A Whole Lotta Nothing

iMovie on the iPhone 4

The other day I was at a friend's house and we set up a slip 'n slide for our daughters to play on. I took out my new phone, recorded a couple clips of the setup and a few clips of them using it. I had downloaded iMovie earlier (it's $5 in the app store unfortunately) so I wanted to try it out for the first time.

I opened iMovie, created a new project, and selected my clips. With its minimal interface and no instructions, I guessed correctly that you can customize output by double clicking items. I added a title and a background song in just a couple clicks, and then it was done.

Here's the output:

What I'm most amazed about is that all the complexity of video editing was taken away and automated but the default settings are very, very good. I'm blown away that an application running on my phone let me edit a little movie, it added cross-dissolve transitions and auto-ducked the music when there was audio on the mic, and even had all the title fade sequences worked out. The whole thing is amazing and pretty incredible for a phone app.

(if you want to see what the app can do in the hands of a pro, check out this video on Vimeo)

Another breakthrough for the low budget filmmaker

I posted this on MetaFilter but I can embed video here so I'll do that as well.

What happens when you strap a $1700 digital SLR camera doing full HD video to a $2k remote controlled helicopter? You get amazing freaking video:

Another example of what you can do with a few grand worth of equipment that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to do with a real helicopter (not to mention, would also be super dangerous)

Khan Academy

My favorite project and talk from GEL 2010 was this one by Sal Khan. His amazing Khan Academy is what happens when you sit down and simply share comprehensive knowledge on every subject imaginable and make it freely accessible to as many people as possible. 

Sal Khan at Gel 2010 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Fantastic body boarding video

The video game-like surfing video of Matt Meola blew minds a few months ago and I'd say there are some sections of this body boarding video that come close, where guys are absolutely hucking themselves out of waves and doing some pretty insane barrel rolls on monster waves. It's filmed beautifully too.

La Blogotheque takeaway shows

I'm a late comer to La Blogotheque's Takeaway shows (Andy turned me onto them six months ago). From what I gather, the site is like a French Pitchfork, and when musicians come visit, a video director and sound guy throw some instruments at the musicians and they play wherever they can. Buses, street corners, and hotel rooms are the norm, and the videos (and music in them) are simply amazing.

There's some magic combo of improvisation with nervous musicians using borrowed guitars, standing in a French street where few people recognize them, while a shaky hand camera captures the unamplified sounds. There's something incredible about how it all comes together and you're instantly transported onto the street as a nervous onlooker, instead of an idle observer at a computer. It feels like if a tripod was used, the whole thing would come off as fake like U2 playing a rooftop show, or if the band seemed too rehearsed or comfortable, you couldn't pick up on the energy of the moment.

They're all great, but these are my favorites:

I'd never heard Phoenix before but I enjoyed the videos so much that I bought two of their albums off iTunes. Much to my surprise, the sound on their records is smoothed over and diluted, with none of the raw charisma seen in the live taping. I almost want to rip mp3s from these videos and replace the album tracks.

On the plus side, this means they'll be great live and hopefully next month I'll see them in Portland.

Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young doing the Fresh Prince theme

Astoundingly brilliant and funny to boot:

Spring Blossoms

Spring Cherry Blossom blooming from Matt Haughey on Vimeo.

Autotune

Though I bet Anil has seenit, here's a brilliant goofy video from the Vimeo crew called Auto Tuning:

Auto Tuning from Casey D on Vimeo.

Flip video from yesterday's cyclocross race

Heiser Farms Cross A class race from Matt Haughey on Vimeo.

Someone wants me to install adblock

Recording of me trying to follow a link in a Salon article today. Somehow I wish there was a code of online advertising ethics that stated One Must Never Obscure Content With Advertising but I'm not holding my breath for that happening anytime soon.

30 second clips from the aquarium

I love that flickr is limiting videos to 90 seconds. It makes it the twitter of video that way and I don't find myself ever getting bored clicking around my contacts. Here are a bunch of 30 seconds-or-shorter videos from a trip to the aquarium today.

Interviewapolooza

Anyone that follows this blog probably knows me and my projects pretty well, but you'll probably learn something new and/or get a kick out of something I've said in recent interviews. I was on the BoingBoing podcast a couple weeks ago, with the last 20 minutes or so devoted to talking about how I run MetaFilter. Bren from Slackermanager caught up with me for his new Yamhill.tv project, a video interview site/podcast devoted to residents of the small county in Oregon where I live.