Archive for March, 2010

I didn’t realize the other day, when I mentioned Spike Jonze’s “I’m Here”, that the actual film had already been released. The trailer was exciting enough for me I guess. Now you can view the entire 30min film on the website. They limit the amount of viewers per day, so make sure to take a look when you can. I haven’t seen it fill up recently, but you never know. Props for a smooth web interface too — feels like a video game without being frustratingly slow or clumsy like most Flash pages.

The film itself is great; the opening sequence is especially well done. The music works really well with the visuals throughout, and of course the whole thing stars robots. They are remarkably expressive, what for being robots and all. I really like the combination of animation and lo-fi costumes; it works really well for this, just like WTWTA. The story is a nice one, a little sad/mopey, but I enjoyed it overall. I found myself more attracted to the uniqueness of the whole project rather than any specific aspect of the plot.

My favorite part is when the bearded guy in the car yells “You’re a ROBOT!!” into the main characters head. Awesome. Check it out here.

Over the past year I’ve been going through the process of scaling some of my posters for large format (e.g. the Knitting print: Old | New). Most of these were originally designed for 12×18″ format so they had to be re-created from scratch. It’s been a painstaking process at times, but it has also allowed me a chance to approach some of the designs from a fresh perspective. Something about stripping a design down to nothing and building it back up again gives you a clearer view of the essential nature of the piece allowing for more objectivity when making design decisions.

The latest print to be scaled up is the poster for the Terrabyte music festival (pictured above — view original). As you can see, I’ve made some changes and cleaned a few things up. I’ll be posting a process piece detailing the various earlier versions of the print and the transition from small to large format next week. The print is currently available as a giclee from the ISO50 Shop.

On a side note, if you’re partial to any of the older designs in the small formats now would be the time to grab some, they will not be reprinted. They can be viewed in the prints section at the shop.

ISO50 Studio Edition #007: Terrabyte

I’m not going to try and explain how good is Hammock music video is, you should just check it out yourself, what great treatment and ideas behind each shot, David Altobelli should just go and do a movie now.

Hammock – Breathturn from David Altobelli on Vimeo.

On the music player front Off The Sky reworks Rob Theakston’s cleverly named album I Am Waiting for You to Stop Being Mad at Me, a piece that touches on slow yet busy low level music that reminds me of walks on cold fall afternoons on very jagged terrian, you can download it FREE here.

Black Tambourine throws their hat in as who will put out the best post rock track in 2010 and with Pack You Up they have a very good chance in my book. Look for them and Soft Moon to make it to well versed goth kids mixtapes this year once they tire out the tempo of The Xx.

You would all tell me if my frequent posting on Washed Out was unhealthy right? well this is somewhat special since its a mix from his blog that you can download for free. Its really crispy and diverse like finding a damaged cassette mix from the basement of your favorite radio station that 25 years old and playing it.

Arch M – “Bedrm Band at Caf NVA (edit)”
The Samps – “Magnetic Thys”
Samiyam – “Wrap Up”
Toro Y Moi – “Brubek”
Koushik – “Homage”
Osborne – “Afrika (Bullion Remix)”
Iasos – “Inter-Dimentional Music”
Jack Nitzsche – “Untitled (edit)”
The Khalsa String Band – “Song of Bliss”

DOWNLOAD HERE

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jaiq_ZZ_eM
With all the recent talk about The Impossible Project I thought I’d post this beautifully shot ad for the Polaroid SX-70 camera.

“This ad from the 70’s describes the Polaroid SX-70, a Land camera with complex optics and advanced features that brought immediate-results photography via the Polaroid system.”

Anyone got an SX-70 they’re going to dust off now that film is available again?

Video Link

Witness the unchained creativity of Julien Vallée. I suppose this is a little more whimsical than my average post here, but I can’t get over how awesome his work is. The combination of hand-made elements, motion graphics, and unparalleled ingenuity create some stunning work. He also does a great job documenting his process — his behind the scenes videos are just as entertaining as the actual finished product. The last video above is a “Making of” for Danse Dance. You can view the actual interactive video here.

As he says in his Gestalten interview about his work, “I got bored with the computer technique and a pre-formatted way of working”. Good thing he did — it’s refreshing to see work like this that jumps off the page in more ways than one.

Shailesh Chavda has a beautiful collection of matchbox labels up on Flickr. I have a book of Czech labels but I’ve never seen these German ones. Dave from Grain Edit originally turned me on to matchbox labels when he showed me his collection (I think they were mostly Czech). They’re so incredibly detailed considering the format; most of these would do fine as posters. I think the most striking part to me is the printing, when blown up you can really see that nice grain and spacing in the ink.

Many more great examples can be found here

You maybe remember City Center from my Top Albums of 2009 list, the project is still going strong with plenty of releases planned like this limited pressing EP on Quite Scientific that really grabbed my ear. The duo is always on the road and really great live, I highly recommend seeing a live show.

Foxes In Fiction has a pure honest sound, it touches on the softness of Atlas Sound yet keeps this youthful honesty that is not as common in music these days. Ativan could be the perfect love song for this day in age, this might be the closest you’ll get to feeling that fuzzy feeling about someone and sharing a soda.

Ariel Pink keeps surprising me with his progession in sound, we went from lo-fi to AM Gold and i’m not gonna complain at all, he does it so well.

Girls In The Eighties has that vocal in lo-fi where I find it harder to share with new listeners but personally appeals to me and it attracts me even more when it has hints of IDM like this song Youth Experiment.

I’ve been delving into the depths of the internet over the past few weeks; reading about everything from ultra high speed video camera comparisons to the best post production workflow for the 5DMKII to FCP. One of the best resources I’ve found is Prolost, the site of filmmaker Stu Maschwitz. The blog is generally about filmmaking, with a heavy lean on post production techniques, typically as it relates to DSLR equipment.

You may have already heard of it, but as was true for The Strobist a year ago, I had not and am very glad to have discovered such an informative resource. I came to Prolost by way of an article on color correction called Memory Colors. It’s not a ‘how to’ by any means, but puts forth some interesting information on the theory behind color correction and manipulation.

With the release of the new (now fixed) firmware for the MKII, it’s been hard to escape the buzz. Finally the MKII can shoot 24p! (In case you don’t see why this is awesome.) Of course now I am lamenting the fact that it can’t do 60fps (all of a sudden I had the urge to get some really smooth slow motion). Maybe next time.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI
Update: The Real Uqbar has a post discussing GIMP resynthesis and how it makes this particular feature completely possible. Via Kevchenko

This is absolutely insane. In the video, Photoshop product manager Bryan O’neil Hughes walks us through a new feature they’re working on: “Content-Aware Fill Sneak Peek”. I can’t tell you how much time this would have saved me. To be honest I thought this might be an early April Fools joke (a’la Google’s hoaxes) but this appears to be legit.

Bryan doesn’t say when/if this new feature will show up in the product, but judging from it’s performance in the video I wouldn’t be surprised if it shows up in CS5 at some point (coming April 12th, 2010). Let’s just hope it works as well in the real world as it does in the lab because that’s downright incredible.

Video Link