video” and Michelle Legro (@michellelegro) did just that, with this unbelievable 1947 film documenting bioastronautics research of cats in zero gravity.
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LOLCATS in...
