Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Today’s SF Chronicle is running an article about the growth and diversity of Internet video content. They include a list, and here are some of the hyperlinks to the sites. See the democratization of television on the march.

• YouTube – looks like flickr for videos
• Current TV – an ambitious user created video content network offering payment for your uploaded video projects.
• vMix – videos submitted and ranked from around the world
• vidiLife – yet another way to share videos with your friends
• Ourmedia – this one appears to have a socially conscious edge
• Break.com – kind of sleazy and commercial brand of site
• FireAnt – pioneering videoblogging
• Veoh – invitation to submit your videos. Clips from copyrighted films such as Coppola’s Dementia 13.
• GorillaMask.net – slick, sexy, commercial regurgitation of primarily professional mass media
• Grouper – a place to upload and share your videos from
• GUBA – enables images and video through good old Usenet
• Podzinger – an index of audio and video for podcasting

Congratulations to the little guys! John Canemaker and Peggy Stern won an Oscar for Best Animated Short film, The Moon And The Son, at the 78th Academy Awards last night, beating out the mighty Pixar’s One Man Band. The handwriting is on the wall that the psychological expression of hand drawn animation is the real treasure, since 3-D computer animation has become as common and all pervasive as video games.

Luma Pictures recently produced 200 monstrously realistic visual effects shots of vampires and werewolves for the recent horror movie UNDERWORLD: EVOLUTION. Apple’s web site has a good write up of the software and visual effects techniques of Luma’s artists on Underworld, Crash and The Cave. The 3-D modeling, animation and compositing is very high end.

Luma’s work generated a VFX Forum discussion which includes an excited artist bubbling over his first film experience. Looking at the trailer I am too removed from the excitement. With all the real life horrors in the world, what is so scary about this old fashioned hocus pocus stuff?

Loose Change 2nd Edition is a hard hitting, provocative 9/11 documentary that can be viewed at Google Video. The observations in the documentary are highly disturbing, which many Americans would prefer not to believe: that the 9/11 was a staged event by our own government to create a Pearl Harbor II as a pretext for Middle Eastern wars, political power grabs, gold, insider stock profits and insurance money.

The documentary covers these 9/11 mysteries:

• a missile-like hole in the Pentagon and lack of aircraft debris.
• black box flight recorders not retrieved.
• lack of aircraft debris or bodies found at Pennsylvania “crash” site.
• explosion evidence at base of twin towers, far from aircraft initial impact.
• evidence of controlled demolition explosions at WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7.
• inability of cell phones on aircraft to contact phones on ground.

The stomach turning implications, if proven out, would of course be the horror story of the century. The documentary suggests that there are clues that could be tracked down, such as accused hijackers may still be alive, aircraft victims may still be alive, because planes were switched, and the list of deep, dark secrets goes on and on. Could so many innocent people be sacrificed for such a ruse? Could so many Americans be fooled? Who knows?

Online resources such as Killtown.org have collected theories and evidence.

Update:  New York Magazine’s article, The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll.

Today on the KQED radio program Forum, documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker (“Don’t Look Back”), Richard Leacock, Stephen Ujlaki, director of the Documentary Film Institute at SF State University, and Dan Krauss, Bay Area filmmaker whose film “The Death of Kevin Carter” is nominated for an Academy Award discussed their craft. Part of their debate was if the documentary filmmaker should be a “fly on the wall” or not.

My own experience shooting photographs of rock bands performing in small clubs is that the performers know you are there and they know how to act. As a photographer I’ve felt the need to be “cold blooded” in order to best capture a moment. The focus is on the technical aspects of the film, lighting, camera and lens fitting the subject into the frame. A good photographer calmly and cooly stalks the great image and can only indulge in emotional reactions after it has been successfully captured. I know people who have flown to war zones in order to find “great” photographs, and that is not for me.

Dan Krauss discussed the dilemma of whether or not to become in involved in the subject matter, explored in his Oscar nominated documentary short about photographer Kevin Carter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his picture (above) of a Sudan famine victim above. Mr. Carter was haunted by the photo and committed suicide, tormented by his conscience and other critics for exploiting the suffering of others.

Computer animation artwork based on fractal flocking logic by Spot Draves. From his Dreams In High Fidelity web site:

A Painting that Evolves:

Physically Dreams In High Fidelity consists of a small computer driving a large liquid crystal or plasma display. The computer creates a continuously morphing, non-repeating, abstract animation.

This work stretches the definition of “painting,” in this case, a computer rendering math logic onto electronic displays. I believe the legion of painters from Picasso on back to the cave dwellers might argue in favor of the hand rendered definition of painting, whereas this is a robotic automaton spitting electronic fire.

In case you missed the Super Bowl XL commercials, they are posted at Google’s video site. Budweiser sponsored enough ads to assure a couple of winners, and my favorite was the follow-up to the previously aired and beautifully photographed Clydesdale horses lining up for a football scrimmage and being referreed by a zebra. In this one, a shaved sheep bursts on the scene, interupting the game, and two cowpokes comment, “Streaker.” Silly pink lamb animation adds to the fun. Also good was the suburban Bud guys telling their wives they were working on the roof, and then setting up roof top parties. The Burger King “Whopperettes” was great silly fun. A couple of big monster CG ads by FedEx and Hummer were good, but more weird than funny. My worst ad choices are the Pepsi themed ads, especially the Hip Hop one. Really weak. The Cadillac Escalade fashion model runway mix should make anyonewho owns one who isn’t already embarrassed, truly ashamed. I suspect most Escalade owners lack shame anyway.

In the end I felt the luster of the Super Bowl ads had tarnished a bit. Less great ads, more blah blah car and TV promo ads. It looks like the Super Bowl is headed the way of the Miss America pageant, like who cares?

This weekend I am finishing up the last of 200 health-themed biomedical images for a PureStock CD-ROM. All of the illustrations were composed and rendered with Maya 3D software. This project started late in the summer, and is finally arriving at the last few images to complete the collection. Along the way I made use of some cool texture shaders to give the body parts an x-ray look, and cells an “under the microscope look.” If sales go well enough, I’d like to invest in more detailed 3D body models, with more veins, nerves, muscles and tendons. “Igor, come quickly, I’ve got a job for you!”