All I can say is.....wow! This video from Robert Croma (as part of Semanal) is just superb. I'm highlighting it here as an inspiration for me to post new videos during 2008.
Last night, I got inspired to post to my long dormant "video blog." Joanna and I attended RIPFest #9 ("Second Chances") at the Anthology Film Archives, where 5 original short films were screened. Our friend Chris starred in one of the films - he is an incredibly talented actor (though we are biased). Each film was cast, written, directed, and edited in 16 days - a short, creative, collaborative project among artists who have never met before.
RIPFest is supported by the not-for-profit Raw Impressions, which is "committed to inspiring artists to be prolific with excellence, introducing artists to new collaborators and supporting artists through a speedy development process free from commercial pressures - so our artists can just be artists."
So, I got to thinking about my amateur film-making pursuits from several years ago, and my continuing ed classes at SVA. As part of a film production class, I collaborated with classmates to make a few 16mm films - acting as the lighting and camera operator on others' projects and then helming my own. It was an intense process where each person was to write, cast, direct, and edit their film over a 6 week period. The filming and editing was "old school" - using a Bolex camera and a Steenbeck to physically cut / splice the film.
On a 100+ degree August day in '02, we shot my film in Ryan's apartment over about 12 hours. The film was then edited over the next 2 weeks and screened for my class. Editing on a Steenbeck was quite an experience - in fact that whole time constitutes one of my most satisfying creative /collaborative, "learning by doing" projects. A huge thanks to my cast and crew!
The film has had limited, small "screenings" over the years, and since it wasn't shot with sound, a soundtrack was usually played via a CD while the 16mm film (or VHS tape) played. A few months ago, decided to transfer the film to digital video, add titles / credits, add a soundtrack, and encode it using Flash video (for those not in the know - that's the video format used by sites like YouTube). Again - this was a "learning by doing" process - wanted to learn more about Flash video.
While I'm still not completely happy with where the soundtrack falls relative to the images, it's pretty close to what I'd consider acceptable for a wider audience. Please click on the below image in order to watch this film (for those using Internet Exporer you may need to click a few times).
Disclaimer: While the title is "Love and Marriage," the film isn't a reflection of my personal thoughts on these subjects - and structurally, it's heavily inspired by David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (which I had just seen at that time).
In Aug '05, I shot some short video clips of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, which has one of the best views of Manhattan. As with my 1st vlog post, used an Olympus D-380 camera. Had edited the clips into a 2 minute music video, but was never quite satisfied with the results. Dusted that off the other day, and made some minor tweaks to the editing in Windows Movie Maker. Finally posted it here (a 2.6 MB .wmv file encoded at 169Kbps). Clicking on the photo to the right will also open the video.
This video was edited while playing around with several effects in Windows Movie Maker such as: speeding clips up, rotating / flipping clips, and overlapping clips together. The editing software does have its limitations, though I was pleasantly surprised at the results. Of additional note - the program is somewhat buggy and it wound up crashing many times (especially while stacking several effects on top of one another).
Am trying to find time to continue blogging / vlogging. While I finish editing my 2nd video to post here, thought I'd share a few videos from others around the Net that are worth checking out.
A Million Ways from the band OK Go was posted on several blogs - it's a fun homemade style video. This is a QuickTime file @ 300 Kbps - other formats and download speeds are on their website.
The Mirror World (from Lean Back Vids - the guys behind Vlogmap.org) is an awesome post that combines Seattle video footage with screen captures using Google Earth. From their site..."GeoVlogging is the process of associating a geographic location to a video blog post. In our first virtual voyage, you’ll be able to watch time pass over Lake Union and share in some of our Seattle experiences." This is an embedded QuickTime file (not sure of the download speed - it was downloading a bit slow before, probably due to high traffic).
The E-Band's Jam #2 via Maximilian's Vlog (note: vlog site isn't up anymore - but the video is still available via the Internet Archives) is a video created so that others can collaboratively add to it. These are earlier and later versions of the E-Band's Jam #1 after others had contributed. From the site...."To join the e-Band just remix this video by contributing some original video/audio material. For example if you play a musical instrument, video yourself playing something that fits in....and mix the two together, if you don't make music it doesn't matter, just shout, scream, sing put anything in there, then post it so hopefully someone else will remix your efforts and so on and so forth." Note - all files are QuickTime.
Number 14 Bus uses some very cool video effects (via Big Time TV). This is also a QuickTime file. UPDATE: QT file no longer seems to exist, but the video has been uploaded to YouTube - which is now linked to via this post.
I finally decided to try my hand at videoblogging. To view my first videoblog post - you can click here or on the photo to the right. It's a short 42 second Windows Media clip (.wmv file format). This was more of a "proof of concept" experiment for me, and I wanted to understand first-hand how easily it could be done. Below is a description of how the final video was created and then posted.
Video clips (between 10-60 secs each) were shot using a very bare bones point-and-shoot digital camera - a 2 Mega-pixel Olympus D-380 with 8MB's of memory. The camera was set-up to capture video at a low resolution (160 x 120 pixels) mainly to allow for somewhat longer takes.
The Olympus automatically created .mov files. These were converted to .asf file formats using a free endcoder called SUPER (version 1.791) that I found on Download.com. The clips were then imported into Windows Movie Maker for editing and the addition of an audio track.
The final video was created by exporting it from Windows Movie Maker -- encoding it by using the "Video for broadband (150Kbps)" drop-down option, which produced an 817KB file.
All of the above took maybe about an hour.
I then created an account with the Internet Archive, used OurMedia to upload my video, obtained the URL for this uploaded video file, and also created a "screen capture" of a frame from my video - the photo used in this blog post.
That took another 1/2 hour maximum (including the time it took to learn about using the Internet Archive and OurMedia). So - from start-to-finish, I was able to produce a 42 second video and post it in about one and a half hours. For more info on how to videoblog, check-out: Freevlog.
Still to figure out: how to easily convert the file back to .mov format for playback in QuickTime (using free conversion tools). It seems that SUPER doesn't read the file format produced by Windows Movie Maker.
Yesterday evening was filled with one of those rare experiences when you feel a real sense of community amongst people at the start of something potentially big. I had the opportunity to attend Vloggercue 2005 at a loft apartment in Hoboken, NJ with 30+ attendees (vloggers, technologists, and others). It was a blast. The Vloggercue site has a listing of those who were planning to attend. (See my earlier post about video blogging, aka vlogging, and the Vlog SoHo event held Friday at the Apple store).
Vloggercue was basically a barbecue that brought together all kinds of different people with a shared interest in vlogging. There was food (really great BBQ) and drink, and lots of conversation. There were also similar events taking place in Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Those events were linked to ours using FlashMeeting, which is a very cool online videoconferencing tool. In addition to just meeting and talking, several people gave demonstrations of vlogging tools that they're developing. These included: blip.tv, Linkubator, vlogdir, mefeedia, and FireANT.
Thanks again to Adam Quirk for hosting this amazing event at his apartment and to all of the organizers!
You say you want a revolution: Yesterday evening I attended a workshop @ the Apple store in SoHo NYC , where there were a series of video bloggers (vloggers) who spoke - they dubbed it Vlog SoHo (click on the link in this post's title or to the left for a list of the speakers and links to some of their sites).
For those unfamiliar with Vlogging, this is from the event's web-site: Videoblogging is a new form of expression centering around posting videos to a website and encouraging an audience response. It is the next step from text blogging and podcasting. A community of artists, video editors, podcasters, bloggers, and software developers has formed around this new mode of communication. We are a group of people who use videos as a normal part of our blogging."
Vlogging has enormous potential for communications: from citizen journalism, to collaborative projetcs, to art and self expression, etc.
Steve Garfield was the emcee last night (this is his bio from Wikipedia). Steve vlogged from the DNC in Boston last summer and got tons of press. I had the opportunity to speak with Steve after the workshop, and mentioned that I'd been following the vlogger scene for a few months. He was very welcoming of me (as a newbie to this growing community).
I first read about vlogging sometime early this year, and then discovered a site with video of sessions from Vloggercon 2005, which was held Jan 22, 2005 at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Vloggercon was the first offical face-to-face meeting of vloggers from around the country (and world).
Also at the workshop last night was Eli Chapman, who is Avid Technology's Manager of New Market Development. Eli was a session leader at Vloggercon 2005, and he writes a blog called ChapmanLogic. I thanked Eli for posting an incredible video some months ago, which I've since e-mailed to many people. Click here for Eli's post.
FYI - if anyone is interested in setting up a free Vlog, Ryanne Hodson and Michael Verdi have created FreeVlog, a site with how-to tutorials.
Steve Jobs gave the commencement address @ Stanford this past week and he ended with these parting words of wisdom from the Whole Earth Catalog - "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." He also shared 3 stories about events that helped to shape him, and I found these to be very interesting.
From Jobs' address: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."
Love him or hate him, you have to respect Steve Jobs for his accomplishments. I happen to be a fan. As an undergrad @ Cornell some 14+ years ago, I had the opportunity to hear Jobs speak and give a demo of the NeXT computer / NeXTStep OS. It was an amazing experience.
"Apple was this incredible journey....The thing that bound us together....was the ability to make things that were going to change the world....and the greatest joy was that we felt we were fashioning collective works of art much like twentieth century physics. Something important that would last, that people contributed to and then could give to more people."
"I actually think there's actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest caliber. I've never had a distinction in my mind between those two types of people. They've just been to me people who pursue different paths but basically kind of headed to the same goal which is to express something of what they perceive to be the truth around them so that others can benefit by it."
"I think the artistry is in having an insight into what one sees around them. Generally putting things together in a way no one else has before and finding a way to express that to other people who don't have that insight so they can get some of the advantage of that insight that makes them feel a certain way or allows them to do a certain thing."
"In the 70's and the 80's the best people in computers would have normally been poets and writers and musicians. Almost all of them were musicians. A lot of them were poets on the side. They went into computers because it was so compelling. It was fresh and new. It was a new medium of expression for their creative talents. The feelings and the passion that people put into it were completely indistinguishable from a poet or a painter."
Stay passionate. Stay creative. For all life is art direction....
An excellent list of new services for publishing/distributing video and films over the Internet (via Robin Good). I cannot agree more that there is radical innovation coming to this area.
Won't it be interesting if "the masses" are given tools to "write" and "read" via the language of video/film as easily as we now use word-processors and e-mail?
How many of us write by long-hand anymore? Sure it's done, but most use a PC to bang out their ideas. Think how many people now use Photoshop (or some other program like Picasa) to help shape their images - who, except for professionals could have done that 20 years ago?
Many people already have digital video cameras (in their phones too) and have access to tools like iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Final Cut Pro, Avid, etc. But how do you publish and share your work? That's where these new services will help to propel us to another level.
The next wave of the video revolution is upon us. It has huge implications for business, art, and society as a whole.
(BTW - one might think of "business" as being the obvious, established media companies...... yes, that's true. But I also see very promising uses for video in communication between employees and with customers.)
