Video: I Will Derive
Penguin May 31st, 2008
Cute little spoof on “I Will Survive” with a calculus twist. You may not find it as amusing without some calc background.
-Penguin
Related postsArchive for May, 2008
Paul Pope: Pop Gun
Ninja May 31st, 2008
“You can do anything you want, so long as there’s a sexy girl in it wearing headphones,” was the direction given to Paul Pope from Pop Gun.
Via ernest.borg9
Related postsIra Glass on Storytelling
Penguin May 30th, 2008
Current TV has a great interview with Ira Glass from This American Life.
The two main points that I took away was the anecdote as a form of storytelling and having good taste.
The Anecdote. When you listen to good story tellers share their stories in the form of anecdotes, there’s progression to the story. I did this, and then this happened, and then… etc. There’s a momentum to the story that draws you in and creates tension. But what separates the good stories from the bad is that it takes you some where. There is a sense of revelation at the end of the journey. Most stories lack this crucial element. Likewise, revelation w/o the journey of the anecdote is not nearly as powerful.
Good Taste. For 8 years, Glass struggled with producing material that he liked, but just didn’t feel was good enough. He was struck by this dissonance between what he had created and what his own evaluation of his material. I know when I look back at Love Angle there are plenty of things that I would change or have done differently. Even though it holds a special place in my heart, I know it’s nowhere close to where I want it to be.
Even looking back at my more current work: Cupid’s Chokehold or Interview with an INS Agent, they aren’t where I would like them to be.
Part of it has to do with my lack of experience and skill. But there is a part where I’m not sure what I could do to make it better. So I really take Glass’s insight to heart. To persevere through and keep working on my body of work and knowing that it may be a long journey.
-Penguin
Related postsDream 2: Zach Attack
Ninja May 30th, 2008
Hallo & happy Friday! Thanks for stopping by and visiting my dreams.
Here’s dream number 2. I’m not sure which is scarier—that I actually had this conversation with Zach or that I later dreamed about it.
A bit of background for this dream: there’s a zombie war raging on. Zach and I narrowly escape and barricade ourselves inside an abandoned warehouse. I’m still trying to process the day’s events, and needless to say, I’m quite shaken up. Then Zach snaps me back to reality by saying, “Looky, missy, this is serious! There’s a zombie war out there. If you get bitten, I will not hesitate to put a bullet through your head.” I stare at him in disbelief. To drive the point home, Zach adds, “I would shoot you point blank!!”
Of course, Zach gets bitten, hides it from me, and later turns into a zombie. Then he comes after me. Zach’s hungry. Very hungry. No matter how fast I run, he manages to catch up. He grabs a hold of my arm, starts salivating like Pavlov’s dog, and is about to feast on me. Then I wake up.
As you can see, the panels are not finished. I’m not that thrilled with my inking here, but I feel like I should complete this and try and salvage what I can.
Until next Friday, sweet dreams!
Cheers,
Ninja
Alfred Hitchcock and How Sound Ruined Movies
Penguin May 30th, 2008
Found this at Slashfilm. Not sure where they found the quote though, but it’s a great one.
The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema; the only thing they lacked was the sound of people talking and the noises. But this slight imperfection did not warrant the major changes that sound brought in. In Many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema. They are mostly what I call ‘photographs of people talking.’ When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise. I always try first to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between… To me, one of the cardinal sins for a scriptwriter, when he runs into some difficulty, is to say ‘We can cover that by a line of dialogue.’ Dialogue should simply be a sound among sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
-Penguin
Related postsNative Son (beta)
Penguin May 29th, 2008
A friend asked me to edit video that he shot for one of his class projects. Here’s my first rough edit. I still need to find music for some of the other parts.
I had some weird problems with rendering in After Effects. It kept adding space on either side of the video. I ended up going back to Premiere to render it out.
It’s definitely different editing another person’s work, both in terms of direction and photography.
Let me know what you think.
-Penguin
Related postsFirst Kiss is number one
Ninja May 29th, 2008
I recently received an email from a lovely lady from Canada. She mentioned that she found us through a Google image search for the word, “kiss.” That got me wondering, so I too did a search and discovered that our image for First Kiss is number one and the First Kiss process sketch is number two on the Google image search. Wow… we even beat out the band, Kiss.
Photographer: Amy Stein
Ninja May 29th, 2008
Amy Stein teaches photography at both Parsons and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her work has been shown at the the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Nevada Museum of Art.
As I was going through Amy Stein’s photograph series—Domesticated, Women and Guns, and Stranded, I realized I could play a game of exquisite corpse narrative with them. Instead of the traditional head, torso, and legs; my version is beginning, middle, and end of a tale. If I took one photo from each series, I could form a visually eerie, campfire story.
Example 1:
Example 2:
It doesn’t work for all her photos, but it is kind of fun.
To see more of Amy’s photographs, visit her portfolio website here.
Related postsCompromising Your Art
Penguin May 28th, 2008
Over the Memorial Weekend, I was asked by my church to shoot some footage for them. Specifically of two events: a field day and a family night. I also began shooting a bigger piece about the church. I thought it would be a good idea to get some b-roll footage of the worship team playing music and the congregation singing.
Not 3 minutes into the b-roll, Shirley, one of the people in charge came by and told me to stop filming. She was pretty mad. I got a few more shots and then I stopped. I can appreciate her reasoning behind not wanting me to shoot because it might be a distraction to others. Fine. But she could’ve been nicer about it.
On Monday, Shirley gave me a message through one of our pastors to not put any of the family night footage online. It baffled me because it’s not like there was anything risque or compromising in the footage. To the contrary, everyone was really looking forward to watching it. I realized the issue at hand was the censorship.
I’ve become so used to working independently, having final cut, not needing approval for anything, and just producing whatever I wanted. Now I can appreciate what it may be like in a studio system. You have producers and execs and all other sorts of people financing the project who want it done a certain way. Unfortunately, I’m not being paid for my services.
How far do you compromise to get your art made? I’m not even in a position to compromise because the option of dialogue isn’t given to me.
Luminaries in the industry can do whatever they want. But I’m nobody. I’m poor and I can barely afford DV tapes. I’m not even getting reimbursed for the tapes that I used.
I’ll do what I can to fight it, but I don’t have high expectations.
-Penguin
Related postsCentro Pro ftw
Ninja May 28th, 2008
Congratulations to the Parachute type foundry for winning an European Design Award for the Centro Pro typeface families!
Centro Pro was designed by Panos Vassiliou, and you can view his sketches and design process here.
PF Centro Pro is a type system, not just a type family. This large series of 40 fonts with 1519 characters each, is composed of 3 superfamilies (serif, sans and slab), includes true italics and supports Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. It is an almost ‘invisible’ typeface which has legibility as its main attribute and is ideal for a wide range of design works. It does not attract any unnecessary attention, but rather serves its purpose. A rare case of contemporary type family working across three alphabets, Centro Pro meets an ever-growing demand for such typefaces among pan-European companies and institutions.
- European Design Awards jury
Meet the Centro Pro family.
Purchasing links are available after each image.
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