Posts Tagged ‘video’

BIRDEMIC: Shock and Terror

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Might be the worst best movie since The Room.

“Driven by passion.”

Birdemic: Shock And Terror Official Theatrical Trailer from Severin Films on Vimeo.

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John Foxx’s Tiny Colour Movies

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Saturday Morning Video Club
Just months shy of 30 years ago, John Foxx released his groundbreaking album Metamatic. After a hiatus from the mid-1980’s until 1998 he disappeared from the music radar. These videos are from his recent album Tiny Colour Movies. For this album Foxx scored several almost forgotten home videos from the collection of Arnold Weizcs-Bryant of Baltimore. The effect is haunting.

Underwater Automobiles

As Foxx explains in the liner notes:

. . . Robert Rouncefield acquired an underwater super 8mm camera from his parents on his 17th birthday in 1972. He and his friends would often swim in the lakes near his home in Montana. One part of a lake was used to dump old automobiles. They would be disposed of by simply letting off the brakes and allowing them to roll quietly down a slight incline into the lake. Swimming there one summer, Rouncefield discovered what resembled an underwater car-park and decided to film it. He also took his girlfriend along and persuaded her to swim underwater. This juxtaposition produces a strange and beautiful film – the submerged cars, the classically beautiful young swimmer, the moving light from the sunlit surface. The rich colour of the super 8mm film and its grain lend the brief sequences a luscious, impressionistic appearance . . .

Smokescreen

As Foxx explains in the liner notes:

Several short sequences made by an unknown film student in the 1950’s and discovered in the film school vaults. All depict a man in a suit walking through a series of smoke laden rooms. This was the first film that Arnold obtained and the one that began his collection. “This particular film is very dear to me,” he says. “Because it precipitated my understanding of what film actually is. I was looking for stock footage in the school film library when I found an unlabelled canister. I was curious about pieces of unknown film even then, so took it to the viewing room. I saw these marvelouslly lit sequences which seemed to have a very definite story, yet there is no explanation or development or resolution. We can have no idea what the filmmaker had in mind. Because of this lack of resolution, they seem strangely suspended. You begin to make connections, you feel compelled to write a story. But there is none. There can be none. The effect is tantalising, like a damaged and incomplete fragment of memory.”

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People in Order (by Age), 1-100

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

People In Order: 1. Age from James Price.

This is first in a series of four films – People In Order – commissioned by the UK’s Channel 4 in 2006. The concept behind our films was simple: we asked ourselves if you can reveal something about life by simply arranging people according to scales. Three minutes is a very short time to communicate something – perhaps too short to tell a story, or to get to know a character – so we wanted to make this series by setting ourselves some very straightforward rules, and then following them through over a long trip. The rules had to be simple so it would take the audience virtually no time to understand them. We established what scales we’d look at, and then chose how each film would be framed. Then it was a case of getting in a campervan and driving round Britain, filming as many people as we could over 4 weeks in February, coping with microphones crackling and our camera refusing to work.

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DIY Paint Marker

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

YouTube abounds with 12 year old graffiti kids giving great tips on DIY art supplies. Rather than feeling rooked over paying way too much for a few lousy markers, I’m going to be taking this guy’s advice and abusing a few old sharpies.

And if you your marker needs are fatter…

Ink recipes are also everywhere.  Like here.  And here.  Note that you can skip adding in the brake fluid if your painting needs don’t involve permanently staining the underlying surface of where you’re painting.

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Saturday Afternoon Movie Club: The Known Universe and Closer

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Like Powers of Ten, but with more satellites:

The making of NIN’s “Closer” video:

NIN: The Making of the “Closer” Video from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

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Saturday Afternoon Video Club: Beneath the Neon

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

This installment of Saturday Afternoon Video Club comes via Dangerous Minds, a fine site of this and that.  Here’s Al Jazeera’s look at the people living in Las Vegas’ storm drains:

Much the same territory as covered by Marc Singer’s Dark Days.

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Adam Curtis Says You’re as Crazy as Richard Nixon

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

In summary: the media is a vast jabbering mouth screaming all the ways you will die in terrible pain and loneliness.  Why the hell would we let a wretched creature like that in the room?

Well, because maybe, just maybe, it might finally cough up a scrap of truth.  And we’re wired to hang onto that hope.

I recommend you embrace doom, joyfully.

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Mars Needs Hipsters

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Two, count ‘em two, UFO sightings occured in my very own backyard of North Brooklyn. One in Williamsburg and one in Bushwick. Obviously the out-of-towners from another world dig skinny jeans, art projects, and indie music.

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“Nuts to War!” Disney’s Dinosaurs Show the Horrors of War

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

Remember that big rubber suit sitcom Dinosaurs?  Remember how it was the most incisive social commentary on television?  No?  OK, so you just remember wearing a t-shirt from K-Mart that said “Not the Mamma!”   Fair enough.  But the show had its moments.  And apparently the whole run is on YouTube, including the 1992 two-part parable about the Gulf War where the dinos go to war over pistachios.

Of course, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Iran is the world’s largest producer of pistachios, giving the whole deal a bit more modern resonance.

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The Write Channel

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Giant leaf fell on a boy. Mayor ate too much and got sick. Kid bites dog. Grammar gets mangled.

The Write Channel chronicled the not-so-gonzo journalism career of insect reporter R.B. Bug, spitting out the facts on a 70s local newscast under the watchful eye of editor/anchor Red Green.  No, not that Red Green.

R.B. covered surreal events around town in a basic, straight-laced manner, suitable for illiterates and the E.S.L. classroom.  That’d be where I encountered this fine bit of educational programming.  Though I was already sawing my way through Isaac Asimov, in 4th grade they sat our narrow asses down in rows to watch our weekly installment of a stop-motion bug talking with all the speed and juicy detail of a Midwesterner with a concussion. (Yeah I went there, Minneapolis.)

Still, credit is due for the end bit (the ominously named The Club) that goads viewers to fiction, finishing the epic tale of the Man Who Lost His Sack.  Interactive fiction with 1978 broadcast technology.

After the cut, another clip where Red Green gets personal…

(more…)

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