This is only my sixth week of posting my videos of the week and I’m delighted that it is being hosted on the Illuminations blog for the first time. This week is probably the most mixed bag yet so I hope that readers from both my own site, and the Illuminations site, find something that interests them.
Kicking off for us is the news that this week New Zealand became the 13th country to legalise same-sex marriage. MP Maurice Williams delivers a very entertaining speech that underlines the bill being passed.
I got very excited by this after watching the next video. Some very clever people over at hyperlapse.tllabs.io have built a site that links with imagery from Google street view and allows you to create your own 60 frame ‘hyperlapse’ between ANY two points on Earth. This is quite a lot of fun to play around with and once you have exhausted the 60 frame limit, if you’re clever enough, the source code is available (here) for you to manipulate yourself and remove all of the limitations! Here’s one I made that moves along a stretch of road commonly known as the ‘5 mile road’ in Jersey where I grew up: http://bit.ly/XKA23e
Google Street View Hyperlapse from Teehan+Lax Labs on Vimeo.
Despite most of us consuming a large percentage of our media online now, a lot of us still enjoy having something physically in our hands to look at. For me it makes something feel more precious than just seeing it on a webpage or computer screen. This is just a fantastic idea about how to bring the variety of the digital world together in one personally curated book or portfolio by utilising an online ability to build media. A good one for future presents to people as well!
“Print-on-demand has completely changed the way we think about books” from Dezeen on Vimeo.
Here’s another one for my process video archive that I went off on one about last week. Anton Alvarez is an RCA graduate who makes furniture without joints or screws.
Thread Wrapping Machine by Anton Alvarez from Dezeen on Vimeo.
Next is my weekly film-tech-geek-fix. Everyone’s talking about 4K resolution. 4K, in it’s most basic terms is supposedly double the resolution quality of standard high-definition. 4K (4,000) refers to the number of pixels running length ways across a captured image. Standard high-definition currently outputs an image that has 1,920 pixels across and 1,080 pixels high. Commonly known as 1080p or 1080i. For high end cinema 4K will probably become standard in the next 5 years or so? However, broadcast will take much longer to adopt this kind of specification (if it even does so that is). For the kind of content we make at Illuminations, 4K isn’t worth the debate. It’s excessive to say the least, not to mention hugely expensive to shoot (the camera responsible for the footage below is currently priced at just over £90,000) and process and edit and output. There is no denying however, that it looks SERIOUSLY COOL. The video below shows the first proper footage take from the new Phantom Flex camera that is capable of shooting 4K RAW at 1000 frames per second. For anyone unsure of what that means, it is basically capable of capturing the kind of slow motion that makes you see the world in a different way and at the kind of quality that makes you appreciate being alive! (I did warn you this was a film-tech-geek-fix right?)
– First footage from the new Phantom Flex4K – “Let me know when you see Fire” from Gregory Wilson on Vimeo.
And if all that wasn’t enough to make you go mental, then this will certainly have an affect on your eyes, or brain, or both. Amazing imagery here.
Illusions (part one) from Animal on Vimeo.
Have a good weekend.
Todd MacDonald 