Love this: Everyday Turns A Famed Viral Video Into iPhone App Gold | Co.Design

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Excerpt from fastcodesign.com

"Inspired by the wildly popular time-lapse self portraits of photographer Noah Kalina, he wanted an easier way to make similar portraits of himself. "Noah has got his process down to a science by now, he knows how to frame it perfectly and is strict enough to do it every day," Wilkinson tells Co.Design. "I just wanted to make it easier for someone who can't just point a camera at themselves and guess the framing, or a forgetful person." His solution: Everyday for iPhone 4...."

No More Questions! Love that StoryCorps is Creating Animated Shorts

Description:

"Kay Wang was a strong-willed grandmother who was reluctantly taken to a StoryCorps booth by her son and granddaughter. Though Kay resisted, she still had stories to tell—from disobeying her mother and rebuffing suitors while growing up in China to late-life adventures as a detective for Bloomingdale’s department store. Kay passed away just weeks after that interview, and her son and granddaughter returned to StoryCorps to remember her gentler side, which she kept to herself."

Directed by: The Rauch Brothers
Backgrounds: Bill Wray
Producers: Mike Rauch & Lizzie Jacobs
Art Direction: The Rauch Brothers & Bill Wray
Animation: Tim Rauch
Audio Produced by: Katie Simon & Michael Garofalo

SUPER Cool: iPad App Tells The Full Story Behind Making "Portal 2", Pushing Limits Of Story Telling | Co.Design

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Excerpt from fastcodesign.com original article:

"Geoff Keighley is kind of like the John McPhee of video game journalism: he made his name by publishing exhaustively reported, fly-on-the-wall accounts of the making of blockbuster games like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Half-Life 2. Then he realized he had to do un-McPhee-like jobs (like writing for Entertainment Weekly and producing shows on G4 and SpikeTV) to make a living. But he never let go of his passion for writing epic behind-the-scenes stories about video game creators -- and in 2010, he saw a dual opportunity.

"I equate this to the music industry, where everyone buys singles now."

The result, a $1.99 app called "The Final Hours of Portal 2," is a 15,000 word, 13-chapter opus stuffed to the gills with magazine-quality photos, videos, and interactives. Sound like an intimidatingly dense, loss-leader passion project? Wrong: it's doing gangbusters business and raking in five-star ratings. "I equate this to the music industry, where everyone buys singles now," Keighley says. "There's a shift going on in publishing much like what happened in the music business, where the single became popular online. And our app shows that a deep dive on a particular topic can be very appealing."...

read the full article on fastcodesign.com

How to Get Your Short Film In Front of 37 Million People - Very Cool News from indieWIRE

How to Get Your Short Film In Front of 37 Million People

London-based Shorts International, which claims the world’s largest short film catalog, has just launched its third U.S. cable channel with DIRECTV; it joins similar efforts on Dish Network and AT&T U-verse.

As the nation’s largest pay TV provider, DIRECTV arguably represents the biggest potential audience; the ShortsHD channel is available to 37 million viewers who subscribe to the premium network’s HD Extra Pack.

Perhaps even more importantly: Shorts International buys around 3,000 titles each year. So we went to CEO Carter Pilcher and asked: How can filmmakers get their work on the channel?


Do you accept direct submissions?

Absolutely. The best way is to contact us through our website, or you can mail us directly through the post (address below).

What are you looking for in submissions?

The films have be 40 minutes or under. We don’t just show short funny clips. We show stories. It comes down to the story and the cinematography. Shorts films have a different ability from features. They’re often about a thought. You don’t have to develop a story over an hour and a half.

Who’s doing the buying? Do you monitor film festivals?

We have a group - some in Europe, some in the U.S. - who travel the world to film festivals and make offers to filmmakers. We also go out individually and work with different film schools, including the University of Southern California to license their films. We also hold contests.

Is there a demand for short film in the U.S.?

Shorts used to be this artsy thing. But now there really is this explosion in filmmaking. With all this new technology, shorts films have a lot more interest among regular people, because so many people are making them and putting them on the web. Suddenly, we’re not explaining short films to people. Everybody’s seen one.

Send your film to:
ShortsHD and Shorts International
Short Film Submissions
1522-B Cloverfield Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Comments
1
Ginger Gentile says on May 6, 2011 at 4:22pm

Don’t forget to look into the great short films of Argentina!
I’d love to know what the average sale prices are.

Whoa - that's cool: DimP - A Direct Manipulation Video Player

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Description from the site:

"DimP is a video player prototype that allows to browse video clips by directly manipulating their content.

The way it works is quite simple:

DimP automatically extracts object motions from the videos.
DimP then allows the user to control video playback by scrubbing these objects on their trajectories."

A Horror Set Waiting for a Crew: New images reveal derelict Joyland amusement park at heart of America | Mail Online

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From the original article:

"At first glance, these desolate images look like they're from the aftermath of a warzone, or a ghost town left behind from the Chernobyl disaster.

But in fact these pictures were taken in the heartland of America - at Wichita's Joyland, an amusement park with the most inappropriate name you can imagine.
In its heyday, thousands of families from across Kansas would flock to the park to scream and yell on the wooden rollercoaster and listen to Louie the clown play on his Wurlitzer organ.

But now the loudspeakers stand silent and corroded, the bright yellow big wheel is faded and rusting and the dodgems sit mournfully with no-one to ride them..."

For more super creepy pics, deets & video:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384747/New-images-reveal-derelict-Jo...