This is a collection of observations, anecdotes and ideas that exercise and excite us at Studio Staufenberger.
If you want to get in touch, you can reach us at john at staufenberger dot com.
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This is from Pikapika out of Japan. It's basically light pen based long exposure stop-frame animation (shot in the low light of course). Nothing more to say except that it delivers amazing results. There has been quiet a bit of of excitement about this for a while now so it shouldn't be too long before we see it put to use in an ad if it hasn't been already.
Sometimes exploring Youtube is like digging through your record collection, find an old clip from some film you'd long forgotten about and let the memories flood back.
'A Visual Sound' from Stereo Skateboards was and still is my favourite skate movie. Released in 1994, it managed to combine my two loves at the time, jazz and skateboarding. Throw in some 8mm footage and you got a skate classic. Below are clips from Jason Lee's section (before he became a hollywood actor) and Ethan Fowler.
What I love about this film is that none of the tricks are particularly death-defying or highly technical it's all about style and natural ability. The black and white footage and beatnik posturing only served to underline this and allowed it to stand apart from the rock/hip hop infused technical trickery skate films of the time.
Style over substance isn't always a bad thing.
In an uncharactersistic fit of activity I've just done something to improve my working environment for the better. I've changed the image on my desktop.
Usually, when I approach this arduous task, I'd have a trawl of the web, check out what's available via Kaliber 10000, try using something from my iPhoto library and then give up.
But thanks to my new friends in bloggerspace, I've discovered Ray Fenwick's desktop patterns. And I now have an embarrassment of options. Amongst others, there's Seamless Swords:
Walkie Talkie:
And my current fave, The Battle of Excelsior Gulch:
Not only are these desktop patterns aesthetically pleasing, they also serve a handy functional purpose: they're busy enough to dissuade you from saving too much stuff to your desktop. Excellent.
Ray has just taken over from Robert McKee (or was it Joshua Davis?) as Staufenberger's official poster boy. Not only does he make tasty desktop patterns, he also does a twisted line in comic strips, gig posters and - the bestest of all - calligraphic renditions of The Slow Jams of LL Cool J. Aiye.
As a hamfisted gesture of hommage, we attempted to hack his alphabet tile (The Canon of Type Design) so that it reads STAUFENBERGER. But our Ilustrator/Photoshop chops are not up to the task. So we gave up.
The end.
Via Typographica. Or somewhere else.
There's a new generator-style thing doing the rounds for the Nokia E61. It makes a sort of personalised video message from "the CEO". Have a go here.
Did you see how the personalised bits stuck out? The CEO jumped from position to position as the video accommodated the variable bits. For those who can't be bothered, here's a comp of one of the less egregious jump cuts:
This highlights the key challenge faced by the more ambitious of these generators: the more sophisticated the end result needs to be, the harder it is to conceal the joins.
Of course, film grammar - and TV news interviews - offer a relatively easy fix for this problem of the jump cut: vary the camera angle or include a cutaway to something else. When you see a shot of Jon Snow nodding during an interview it is there to disguise a cut in an interviewee's answer that would otherwise look awkward.
A while back, there was a near identical thing for Mini, albeit a message from a gangster rather than the boss.
How did they tackle the joins? Yep, they varied the camera angles to disguise the cuts. In fact each section of the final video uses a different shot, so you move from something like this:
To a shot like this:
So simple, yet it makes all the difference. It's the small things...
Of course, the basic idea is a bit hackneyed, isn't it? But if you're going to do it, at least make sure it works well, I say.
We've been investigating online generators for a project we're working on. You know the sort of thing: enter a few variables and the site spits out an amusing story/picture/noise. The Design Conspiracy produced a really good one that generates dodgy brand names.
So, for your delectation, here is a fun - but ultimately pointless - site that makes old school audio cassettes. Here's a tape we made earlier, one of John's Web 2.0 motivational speeches:
Says-it also does 45s and church signs. Praise be!
Cassette Generator via plasticbag.org. Again.
Web 2.0 nonsense generated by whyblog.org.
Incidentally, can anyone help us coding PHP?
Alan Yentob is making an Imagine programme about YouTube. Or user-generated content. Or somesuch.
So in the spirit of The Social Media Revolution (TM), he's posted a request for YouTube users' views of YouTube. On YouTube, of course.
You can imagine (sorry) this video - and the comments it generates - as forming a very small part of the finished film. Or it might be the beginning of a narrative device that holds the the whole thing together. Who is Toby/Tobias Jones? Will he be old Al's plugged-in guide to all things new and groovy? Will he be the focus of a quest through the social media webspace? Who knows.
Many have pointed out how stiff and contrived the 30 second clip feels. Personally, I can't help but fixate on the projection behind the pair of them: why did the production team feel the need to mock up a screenshot of YouTube so that it appears to be showing the very clip that they are recording?
We toyed with the idea of posting a video response - al la Coudal/Subway video - but couldn't work out how to do it without it looking like a heavy-handed piece of self-promotion. Which is exactly what it would have been. So we offer it up to those of you who can do it in style. Over to you.
Via plasticbag.org.
In Manchester, just as in the rest of the country, there seems to be a hand car wash on every corner. But when I visit my in-laws I drive about two miles past four car washes to one particular car wash. Not because they clean well (although they do) but because they make me smile...(yes, I finally got round to reading A Smile in the Mind)
Right down to the smelly thing they hang on the rear view mirror...
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