It is the eleventh Star Trek film and features the main characters of the original Star Trek series, who are portrayed by a new cast. It follows James T. Kirk enrolling at Starfleet Academy, his first meeting with Spock, and their battles with Romulans from the future, who are interfering with history.
I’m not a proponent of the idea that any Trek is good Trek so I really want to hate this movie but it looks kind of awesome. At least f’ing McG didn’t direct.
Online political observers say President-elect Obama’s innovative, online-fueled campaign will likely evolve into a new level of online communication between the public and the White House — the Internet-era version of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous “fireside chats” between 1933 and 1944.
Now that the Flip has released their handheld digital HD video camera, here’s a little rundown of the offerings currently out there and coming soon.
Kodak Zi6 - 128MB of built-in memory, expandable to 32GB, 720p, 1280x720 at 60 fps, 2.4 in. LCD, AA rechargable batteries. $180. (Video sample.)
Flip Video MinoHD - 4GB of built-in memory (~60 min of video), 720p, 1280x720 at 30 fps, 1.5 in. LCD, very slim handheld. $229. (Video sample.)
Nikon D90 SLR - expandable SD memory, 720p, 1280x720 at 24 fps for 5 minutes at a time, 3 in. LCD, and almost every single setting and control that’s available on a SLR camera. $1200. (Video samples.)
Canon 5D Mark II SLR - expandable CF memory, 1080p, 1920x1080 at 24 fps for 30 minutes at a time, 3 in. LCD, and almost every single setting and control that’s available on a SLR camera. $2700. (Video sample.)
Red One - Not going to list the specs on this one, except to to say that you can shoot whole feature length movies on this thing at a higher resolution for less money than pretty much any other camera out there, digital or otherwise. $17500. (Gorgeous video sample.)
You may have noticed that the video of Burn-E I embedded looked a bit better than a normal YouTube video. YouTube has been quietly offering high-quality versions of some of their videos for quite some time via a “watch in high quality” link just underneath the player. It’s not HD, but it’s definitely an upgrade of YouTube’s legendarily crappy video quality. By default all videos on YouTube and embedded on other sites load at normal quality, but there’s a way to set your default viewing quality to high, link to high quality video, embed HQ video, and even save HQ videos for later viewing.
Set your default viewing quality to high:
When you’re logged in, go to Account / Playback Setup / Video Playback Quality and set the option to “I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available.”
Linking to YouTube videos in high quality:
If you need to link to a high quality video on your blog, append &fmt=18 onto the end of the YouTube URL, like so:
Upon arriving at the YouTube page, you’ll see the highest quality video that YouTube pushes out. The full technical details are available here…basically it’s a mp4 encoded using H.264 with stereo AAC sound at 480x360.
Embedding high quality YouTube videos:
The &fmt=18 trick doesn’t work here, but a similar trick does. For each of the URLs in the embeddable code that you get from YouTube, add &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 onto the end, like so:
Saving high quality YouTube videos:
When you’re viewing a high quality video on YouTube, you can use the KeepVid bookmarklet to download the mp4 file for later viewing on your computer, iPod, or iPhone. I tested this with the Burn-E video and the resulting mp4 was in letterbox format (480x198, or roughly the standard 2.40:1 aspect ratio).
BTW, here’s a comparison of the low and high quality for the same video.
Update: I switched the example videos and code because YouTube took the Burn-E video down.
Update: I got an email from a YouTube engineer who tells me that format 18 isn’t even the highest quality you can get. Check out Dancing Matt in format 22, aka 720p. Furthermore, some videos don’t have a format 18 version (if the uploaded movie doesn’t have sufficient quality, for instance). (thx, phil)
Sea Orchestra is a nice animated commercial for United Airlines done by Shy the Sea. As lovely as it is, the “making of” video — which reveals reference materials, initial sketches, and storyboards — might be even better. (thx, dave)
Dark Days is a documentary released in 2000 about a group of homeless people living in an abandoned Manhattan railway tunnel.
When he relocated from London to Manhattan, Marc Singer was struck by the number of homeless people he had seen throughout the city. Singer had befriended a good number of New York’s homeless and later, after hearing of people living underground in abandoned tunnel systems, he met and became close to a group of people living in The Freedom Tunnel community stretching north from Penn Station past Harlem. After living with them for a number of months, he decided to create a documentary in order to help them financially. The film’s crew consisted of the subjects themselves, who rigged up makeshift lighting and steadicam dollies, and learned to use a 16mm camera with black & white Kodak film. Singer himself had never been a filmmaker before, and saw the production of Dark Days as a means of gaining better accommodation for the residents of the tunnel.
And then there’s the self-created interview ad that is a product of recent advances in technology. Camcorders that can be taken anywhere. We’ve seen self-reporting from the Iraq War and video diaries created by soldiers. The photographs and videos from Abu Ghraib are part of this phenomenon. Ultimately, video-blogging and self-reporting finds its expression in campaigns like the “Joe the Plumber.” As I understand it, the McCain campaign has posted on its Web pages a request for people to film themselves and discuss why they are Joe the Plumber or Hank the Laminator or Frank the Painter. The intention is to collect these testimonials and then cut them together for a tax revolt television ad.
The Unfinished Swan is a maze game set in an entirely white world and you use a gun that shoots black paint balls to navigate your way around. Check out the demo video:
So there it is: a weird/powerful truism about social politics delivered in a catchy, post-modern package that uses parody, found video, and cutting-edge video techniques (and let’s not sell Hype Williams short for a second — check out the shots of Puffy and Mase in the yellow suits — I mean, what the hell is that?!), all montaged together with an off-handed mastery (check out how some of the transitions are deliberately not on-beat) to create something that felt so like the future that it could never really be the future. Just like all videos for pop singles, it was dug, and it was forgotten. And so it goes. Somewhere out there there is a list of videos that really truly did something new, and this one belongs on that list.
From The Living Room Candidate, a site which houses presidential campaign commercials from 1952-present, comes a 1960 commercial for John F. Kennedy. How the ad positions Kennedy reminds me of the delicate fusion that Barack Obama is attempting with his relative newness to politics and readiness for the job.
Do you want a man for President who’s seasoned through and through but not so doggoned seasoned that he won’t try something new? A man who’s old enough to know and young enough to do…
What a great ad…I wish they still made ‘em like this. You may remember seeing this on Mad Men.
The stage manager didn’t help. “Sting never shares a microphone,” he muttered to Ketola as she waited in the wings before the concert. “So don’t [expletive] up.” But in true fairy-tale tradition, a white knight swept in with a bottle of water and a few reassuring words. “He says that to me every night, too,” Sting confided.
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