Fast Forward

Part of a series of posts about awesome film, web or design artists and their work currently abuzz online and in-person.

"Man on Wire" poster by All City Media

London's All City Media

"Man on Wire," a new documentary coming out August 1 about Philippe Petit's "artistic crime of the century" to tightrope walk in 1974 between the World Trade Center towers. All City Media, a "design for film" studio in London, has a shot of the poster on their site. All City's site often includes images of initial concepts for the key art, from posters to DVD covers, such as "Control", "Persepolis" and "The Lives of Others", along with a case study of the key art for "Amores Perros".

Radiohead's Camera-Free Video

Aaron Koblin, artist/designer/researcher "focused on creating and visualizing human systems," thought Radiohead might dig his new take on data visualization. Low and behold, their new music video for "House of Cards" is his work: made up of 3D images captured with a sonor-like data visualization. The behind-the-scenes video (embedded below) includes Koblin talking about the project. You can download the code at code.google.com to make your own visualizations. In March 2007, I interviewed the fellow UCLA alum about the SXSW-winning web site, "How Do I Say This?"

Screenshot from "Tarantino's Mind"

Tarantino's Mind by Brazil's 300ml

With its first U.S. screening in 2007 at the The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the short film "Tarantino's Mind" is about a film buff (Selton Mello) who shares with a friend (Seu Jorge) that he's broken "the code" of Quentin's work, stitching together interconnections from "Reservoir Dogs" to "Kill Bill." Hungry Man TV, a web video channel from director Bryan Buckley, currently hosts the film directed by 300ml (Manitou Felipe and Bernardo Dutra). The site also hosts other web series, like "Undercover Cheerleaders" and "Phistophicles, the Lesser Known Greek Philosopher." To view the film full-screen, you're better off seeing it on DailyMotion or YouTube. (via Coudal Partners)

Dr. Horrible, the latest web series — a sci-fi musical, too — for the "low six figures," Whedon told the Los Angeles Times

Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly) decided to do a web project during the writers' strike. It's just hit the net and already come and gone in free form, but now the 36-minute three-part series is exclusively on iTunes (open in iTunes) for a flat $3.99.

It's worth it.

Whedon's project is Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, an Internet mini-series event about a struggling super villain (Neil Patrick Harris) who falls for the girl next door (Felicia Day).

Some excerpts from his master plan, so get ready to feel empowered, and follow his lead just without the famous actors, big money, and industry connections:

It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, "It's Show Business – not Show Friends"? Well now it's Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.)

I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A super-villain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few.

The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the Internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first.

If you like the sound of that, read more on the official site.

This project as a whole asks us, can we change the way we do business as creatives? Will the Internet provide us filmmakers with actual income and communal support? It could mean you no longer hope some exec sees it on YouTube; you might not need him down the road. The middle man is long gone. Today the relationship is artist to viewer and distribution is bandwidth.

David Badgerow's film, Jungle Gym

I've been intentionally avoiding posting Jungle Gym to YouTube because I was waiting for the festival run to end, and even then was a bit hesitant to share it on the online-video nebula. However, recently I was at a friends apartment and wanted to show them something silly that I had recently saved to my channel favorites. So in order to find this, my sub-intelligent brain thought the best way would be to search for my user account name and maybe it would show up in the listing. Yet instead, when I did this, what came up but my very own film, Jungle Gym, apparently posted 6 months ago now by someone else!

Almost 100,000 hits, over 100 comments, 300 favorites, ridiculous! All of this happening without my knowledge. I suppose I am happy for the added exposure, but a bit blindsided that this could occur under the radar. I of course realized that in my contract with Aniboom, they reserve the right to re-distribute / re-encode my film in any medium they got their hands on, so theres not much I can do about it, but I suppose this is a cautionary example of what happens when you don't think about what the fine print actually means.

Apple iPhone

The Apple iPhone, which just came out with a new iteration last Thursday, is the latest mobile platform for filmmakers. And no matter what David Lynch says about it, the latest geek chic is not just for calling people, browsing online, or watching movies: it can help the workflow on set, in post, and that's just the beginning.

iPhone Apps

The iPhone, and the phone-less iPod Touch, are still new, expensive, and sometimes can mean standing in a line for hours this last weekend. But mobile is an emerging market (even Spike Lee is hot on mobile film) and Apple is making it easy to develop, share and sell small applications than other mobile or PDA devices.

In tandem with the new hardware, Apple released a new area of its online store for downloading free or low-cost applications, made by users themselves. Scott Simmons of The Editblog posted his hopes for post-production applications, from a timecode calculator to a post-specific footage/storage calculator. Jon Chappell of Digital Rebellion, which hosts several web-based applications for filmmakers (listed below), also asked for more filmmaker apps. As for now, due in part to Apple's process to grant licenses to individuals to their Developer Program, there is only one:

Utilities

• LlameSlate ($0.99 download via iTunes Store) by Scott Lawrence (7/2008)

iPhone Web Apps

Prior to the iPhone App Store, Apple has been providing user-generated web applications (explaination) a listing in their directory. They also explain how to build one yourself, to then submit and share. All of the web apps below are free.

Paul Harill at Self-Reliant Film posted an initial list. We've swapped a few and added a few, ready for production or post-production:

Calculate

• Aspect Ratio Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC (12/2007)
• Depth of Field Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC (1/2008)
• Depth of Field Calculator by Viewpoint Photography (1/2008)
• Footage Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC (12/2007)
• Film Rate Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC (12/2007)
• Lens Angle Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC (4/2008)
• Pixel Aspect Ration Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC
• Power Load Calculator (mobile version) by Digital Rebellion LLC (7/2008)

Weather

• Stormchaser Cloud Reference Chart by Crossgates AC (6/2008)
• Sunrise & Sunset by Piet Jonas (7/2008)
• Also: see all Weather web apps on Apple.com

What's Ahead

Penguin at the Ninja vs Penguin blog, who cites a recent Wired Magazine article on Google's upcoming move in the open-source software arena to free up the mobile market, calls out to filmmakers to be pioneers:

"We need to understand where technology is bringing us and learn from what business and other content creators are doing with it. Yes we'll make mistakes, but we make plenty already with our films."