glitterfish.com

This short video is ridiculously inspirational. In fact, it is so inspirational I’m going to tag it as awesome and share it with you.

This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

If it looks familiar its the same guy who did that other Web 2.0 video.

Amautalab is an animation studio based out of LA, Buenos Aires and Lima. It’s headed by Carlos Battilana, Martin Jalfen and Julian Montesano.

I love this biology inspired music video for Anne Laplatine. It’s a rough life when your a red blood cell.

(via Cartoon Brew)

My buddy Cameron’s prized possession is an enormous big screen HDTV. Considering that I don’t own a television of any size Cameron’s monster TV is very impressive. Any time there is a Sun’s game or not to be missed HD Discovery Channel nature documentary we all go over to watch and be amazed.

Last night was Cameron’s birthday so we were all over at his house playing Nintendo and drinking into the Wii hours of the night (that’s punny!). I really love playing Wii but I’m embarrassingly bad at it. Knowing that Cameron’s susceptible to purchasing gadgets, I suggested he buy an Apple TV so we could watch Youtube on his big screen. He replied that in fact you can watch Youtube using the Wii! I was hugely relieved to stop losing Wii sports and shift to watching stupid internet videos.

I guess it was the first time he tried watching Youtube on his Wii because Cameron was surprised that it actually worked. Searching is a little awkward as it’s hard to type using your Wii remote but the full screen option worked very well and the video quality was more or less watchable. It was a lot of fun sitting around watching the internet when your not all huddled around a laptop. It was very social and even became competitive when everyone started one upping each other by throwing out their recently watched favorite web videos.

Our spontaneously generated playlist:

• What What in the Butt
• Breakdancer Kicks Baby + Remix 1 + Remix 2
• Conan O’brien - MC Hammer’s Dancer
• Gay Boys Soccer Practice
• Grape Lady Falls + Music Video Remix
• Pablo Francisco - Mexican Women

News Corp. and NBC announce partnership to create YouTube competitor.
• NBCU-News Corp.: More Like The Anti-YouTube Than YouTube Killer

The following is a list of the top 10 most visited video posts on Glitterfish in 2006:

1) Lily Allen LDN and Smile Videos
2) Washington
3) Jagged Peak Adventure
4) System D-128
5) Paris Hilton’s “Stars are Blind” Video
6) Defaced Wolfmother Video
7) Remixed Pepsi Mentos Experiments
8) Guyz Night Die Hard Video
9) Gnarls Biggie Video
10) Squeaking in at number 10…the Glitterfish Stormhoek Geek Dinner Video!!!

Nate put together a good list of the year’s best web videos.

This clip remixes the OK GO treadmill video using legos. I guess I’m a sucker for click bait…

Not only did director Mreel777 animate only half the song, but each frame is up for too long creating a jerky and amateurish stop motion effect. Worse of all is there are noticeably out of focus shots peppered throughout the entire thing. All in all its a pretty terrible effort by director Mreel777 who is going to have to be a little less lazy if he wants to compete with Youtube Lego autuer, TazziToz. Watch his remix of the first Ok Go video, “A Million Ways:”

Clearly TazziToz has a superior sense of production design. Additionally, the camera work, while still lacking, is miles above Mreel777’s.

However, by far my favorite Youtube Lego remix is this Star Wars video by Vidmaster55 and his (former) friend. Vidmaster55 has actually done a couple of lego stop motions. Apparently, he works without the benefit of editing software. He builds a slide show out of still photographs and then shoots his computer monitor to create the video. I’m going to repost the video description of “Lego Star Wars: “Supposed” Final Duel” in its entirety. Its a fascinating case study of how creative differences can shatter friendships and get in the way of the work:

WHY THIS VIDEO SUCKS Oh my God!! This video sucks. Ok here’s the deal, I was over my (former) friend’s house and he well, insited on making a lego video. I mean he’s heard about my lego productions, (With every film I get better.) and he thinks that you can just snap a couple lego pictures make the slideshow, film it, insert a couple of sound fx and post it here. Well, its not that easy, and plus, if you want to have good audio you have to time the slideshow film, write a script, and discise your voice so it doesn’t sound like some “13 year old star wars nerd.” The whole Prosses takes about three to four weeks. My supposedly straight A student friend was like “Naaa we can do it in two hours or less.” TWO HOURS OR LESS?! what are you crazy!? I even explained to him how the procedure works. But no you can do it in two hours. Also to make the vid more interesting you should add music. My friend and I tried that. But he thought that you didn’t have to include it into your script that because of his “Brain Power” we didn’t need one. The film was suppose to be sort of serious like you know in star wars ep. III, but this dude thinks everything is funny, everything should be a comedy. Well sure enough he classifed the vid as comedy and when he did all the voices, you couldn’t even tell it was star wars. Now let me ask you a question. Do stormtroopes cry like little girls? Of cours not. But my know it all (former) friend thinks they do. So when we tried to film it and we didn’t succeed I ask him if we want to try a script. He said “What’s the point.” Now I’m really pissed off. He thinks, “Oh its no big deal, its not hard.” This kid, I’m telling you…. UGH!! And you know, now that I think of it, it did only take two hours. Since we ditched the script, killed the music and didn’t even care if it had good graphics. Then once we ran the slideshow on his P.C., the whole thing had that like thing going up and down the screen, so it didn’t even look right. (his computer didn’t have a flat pannel monitor so it mad the screen do that funky line thing) So obviously he isn’t my friend anymore. Ya see I’m not his friend just because he didn’t care about the hard work that it takes to make a lego video, but also he was being… well here I’ll tell you. At school he is always talking to me and being annoiying. So one day (the day of the halloween dance at school) I tell him to stop it and I’m not his friend. So of coarse he goes and starts to cry and wimper. Then during the dance he goes up to his mom (his mom works at the school) and says “Edward won’t be my friend.” So his mom come s up to me, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DANCE and embarreses me and says “YOU BE EDDIE’S FRIEND!!!” (We both have the same name…kinda freaky) So I say no and walk away from him and his mom. Now of course Eddie thinks everything is okay and walks over to me an is like “Hey dude!” And the rest of the dance was hell. Finally like almost two months later we aren’t friends. And according to him and his control freak mom I don’t exist! THANK YOU GOD!!! I gon’t have to deal with him and his [SENSORED] Mom!! THE END

There were four grand prize winners (best video, best song, best live performance, and most creative) in addition to ten more honorable mentions.

Since our video was pretty good and there were only 2264 entries, I’m going to just assume that we got 15th place.

If you lost be sure to blame Youtube and talk shit about the winners on the contest’s comments page.

Nerdkiller is my favorite Youtube personality of the moment. I’m not going to bother giving a writeup as there isn’t really anything noteworthy about the film making.

After the success of Charles Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the issuing of such statements became popular with all kinds of political, social, and artistic organizations. Art manifestos were a feature of many Modern art movements of the early 20th century and they have continued to be issued by new groups ever since. Circulated in magazines, journals, newspapers, and now the web, the documents served as an easy platform for art movements to renounce the outdated ideas of the past and outline new aesthetic and thematic frameworks.

Generally manifestos contain a brief introduction followed by an enumerated list of demands and then some commentary. Usually they are written in a revolutionary or even incendiary tone. In his dada manifesto, Feeble Love & Bitter Love II (1920), Tristan Tzara’s describes the art manifesto as follows.

A manifesto is a communication made to the whole world, whose only pretension is to the discovery of an instant cure for political, astronomical, artistic, parliamentary, agronomical and literary syphilis. It may be pleasant, and good-natured, it’s always right, it’s strong, vigorous and logical. Apropos of logic, I consider myself very likeable.

I’ve said before that art is in a slump. These days art is dominated by the page-view-click-thru critics. With their penchant for hype and smarmy language, the blogant-garde has gone from a cornucopias “chorus of voices” into a homogeneous indiecrat PR machine. If you think that’s a grim situation, I don’t even want to get into god and politics. Because the world needs revolution, and because I find myself very likeable, Mr. Tzara’s words strike me.

The reasons are all the usual suspects: cheap cameras, cheap bandwidth, cheap blah blah blah. The deluge of short form video is upon us. Artist, filmmaker, and photographer Nathan Swango of Freeworkingspace.com proposes:

Laying awake I recall an idea shared with me by a good friend, his thought is that anything is watchable as long as it is short. Lately it seems true, a new wave in videography and digital filmmaking has emerged in the form of amatuer filmmaking and internet streaming video. Enormous trends have been set already, funny cats, inside jokes, personal video journals, sexy-smoking-housewives, music video parodies, etc. More often we are seeing professional concepts being inspired by amatuer videographers. The mass contribution continues non-stop and it is a global phenomenon.

Here is my list of rules for Short Concept Digital Video, this is an experiment:

1. One minute in length (60 seconds).
2. Up to but not more than four edits.
3. Camera is hand held.
4. Sound must be original.
5. Playback demensions must be 320X240.
6. No credit to the director.
7. Quick, Cheap, Easy but no sacrifice to the integrity and the quality of the idea.
8. Showcased in a digital public forum, i.e. the internet, youtube.com, Google Video.

Nate doesn’t think like the hand held camera rule and I definitely agree. There seems to be consensus that the 4 cut limit is at least very interesting even if there is disagreement on the exact number of cuts. My favorite rule is #6 but I think it contradicts #4. To me rule number #4 totally flies in the face of what digital short form video is. Digitized information has no “final cut.” Putting something on the web is implicitly giving permission to have your work remixed, mashed up, and made fun of.

Go read the manifesto and check out Freeworkingspace.com.