Posts tagged with film
Mucho thanks to The Cartoonist for discovering this lovely Steampunk film "Reise Zum Mars" (journey to mars, in german). Made by german film student Sebastian Binder, along with Fabien Grodde and Alexander Schumann, it's a short film based on a draft screenplay by Walter Dexel, an early 20th Century Constructivist. But don't worry, it's just music and action, so there's no need to know any german to watch it. And what's more, the lyrics to the song are in english anyway.
And you can watch it at their cool web site, which also has some interesting making-of videos.
Unfortunately they only show the video at the original size. So, if you want to watch it full screen, here is a direct download link that I hacked out of their SWF file: Reise Zum Mars direct FLV download (106MB).
Overall I have only two criticisms: one, that it needs an increase in brightness, it's quite difficult to make out what's happening. This is a simple post-production blunder. Second, the music is a little heavy. On the other hand, the silent-movie farce kind of atmosphere/acting works well.
I love steampunk, and I love this film.
Light + Music
Posted on December 21, 2009 at 04:12 AM
Categories: graphics, music, tech, theories, film, future
I'm proposing a talk for TEDx Waterloo. The subject is Light + Music, an overview of visual music, the past and future, of this wonderful field where two of your senses get together and jam and have a good time.
The theme of TEDxWaterloo this year is Tomorrow Started Yesterday, which is pretty appropriate for this subject. The visualization of music certainly started with dance, which was probably one of the most ancient of human arts, although we cannot say for certain when it started. Music certainly existed over 50,000 years ago. On the other side, the future of music is certainly digital, and the digital signal lends itself to being interpreted in multiple ways—witness mp3 visualizers and VJs.
But I want to start with what is sound. In 1904 Heinrich Rubens created a tube to see the sound as light—literally—glowing from the flames of his curious contraption:
Sound is a wave through the air, and like all waves you can reduce it to a sum of waves at different frequencies. I won't get into sine waves and circles and cycles and oscillators because I don't have the time. But take waves of different speeds, some large and slow, others small and fast—just like in water—and add them up, you get sound. The rube's tube simply shows the amplitude and pitch of the wave as it creates a standing wave inside the tube.
An oscilloscope does the same thing!
Guess what, your iTunes visualizer does the same thing too. It just jazzes up that information into prettier pictures. The basic ones show an oscilloscope like the ruben's tube, or a "spectrogram" which provides much more information—it actually breaks down the signal into the component sine waves, and shows the strength of each. Usually frequency is vertical, time is horizontal, and the intensity of colour is the intensity of sound at that pitch. Here's a spectrogram of a violin:
And here's a video of a whiz-bang mp3 visualizer. It may look crazy but it's just oscilloscope + spectrograph driving it:
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Maybe you can look at the spectrogram and tell a flute from an electric guitar, but most people can't. That's why Anita Lillie made a program that tries to show the timbre of different instruments in colour against the notes of the scale. This is where the future of direct visualization is going:
Visualizing Music by Anita Lillie from S Woodside on Vimeo.
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All of that said… there is more to visual music than can be imagined by computers. Artists will surely have a word to say. And we can go back to the early days of film to find inspiration from Len Lye, famous for his abstract film, A Colour Box (1935):
And you might have already seen this one. Fantasia: Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor, by Oskar Fischinger in 1940!
There is much more, such as the Star Gate sequence in Kubrick's 2001, Lapis by James Whitney, The Bead Game by Ishu Patel, Synchromy No. 4: Escape by Mary Ellen Bute in 1938. Bret Battey's Luna Series #3: Sinus Aestum is more recent—2009. After three quarters of a century, the art is being revived.
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Tomorrow though, it will be the other way around. Instead of looking at sound, you can go the other way, you make light and get sound.
The most significant entry in this green field is surely TENORI-ON, a completely new form of digital instrument created by Toshio Iwai and Yu Nishibori for Yamaha in Japan. It's being used in concert by artists such as Little Boots. I would like to leave you with these two examples, which might blow your mind.
Little Boots .. watch her set it up :-) :
Jim O'Rourke ... a little deeper, but stick with it and your mind will expand. Steve Reich needed 18 musicians! :
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I've skipped over a lot of really cool stuff, so if you want to see more in a fast, wide-ranging and crazy presentation, head over to TEDx Waterloo and nominate me for the show :-) I might even do some live demos :-)
A little ToneMatrix Music
Posted on December 05, 2009 at 10:45 PM
Categories: graphics, tech, links, art, infographics, film, iphone
André Michelle, inspired by the TENORI-ON, created a grid-sequencer called ToneMatrix. It's an interactive experience written in Flash 10 that merges graphics, visualization, interactivity, and music. There are also iPhone knock-offs such as the free TonePad. As for ToneMatrix, click here to check it out and create your own tunes. Here's one of mine.
Eine Kleine ToneMatrixMusik from S Woodside on Vimeo.
You can also right-click on the ToneMatrix flash app and copy/paste numerical sequences to load and save your music. The sequence for the above is:
98386,1024,4096,1024,67474,96,65540,32768,65618,1024,64,0,65618,4,65600,0
Share and enjoy.
Where have all the great actresses gone?
Posted on August 12, 2009 at 08:00 PM
Categories: theories, film
Movies are great for many reasons, but having a superstar actor/actress can make even a half-ass movie bearable or even good. There's lots of great actors who can pull it off these days. To give a few random examples. Benicio Del Toro. Bruce Willis. Brad Pitt. Clooney. Clint Eastwood, after all these years. ... much as I hate to admit it, Leonardo DiCaprio.
We used to have them. Just looking at the 80s & 90s: Sigourney Weaver pulled off many hits, including Alien, Terminator, ... Renée Zelwegger was awesome headlining in Bridget Jones, Nurse Betty... Jodie Foster carried Silence of the Lambs & Contact. Meryl Streep, Katharine Hepburn, Kim Basinger.
Where are they now? They seem to have faded away. Julia Roberts seems to be gone. Zelwegger is doing voiceovers. Foster hasn't been seen lately. Hepburn is out of town, and Basinger seems to be mainly in movies I haven't heard of.
Does Kate Winslet count? Uma Thurman? My theory is that there's still great actresses out there, but they're not getting good parts.
Fictional magazine covers from Blade Runner
Posted on July 29, 2009 at 06:31 PM
Categories: film, future
Blade Runner is one of my all-time favorite films. I got my hands on the extended features and one popped up that I thought I'd share with you—some fictional magazine covers from a fictional news stand on a fictional street in a fictional universe. I believe that the news stand is seen—briefly in passing—during the chase through the streets. Here are all six grabbed from the feature, designed by production illustrator Tom Southwell.
Singin' in the Rain's crazy dream ballet sequence
Posted on July 02, 2009 at 12:49 AM
Categories: art, bittorrent, film
I just watched the movie Singin' in the Rain... and by far the best part was this sequence where Gene Kelly dances a ballet with Cyd Charisse. Wow!
The set is a surreal, Dali-esque painting, which uses forced perspective to appear to vanish into infinity. It features stairs that look like stripes on the ground, strange shadows... but the most surreal is Charisse's 50-foot long white silk veil, which wafts up into the sky like it's floating on air. There must have been some incredible fans, and the choreography of the air current with the ballet is incredible.
I don't know how Gene Kelly thought it up, and how he managed to get it made and into the movie. It has almost nothing to do with the plot. It's totally unexpected, but mind blowing. I've never seen anything like it.
Here it is, but really, you should rent it or download it in high quality...
The Entire Cast of Futurama -- someone should make a poster
Posted on June 21, 2009 at 02:28 AM
Categories: tv, film, future
Here is as close as we've ever got to a poster of the entire cast of Futurama... from their most recent direct-to-DVD movie Into the Wild Green Yonder. It's notable for two things in my mind: first, it doesn't include most of the principles (they would be easy to add) and second, wow, Futurama just doesn't have as many characters as Simpsons. Simpsons has a LOT of characters. What do they say, 50 active on-going basis? That's a lot.
And now my fellow Earthicans ... More Futurama is Coming ...
Comedy Central was happy with the specials and with the 72 produced episodes of "Futurama" it acquired from 20th Century Fox TV in 2006. "Yet there is nothing like new, self-contained episodes week to week," said David Bernath, Comedy Central's senior vp programming. "This is all about reinvigorating the franchise, giving it a new burst of energy."
In other words, futurama pays.
OK, this is stupid but I came up with this joke for Zap Brannigan.
SCENE: ZAP BRANNIGAN IS YET AGAIN TAKING CHARGE OF A
TOP-PRIORITY MILITARY MISSION BY DRAFTING SOMEONE. LET'S SAY
LEELA. IT COULD BE ANYONE, THOUGH.
ZAP: Ahh, do you remember me? I'm Zap Brannigan.
Captain Zap Brannigan. I put myself in your charge.
SOMEONE: How generous of you.
ZAP: By which I mean I put myself in Charge. Of You.
Lame joke? Maybe. But I don't see YOU making up jokes and blogging them for everyone to see.
So there I was, watching the Incredible Hulk titles again in slow-motion, because I'm always curious as to what the special effects people write into the various fake news stories and computer graphics. Sometimes it's funny. And I came across this little easter egg which seems to have been missed by fans on the net.
Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. Command are never mentioned in the film. He's part of the comic team Fantastic Four I think (I never really read a lot of comics as a kid, sorry...) which I guess will be having a film some day. Anyway, here's what it says:
Nick Fury
Shield Command
Code RED
New York, NY 060584
Details: Classified. Subject is THREAT LEVEL RED, surveillance only.
The Bruce Banner manhunt is still not over. This shadowy figure re-
nowned as a doctor and professor at the Culver University Science De-
partment has once again slipped through the authorites hands and is
still on the run.
That's verbatim by the way. Apparently the letter was never on screen long enough (just a few frames) to warrant a thorough spell check.
How come Marvel puts their logo on their movies, but DC Comics doesn't?
The Shape of Things That Hum
Posted on March 20, 2009 at 08:36 PM
Categories: music, bittorrent, film
The Shape of Things That Hum is a series of 11-minute short documentaries about different electronic instruments. It goes through a bunch of classics, most I recognize the sound easily but never knew the name or the story. Here's the proper order:
- Minimoog, the grand-daddy analog synth of them all
- Vocoder, making a voice sound like a synth
- Roland DX-7, the first proper digital synth
- Roland TR-808, early drum machine
- Roland 303, a sort of bass synthesizer
- Various subjects
- Akai Sampler
The whole thing was first broadcast in 2001, in Britain, maybe Channel 4? I'm not sure. In any case it seems to have been more or less ignored, and it's definitely a sort of niche appeal subject. At the moment it seems like youtube/google video is the only source, but let's hope that someone out there will make a torrent with proper quality at some point.
Here's a link to all of the episodes, the best quality I could find. Click on "More from this user" to see them all. Or just google for the title if you can't find it there.
What is the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy really about?
Posted on February 02, 2009 at 12:32 AM
Categories: theories, film
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is about life, the universe, and everything, ... and the fact that it makes no sense. Life makes no sense. Nothing that happens makes any sense. There is no purpose, to meaning, no answer, just an endless series of coincidences, catastrophes, and occasionally good times which we just have to put up with until we die. This is the thesis of HHGTTG, and also a good bit of Douglas's other work.
The story is told through the Book, or rather, the Guide. The Guide is the voice of the narrator, who spends most of his time talking about the book, that most famous of all books to come out of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor Beta, and which the narrator notes, is the subject of the whole story in the first place. Arthur is just a new reader of the book, Ford an old writer for the book, and the other characters embody it's general philosophy: that the universe is fucked up (Marvin), and you might as well just try to have fun (Zaphod).
All of them have essentially zero control over their own lives, even when they think they do. Trillian and Ford seem to have wilfully chosen to just hang on for the ride, and Zaphod seems to be doing the bidding of unknown voices in his brain. Even the hyper-intelligent trans-dimensional aliens can't figure out what to make the answer to the Ultimate Question, or prevent a bunch of bungling bureaucrats from messing up their shot at obtaining the Question. I'm not trying to belabour the plot here, just point out that it makes sense only if you realize that Douglas is trying to tell you that it doesn't make any sense at all. The Big It. Everything. Nothing Makes Sense.
It's like that moment in the Simpson's when the lawyer invokes the Chewbacca Defence. It doesn't make sense. That what the Hitch Hiker's Guide is all about.
So you can't shoehorn that into a movie about romance and character development and happy endings. All of the best material, what Douglas created, is the ultimate joke of the pointless randomness of life. And that's not only what Douglas' story is about, but what the book inside the story is about. That's why the backbone of any good retelling of the story must make the book itself the central fixture and the backbone of the narrative. Keep as much of Douglas's precisely crafted dialogue in place as possible, and don't worry too much about plot or character development. Make sure that when the audience finds out that the answer, after all that time, searching, questing, is 42, that they laugh in the knowledge that it doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't have to, and you'll feel better if you don't worry about it and just go along for the ride.
And maybe, after the pointless early demise of the author himself, in a fashion so fitting that it ought to have been written by him, we'll eventually get an ultimate movie version that does justice and helps us all feel a bit better about losing him before he could write so many more great works.
Lego + Eddie Izzard = Death Star Canteen
Posted on January 11, 2009 at 02:21 AM
Categories: links, film
My home theatre: Audioengine 5, Airport Express, Sharp Aquos 32D64U, and a Mac Mini
Posted on December 23, 2008 at 01:17 AM
Categories: music, mac, bittorrent, film, photos
Someone asked me recently to describe my home theatre. I've put quite a lot of thought & work into it. But not a lot of money. My goal from the start was to achieve the maximum return with the minimum of complexity.
So, right from the start I knew that it was going to be as much digital as possible. I don't care about live TV and I'm a bittorrent expert so I knew I wouldn't have to mess around with cable connections. But more to the point, being digital means you don't have to worry about analog components or duplication. For example, you can concentrate on having just a single Digital/Analog Converter (DAC)... a key component in your audio set-up.
The first thing I bought was the DAC & speakers. I had a new apartment and I wanted to be able to listen to music there. In particular, I wanted to be able to do two things: listen to music coming off my Nokia N95, which functions like an iPod, and listen to music coming off my laptop, a MacBook Pro. I did a lot of research online to figure out how I could get the best sound with a budget of $400. And I wound up finding a REALLY nice pair of speakers.
I actually restricted my search strictly to powered speakers, or, as they are commonly called, "ipod speakers"... and most of them are fairly crap. Even the ones from Apple didn't really score that well when I listened to them. I'm a musician on the side and I know what good sounds like. None of the ones I could find in stores reproduced sound the way I wanted—clean, like the original, faithful. They were bass heavy and muddy. But online I read a review of AudioEngine 5, a pair of "ipod speakers" that got fabulous reviews—from audiophiles.
You probably know that audiophiles are nutcases, but there is something to be said for their discrimination and knowledge of the art. If an audiophile says something is good, then it probably rocks if you're a normal person, even a musician like me. So, I found a deal and bought the A5s for $350. And I picked up an Apple Airport Express at the same time.
Both purchases turned out better the more I learned. The A5s have built-in amplifiers, which means that I don't need to (a) buy an amp (which I planned) or (b) match the amp to the speakers. That's a relief because sound matching amp/speakers would be a LOT of work. With the Airport Express, I started to notice something odd. When I plugged my MBP directly into the speakers, it sounded OK. But when I played through the Express, it sounded GREAT. Turns out the Express has a quite good DAC inside. Sweet! The improvement is highly audible.
OK, a little digression here about speakers. Most products, you get what you pay for. Not with speakers. Speakers are in fact somehow immune to the whole mass production economics. Most audiophiles seem to agree that most, or perhaps all, consumer grade speakers are absolute shit. To get good speakers you either spend absolutely boatloads of money, buy second-hand, or ... you can buy from very small companies, even individual crafters. Audioengine falls into the last category. Even though their website may look slick, this is a small enthusiast company that just wants to make great speakers.
What's up with that? I don't know. I think partly it's the analog ecosystem. For good analog components you just cannot avoid spending a lot of money on expensive electronics to put inside. You can't skimp or replace things with digital. You have to have huge capacitors, big transistors, lots of coiled wire, heavy metal. Good speakers are HEAVY. They are made not from plastic or even titanium but MDF—that's plywood in normal english. You can't fake this stuff, you have to have it, but it's not rocket science, just good workmanship. So, buying from a small company like Audioengine is not silly, it's a great choice. End of digression.
So... now I had a REALLY good sound system and spent countless hours discovering all kinds of wonderful things about my music collection. It really makes a difference. In fact, I admit that I've poisoned my ears on lesser systems... I just need to hear the higher quality. The music is just ... better. There's more in it, detail wise, spatially, musically, tonally. Get a good pair of speakers & DAC, and you too can discover the magic.
Next up: TV. Starting out, I thought I wanted the biggest plasma I could buy. I read all of the reviews, the dark room tests, HD movies, the works. Plasma is the best, blah blah blah. Went to a big store and suddenly I realized different. Two things for me. One: I'm only about 8 feet from my screen and I don't want to be dwarfed. So, I can knock down the screen size dramatically, in fact, I went down to 32 inches. Crazy eh? Second: I have a sunny upper-floor viewing room with a window directly opposite the display, and I intend to watch during the day. That means matte screen which means LCD. Benefits are that I save money due to the small size, don't have to worry about burn in or wasting power, and I know what LCDs are like from long experience. So I wound up with the Sharp AQUOS 32D64U. This model has 1080p, which was essential for me. I have to be future proof. It's going to be a long time before there's a higher resolution than that for films.
Finally, I need something to tie it all together, and here my Mac bias definitely played a role. Mac Mini of course. Of course it helps that they are silent, small, and look very good indeed. No ugly boxes for me. I run VLC and mplayer, but mainly Plex, and awesome port of XBMC. Video goes through a DVI to HDMI converter into the TV, and sound goes analog into the speakers (A5's have two inputs). My only complaint is again, the Mini's analog audio output is not as good as the Airport Express. Eventually I will have to buy a dedicated DAC.
This setup does everything I need, and it's got a good future. If and when I want to move up to new components, all of these pieces will make excellent secondary system components for a second room. They all go together really well, look good, and look and sound great. All told the whole system was about $2K which is a reasonable price considering that I'm basically completely satisfied at this point in time.
For the future? I might—might—try out surround sound at some point. I'm not crazy about—pointless for music, but for the movies—maybe. I definitely don't need a bigger screen. A proper external DAC, driven by USB port, is probably the next item to get, and then I would begin the search for a new amp/speaker combo. Realistically though I can't upgrade my speakers (or add a sub-woofer) until I move into a house. My apartment does not have thick walls and with the A5 bookshelf-sized speakers I can crank it up any time without waking people up.
So, there you have it... complete system, as digital as it can get, and in the $2K range. I'm happy.
A bit of torrent #6: Three Businessmen
Posted on October 23, 2008 at 11:53 PM
Categories: bittorrent, film
This week on A bit of torrent ...
...a surreal film called Three Businessmen. You may not know that you're going to like this movie. You may not thank me for making you watch this movie. But ultimately, your mind will be expanded and you will have a bit, just a bit, more sympathy for the common business-person.
Basically, you've got two businessmen, pictured, thrown together in a sort of haphazard fashion, and they go trekking across the universe (sort of) in search of a bite to eat. On the way, they have many adventures, bond, and talk a lot of silly business speak. Etc.
(Eventually there is in fact a third.)
OK, there's no plot, virtually, and no action, no violence, no sex, no nudity, no guns, no special effects, hardly any budget. But on the other hand. It's by Alan Cox, who you just might remember from Repo Man (he's also the actor on the right). And it rewards multiple viewings. And it's a bit trippy. I liked it. Will you?
Download Three Businessmen (1998) torrent from The Pirate Bay now.
Till next time: bye bye.
Look at this magnificient parrot - wonderful plumage!
I captured it on digital film at the local bird sanctuary. It seems to have a clipped tail. I assume that it sustained some injury but what do I know. Anyway, this particular parrot gets a lot more interesting around dusk when it likes to talk. It knows how to say Hello and lots of interesting whistles.
I tried to edit the video with Quicktime Pro but the transcoding really ruined the quality. Next time I'll try editing it on the phone which might give a better quality if it avoids transcoding . Also I discovered that the 3GPP video standard produces videos with an 11:9 aspect ratio which is a bit bizarre (normal TV is 4:3).
Well, ok, maybe it's not amazing. But it exists. I wish I could do all this through flickr but I can't because they suck and don't handle 3gp video. Not that I really blame them since it's still really blurry and stuff, but hey, it moves and you can hear stuff. Anyway I just implemented a way to throw these videos into my blog and pages much more easily (using the power of XSLT) so here are two that I took this last Sunday.
Steve and I went for a little walk and we saw this kick ass monarch. here's a photo of it getting away . And here is a video I made when I saw it with my trusty Nokia 6630. It tried to get away, but then it came back.
Later on at the university we saw a hawk or something. Probably a red-tailed hawk since they're pretty common around here. It was too far away to get a good photo but I have this video of Steve climbing illegally anyway.
iMovie to ffmpegX to DivX encoding
Posted on November 17, 2004 at 12:00 PM
Categories: tech, unix, film
How to properly use the kick-ass ffmpegX (for OS X, a wrapper for all kinds of open source tools) to encode your iMovie movies.
It is very important, that you do NOT choose the "Full Quality DV" Setting when exporting from iMovie. This just makes iMovie glueing the 2GB chunks together in which it records movies. Mencoder can't handle that. Here's what to do: Choose "Expert settings". Click "Export". Choose "Movie to Quicktime Movie". Click "Options". In "Video Settings" choose "DV PAL" (or NTSC, if you are on that TV System). In the Audio settings, choose uncompressed 48khz Stereo. Uncheck "Prepare for Internet streaming". Make sure the output file has .mov as extender. Now the recording is reencoded as a single movie which Mencoder will encode completely as AVI.
First, it's nowhere near as simple as I thought. Second, it's nowhere near as complex as I thought. Well, here's how it works. MPEG-4 is a way to define a codec. So, when you go into quicktime and it says, save as MPEG4, you're not saving as MPEG4, you're saving as "Apple's MPEG-4 codec". Which, by the way, sucks compared to basically any other option . There's actually a whole bunch of MPEG-4 codecs, including Divx, Xvid, 3ivx, and a whole bunch of high end professional codecs that cost a lot of money. In theory, any MPEG-4 player can play any MPEG-4 codec. In practice, not so much. But also, in practice, VLC and MPlayer can play them all.
Following all that, here's an enlightening discussion thread comparing various formats and explaining MPEG-4 .
I just posted the wedding movie from my cousin Dave's wedding last september. Relatives might be interested.
Today I have a new movie of the World Cycling Championship up on the site. It was shot this afternoon and edited this evening in iMovie. My camera is a Sony TRV22. Here's the blurb that I wrote up for the page, and you can go straight there by clicking on the title of this entry. The music, I nicked from a 1983 german classic.
On October 11, 2003, the World Cycling Championships were held in Hamilton, Ontario. I went with my camera and shot some tape. Forthwith is the result after a bit of editing. What you see here is the Women's Elite race, actually just one of many races over the three-day championship. The leading racer in the film is Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli (France), who broke away from the pack in the 8th lap of 10 total. You can see here the racers going down the Hamilton mountain and then back up again, the final climb before the end of the race where a group from the pack are catching up to Jeannie is the last shot. For those who care to know these things (I don't really) the winner was Susanne Ljungskog (Sweden), and Jeannie came in 6th.
It wasn't exactly intentional, but it seems that my camera managed to linger on the Canadian Lyne Bessette! I have actually a couple of close ups of her, even though I didn't know it was her at the time. She's wearing a light blue jersey and shorts, and has a canadian flag and the Tim Horton's logo on her thigh. She's also 103 by the way ;-)