I once spent a very memorable evening in a 21,000 seat arena in Manchester where the biggest screen I have ever seen covered the whole of one side.
Sat below the screen, dwarfed by it’s scale, was a full classical orchestra.
The orchestra was there to play the original soundtrack to accompany the stunning Blue Planet visuals on the screen. The visual and auditory effect was stunning.
We’ll soon be watching Blue Planet II, but before that here’s a prequel:
When I get into my car I normally turn my iPhone to silent and place it upside down on shelf out of view.
Why so paranoid? I know I’m easily distracted.
Smartphones are powerful distraction devices, very powerful. Distraction and driving is a deadly combination. Enabling “Do Not Disturb While Driving” in iOS 11 will work as another safeguard against the distraction.
I have no idea how many times I check my phone every day, but it’s a lot, and it’s mostly unconscious. If my phone is within reach I’ll check it so i need to take practical steps to avoid the interuptions.
A documentary released yesterday called It’s People Like Us provides a powerful reminder of the impact of this distraction:
This documentary follows five real Australians who, just like us, have found themselves drawn into their screens at the expense of common sense and self preservation.
It’s been a little while since we had some Morph and as he’s 40 this year I thought we’d take a look back at his appearances on Take Hart which was a favourite of my childhood. As Morph was on television for over three decades I suspect that there are a lot of childhoods with the same fond memories.
It always amazed me how much effort must have gone in to creating these initial short segments.
There’s also a 15 minute compilation and a 25 minute remastered compilation if you need more.
Sometimes it’s the simplest things that are the most fascinating when slowed down, that’s certainly true when the Slow Mo Guys start to play with a Chinese Spouting Bowl, also known as a Singing Bowl.
Being able to see sound vibrations and the resulting resonance is fabulous, especially when you see that the bowl you thought was quite still is moving quite a bit:
I usually choose short interesting videos, this one isn’t one of them, it’s 10 hours of mountain video with sound from Planet Earth II including green meadows, forests, snow capped peaks, hummingbirds and bees.
There’s an interesting reason for the BBC doing this and that’s it’s Real Happiness Project which has been built following a study which suggests that watching nature programmes, specifically Planet Earth II, is good for your happiness:
The study found a range of significant results evidencing not only that watching content from Planet Earth II inspired significant increases in feelings of awe, contentedness, joy, amusement and curiosity, but that it also acted to reduce feelings of tiredness, anger and stress. In the majority of cases, changes in emotions were caused by the type of content viewed, and significantly different from the control group. Our findings therefore support the conclusion that viewing Planet Earth II inspires positive changes in emotions that are distinct to the natural history genre.
If you prefer desert, or island, or jungle video and sounds, there’s another 10 hours available for each of them. You could spend a whole working week just watching and listening to nature.
A delightful piece of daftness for a Friday in July.
One day I woke up and I saw everything in perspective…
It’s a perspective that sees things very differently:
Via Collosal.
I’m feeling a little bit surreal today and this film by Michel Gondry fit the criteria.
The tricycle is definitely the star of the show, nut the singing fish are quite good too.
From a technical perspective, it’s shot entirely on an iPhone 7 (which is why it’s been published by Apple). Film making used to require equipment worth millions of pounds, there are clearly limitations to using a mobile device, but this video shows that film making can now be done an a very reasonable budget:
Love it, or hate it, there’s no denying that the style and architecture of the London Underground is iconic. In this video take a walk down the middle of the tunnels, platforms, escalators and stairs. Someone had some very late nights to get all of these places with so few people in them.
We have a thing with tunnels. The underground of London is one of the most impressive infrastructures of the world. It’s a network that transports millions of people every day. Some call it hell. We see beauty.
The infinite tunnels pull us in with their symmetry. The ceiling lights guide our eyes to the horizon. The tiles and posters form patterns that please the eye. The echoes of rushing crowds, a flickering light, a train zooming by.
Stop motion appears quite often on a Friday, that’s partly because I like it, but also because I’m fascinated by the amount of time people will spend creating a piece.
Today’s stop motion must have taken an extraordinary amount of effort and patience with each frame being built by shaving off another layer of wood.
Brett Foxwell who created it describes it like this:
It was a challenging technique to perfect, but once I did, I was able to shoot short sequences that move the camera through samples of hardwood, burls and branches. The result is beautiful imagery both abstract and very real. In the twisting growth rings and the swirling rays, a new universe is revealed.
Via Colossal
The Slow Mo Guys are larking around with giant water balloons again.
I don’t think I need to say any more:
Mrs Chastney makes a mean soup which I like to bring into the office for lunch. In the office there’s a kitchen with a row of microwave ovens on one side just right for warming soup and heating other foodstuffs. People go into the kitchen, select the desired time and stand around looking uncomfortable, not knowing what to do while they wait. It’s only a couple of minutes, but it’s still uncomfortable. This is where Colin Furze come in with a fabulous new invention – the Games Console Microwave!
I suspect that incorporating Games Console Microwaves into the office kitchen would give us a new set of problems to deal with, but it would take away the embarrassing standing around.
In the UK we quite like disappointment, there’s something about things not quite working out that we find comforting, even humorous.
The team at Parallel Motion Design Studio created this little video which animates many of those wonderful unsatisfying occurrences that life throws at us and it made me chuckle.
The team who created it loved the idea so much, they started a challenge and many other people joined in with there own idea of unsatisfying at unsatisfying.tv.
There’s also a set of GIFs available if you prefer.
Have a wonderful Friday:
Via Colossal.
Graham Chastney 