Month: January 2006

Introducing Twelve Fives

Welcome to this little experiment in short short film, delivered as a video podcast. It’s simple: twelve shots, each five seconds long. Why? To find a way to show old tapes that won’t bore everyone (including me).

I’ve edited holiday footage down before: 8 hours from three months on a scooter around Europe. It went down to 2 hours 45, then down again to 1 hour 25. That’s watchable, but I don’t have time to. I do have time to edit and to watch a series of one minute snapshots, so I made up some rules to help. Don’t worry, it’s not Dogme.

Pick twelve good shots and find the best five seconds in each. Add some music, credits top and tail, and you’re done. Easy to edit, and twelve similar shots create a tight little haiku-style portrait.

As I work through the many “USA road trip 2004” tapes sitting in the cupboard, I’ll add more episodes to the video podcast. I’m considering opening this site up to other people’s videos. I’ll add a few how-to guides if people are interested. For now, drop me a line on twelvefives [at] funwithstuff.com.

Some great photos at this Japanese photoblog. Yes, the comments are in Japanese, but the titles aren’t and the photos are still photos. Depth of field control (using a shift lens in some pics) makes cityscapes look like models. Could probably do this in Photoshop with the old duplicatelayer-blur-addlayermask-mirrorgradient trick.

A change: no more referral bonuses for basic accounts. It’s still worth joining, I just won’t be able to fling cash your way if you click my link to do it. Ah well.

Derren Brown is a fantastic illusionist. Wish one of the Australian networks would pick up his show, as I’d love to see the last and current seasons. Anyway, check out his site, which sets a new standard for great Flash design. Stylish, great audio, consistently freaky and interesting.

This is good. This is interesting stuff. Xooglers is the blog of ex-Google employees. Very interesting if you’ve ever wondered what happens in the company that claims to “Do No Evil”.

So I’m searching for album art for some of the weirder albums in our collection, trying to feed the fabulous CoverFlow, a great program that lets you browse through your albums as if they were real again. Check out the movie on the site for a demo.

Anyway, found a blank for “This Is Isis” from Isis, a once-Brisband. Now CoverFlow does look up covers on the internet itself, but if it can’t help, you can try Clutter, which shows album artwork for whatever’s playing in iTunes. Clutter came up blank too, so back to CoverFlow, right-click, choose Google Image Search. That’s useless, so in a last ditch attempt I put quotes around the album name: Isis “This Is Isis” – Google Image Search.

And came back with a great number of new pets. All called Isis. Love the net.

Since Channel 7 has actively chosen not to allow email feedback, let’s air some dirty laundry here, on my blog. Where few people are ever likely to read it. Sigh.

1. The tennis is on a delayed telecast here in Brisbane, so looking at the current scores online means you’re waaaay out in front when returning to the TV.

2. Jim Courier, commentator, is an annoying, disagreeable, bleathering wanker.

3. They’ve managed to sneak ads between games by cutting to a shot of a big screen outside the stadium, then superimposing their own ads on that screen with a poxy pseudo-commentator voiceover. Pure evil.

These bug the shit out of me, and I’m not even a tennis fan. Making a program more enjoyable with the sound off is a tricky feat, but they’ve managed.