Crack The Surface - Episode II from SilentUK on Vimeo.
I linked to the first part of this here, this one takes place mostly in the US and continues to examine what makes Urban Explorers tick. Some great shots of Brooklyn Bridge will be familar to anyone fond of the Grand Theft Auto games.
A jawdropping film of the International Space Station orbiting the earth at night, including the aurora borealis. Wow.
In this short RSA Animate, renowned philosopher Slavoj Zizek investigates the surprising ethical implications of charitable giving.
Crack The Surface - Episode I from SilentUK on Vimeo.
UrbEx, or Urban Exploration to the uninitiated, isn’t about breaking into a place for a laugh. It’s part Cat & Mouse game, part Industrial History and part teamwork. We’re not brave enough to do half of this stuff and we doubt you are too so here’s a documentary about it.
Long time no blog. Sorry about that but I’m sure you’ll manage. I’ve recently been doing a hell of a lot of production stuff for clients which has taken up a gigantic amount of time, on top of that I’ve been doing some very exciting work around education. More on those soon. Much, much more as it happens.
Anyway, in the absence of having anything substantial to post I just wanted to draw your attention to a rather beautiful documentary. I’ve been, in retrospect perhaps a little ineloquently, excitedly babbling about The Semantic Web for what seems like an absolute age. Having had my head stuck in computers and the internet for most of my life, I find it absolutely thrilling that we finally seem to be getting to the point where using one is an intuitive experience. It’s not there yet, not quite, but we are getting there. When we do you will find computers, not to mention all other items of digital media kit, being used in a far more creative way by a far greater swathe of the world then they already are. So it’s pretty exciting, enjoy.
A story about the Semantic Web
Interviews with:
Tim Berners-Lee
Clay Shirky
Chris Dixon
David Weinberger
Nova Spivack
Jason Shellen
Lee Feigenbaum
John Hebeler
Alon Halevy
David Karger
Abraham Bernstein
Here’s a lovely little vid I found where, via the gift of autotune, Carl Sagan – renowned astronomer, author and astrophysicist – sings about the beauty and complexity of the universe. Not to be outdone Professor Stephen Hawking, with that distinctive voice of his, pops in for a verse to give us the benefit of his tuneful knowledge too.
Firstly just let me say Zdravo, Merhaba, Halo Hej and Ola to my recent visitors from overseas and a plain old ‘awight to you grubby lot from closer to home. Earlier today I checked my statcounter figures and since I last posted I’ve had some delightfully random visits from far places as far flung as Croatia, Turkey, Indonesia, Denmark and Vigo in northern Spain – hence my typically awful attempt at Spanish dialect which I can never really master.
Regular readers of the blog (of which, admittedly, there aren’t many) will probably have been wondering why the lack of updates recently. The reasons are many and varied but the day job has been pretty hectic, lots of important and creatively draining meetings have been distracting me, I’ve been doing some serious decorating on our ramshackle 150 year old house and also I’ve been on holiday – see the pic of me and the little terror on the beach for proof.
On the holiday front, the weather in Whitby, North Yorkshire, on a north facing bit of coastline facing the North Sea in September no less, was absolutely fantastic. I had envisaged some ‘Withnail & I’ style “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake” disaster. I have somehow managed to jam my way into booking the best two weeks of the summer off for my hols. Gloat.
Anyway, I had hoped to have some posts ready to come out of draft form and into the cold, hard, critical light of “teh internets” but sadly I have been too busy not looking like a Goth to finish them. Expect some Augmented Reality stuff, some comment and ham-fisted analysis on Twitter’s recent change to their Ts&Cs and a comparison of some of the most popular Twitter desktop clients.
Anyway, here’s a cracking video from Socialnomics09 that – as well as having some lovely typography – also sums up some of the potential for Social Media. Enjoy.
The latest viral effort from the worlds largest conglomerate has been released to a fairly widespread derision. South Korean megacorp Samsung generally create fairly decent technology but, unlike say Apple or Sony, they seem to have perennial problems with actually managing to be likable.
We are, after all, talking about the same company who thought it was a good move for their band to be plastered across the chests of Chelsea FC who are probably the least likable, most vulgar team in world football. Until new petrochemical kids on the block Manchester City came along Chelsea were the embodiment of the ills of the modern game and a litmus test for just how far the world’s favorite sport had gone from being the working man’s game to the Oligarch’s latest play thing. Confusingly, the brand guardians at Samsung thought this would be the image they would want for their company.
Anyway, petty football rivalries aside Samsung have continued making their brand less likeable by now trying even harder to be likable. Lets face it, there’s nothing like desperation and neediness to make you less attractive. The amazing thing about this is that it’s the second iteration of this campaign, the original got panned so they re-cut and re-released it.
The film itself just feels like viral by numbers to me, you can imagine the “creatives” on this account getting the brief, replete with gems like “fresh”, “out of the box”, “guerrilla” and “edgy”, and rubbing their grubby little mits. They’ve even embellished it with the standard talking heads and, even worse, cringe inducing web speak in the form of “FTW” (which, for those of you who have a life and a soul and may not know, means For The Win).
Ugh, I feel all torrid now and need to go and have a wash. Anyway, have a read of some of the video comments for some extra derision.
As if Volleyball wasnt enough, the good people at this week’s Cliffhanger festival have produced this fantastic viral. Cliffhnager is one of the UK’s largest outdoor outdoor-pursuits festivals, based in one of Sheffield’s biggest green spaces. Anyway, enough of me prattling on about how blinding it is, it takes place this Saturday and Sunday. Visit the site for more info.
Cliffhanger 09 from Weekday Productions on Vimeo.
There are very few people who, in my mind, are undiscovered geniuses but this guy has to be pretty close. Swede Mason seems to have the unerring ability to take the seemingly mundane aspects of the rockpools of pop culture and turn them into the funniest, most original little videos there is. Here’s a link to Swede Mason’s Youtube channel, show him some love.
Here he is turning Ex-Stone Bill Wyman’s love of metal detectors into some form of pseudo-kraftwerk goodness:
Here he is twisting some of the most touching scenes Neighbours ever managed into a weird, warped and lovely scratchfest:
Lastly, here Swede takes an already pretty perfect film and makes it funnier, well roughly a second and a half of it:
Here’s a volleyball promo I did with my erstwhile collaborator Phil Parkin of Quickfeet Productions, the campaign itself was hugely successful getting over 200,000 views in six weeks. This is the “off campaign” version as many of you who know me will attest, I am a stickler for measurement and monitoring.
The FIVB Volleyball World Championships first round take place at Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport on January the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and to celebrate Yorkshire Events have taken volleyball to the people of Sheffield with this short film.
The film starts with GB Men and GB Women’s Volleyball teams facing off in a practice match from which the ball escapes. As the volleyball makes its way across Sheffield it takes in some of the city’s more iconic sights and is helped along its way by Sheffielders as they go about their daily business. Along the way the ball passes through the hands of some familiar faces such as Premier League Referee Uriah Rennie, Chinese snooker stars Ding Junhui and Liang Wenbo and the hotly-tipped-for-2012 heptathalete Jessica Ennis.
The soundtrack for the film is provided by unsigned, up-and-coming Sheffield band, The True Gentlemen, with their storming tune “Toxic Reservoir”. The True Gentlemen are currently on tour playing to packed houses and are earmarked in the music press to be one of the breakthrough acts of 2009.
Sheffield has become the home of British volleyball with the EISS housing the British indoor squads, while the venue is the number one choice for many national teams around the world to stage their training camps in this country.
EIS Sheffield is also the location of the British Volleyball Federation’s (BVF) High Performance office and has hosted numerous major events including Volleyball England’s National Cup Finals and the European Championships
The FIVB Volleyball World Championships first round take place at Sheffield’s English Institute of Sport on January the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and to celebrate Yorkshire Events have taken volleyball to the people of Sheffield with this short film.
The film starts with GB Men and GB Women’s Volleyball teams facing off in a practice match from which the ball escapes. As the volleyball makes its way across Sheffield it takes in some of the city’s more iconic sights and is helped along its way by Sheffielders as they go about their daily business. Along the way the ball passes through the hands of some familiar faces such as Premier League Referee Uriah Rennie, Chinese snooker stars Ding Junhui and Liang Wenbo and the hotly-tipped-for-2012 heptathalete Jessica Ennis.
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