The trailer mashup may have hit its peak a couple of years ago (hey, there’s at least one blog devoted solely to examples of the genre) with my favorites Shining and Toy Story Requiem.
I’ve written before about how technology increasingly makes producer work available to consumers and so I was struck by the latest trailer mashup, combining The Ring with the hated Saved By Zero commercial.
The ability to put video inside video might have been out of reach to mere consumers (and I don’t know the details of who made the above mashup), but it looks like these tools are becoming available to anyone now.
Yes, more bathroom blogging! Core77 has just posted a quick video I made
In this video for Core77, Steve Portigal takes us into his company bathroom, uncovering examples of bad design and its consequences.
From signage to artifact and back, people are forever mistaking their cues for how to behave, how to use products and systems, and how different, often-conflicting indicators cause our expectations and realities to collide. This 2-minute video is a priceless example. What’s in your bathroom?
Some years back, in Boston, I helped out on a shoot for Public Enemy‘s Revolverlution video. It was a lot of fun, and pretty amazing to hang out with such seminal artists. I was going through some old pictures today and came across some fun images from the shoot.
A portrait of Chuck D, the idea man
My wife, Theresa, and me (with permed straight hair!) hanging out during lunch break with Flava Flav
And one of the hardest rocking shows I’ve ever seen, at the Middle East nightclub in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Excellent times! Public Enemy has been consistently innovative, not only in their music, but in their willingness to experiment with new approaches to producing and distributing their work.
Stockstock is a film festival consisting of short films made entirely from stock footage. We select a limited amount of stock footage and give it to you; your job is to make it into some kind of short video presentation.
Anne and I submitted and won in 2003. Maybe it’s time to think about doing it again.
The Internet is amazing. I was having an IM conversation with a colleague today and sharing cool packaging stories. I tried to describe the magic packaging (keeps the seaweed separate from the rice, yet you can open it up without having to unwap the whole thing) for onigiri (rice balls) and he suggests there is probably a video somewhere. Indeed, within 30 seconds I found two. The packaging – as you will see – is amazing, but the availability of any sort of content you can imagine is also amazing.
Under the Radar is a showcase of early-stage innovation. Events feature several companies in one sector presenting to a panel of VC judges. Judges and attendees pick the company most likely to succeed and discuss the future of the presenting companies’ industry sector.
Last night I attended my first such event, hosted by Orange R&D. There were actually 7 companies, and the panel didn’t in fact make any overall picks.
Living and working in Silicon Valley means that I’m not immune from lingo like “burn rate”, “angel-funded”, “series-A”, “[something]-play”, “the eBay of [something]” and beyond, but this was my first formal in-depth exposure to this scene.
The companies shown were podaddies (dynamic video ad network), CastTV (video search), Veodia (enterprise video distribution), Nexage (video on mobile phones), Eyespot (editing/mashing up video on the web), ComVu
(mobile video sharing), and OneCast (turnkey venue-based video).
The ideas were all very different and so some just were more easily explained than others, some were better presenters than others. Some were prepared to pitch to investors, others like CastTV were funded using money from their previous startup and there was an interesting comment about not wanting to bother with dealing with investors this time around. Isn’t that a sign of the latest dot-com economy; that companies can do a lot without millions of dollars?
Some folks were slick, some were slick but without merit (the video editing tool that was framed as telling stories since stories are important but offered nothing more than a way to butt clips together and overlay music – that’s not storytelling, sorry).
But the greatest part was the panel – it was a neat form of a crit, really. They asked great questions, shared their own concerns, picked on the weak, challenged the strong, and just emitted so much wisdom and experience (without much attitude) that I was very impressed. I mean, that’s the job of a venture capitalist, to be able to assess new companies based on having seen a million others, but for me to get to see that live and in the flesh was very neat.
There was little discussion of culture, or users; it was mostly about technology and markets, but that’s okay, I learned a bit just being part of it.
A rented DVD with a Be Kind Please Rewind sticker in the case.
Electric Lady Studios has now become a video store. I think this is fairly recent, but I’m not 100%. Kinda depressing; the studio has been there for a long long time.
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