I don’t want to embed this video here because you won’t be able to see it’s true glory. First footage shot with my new Canon HV20.

Go to the link and blow it up full-screen by clicking the Full-Screen button in the bottom-right of the video.

Pretentious notes for videotards: Shot at night, so there are some artefacts from compression, and the built-in deinterlacer in Premiere CS3 doesn’t cut it. But damn, it still looks rool good. Canon HV20 w/52mm wide-angle lens, HD 1080i Cinemode, 1280×720 at 29.97fps, h.264 around 3mpbs average. No idea what Vimeo chops it down to for their Flash player, but they don’t take much off. Looks damn close to the original source.

Earlier this evening, my cohort co-producer Sr. Valdez said:

American Man is blowing up on Yahoo right now. I’d say we’re over 100,000 views this month. Am I suppose to be feeling something?

I’m not sure. When I used to work at Shemuscle.com and I’d publish a new video, occasionally it would get picked up by a few popular porn blogs and our numbers would skyrocket. In our industry, those numbers translated directly to money in our pockets.

In my current occupation, the translation is more subtle.

There are people out there watching what we do, and some of them are really getting into it. They’re agreeing with us. The feeling I get from this is similar to leaving a really good rock concert. 20,000 people just implicitly agreed on everything for about 2 hours. You take that feeling with you when you go home that night, and it stays with you for at least a few days afterwards.

With video, you feel a little electric shiver when a piece gets watched 20,000 times, but it’s not quite as fulfilling as when 10 people send you nice emails or comments.

When I have an idea for a video, the process usually revolves around how to make it funny or interesting enough to entertain my friends. If I think Nick or Nelson or Valdez will like it, I go with it. If not, I toss it. (Unless I personally think it’s hilarious and then I say fuck what anyone else thinks, I’m doing it.)

It’s the general idea behind Wreck & Salvage production: Make stuff that you would want to watch. Since we understand that there is a segment of the population, however small, that agrees with us, then we have carte blanche to do whatever the hell we want. The point is, it doesn’t matter how many people see something just so long as the right people see it.

Alas, when we make a video for a company, they want numbers to crunch. So luckily we can provide them.

It all boils down to the fact that I love what we do. I think it’s just the greatest. If you do too, then thanks, and feel safe in the knowledge that every god damn video we produce on Wreck & Salvage is custom-built from the ground up, just for you.

Quicktime Video

Another Lumiere video.

The rules:

• 60 seconds max
• Fixed camera
• No audio
• No zoom
• No edit
• No effects

I’m working on a personal video bloggers documentary project (aptly titled “Vloggers“), and I need your help. I’m looking for captivating clips of personal vloggers that have grabbed your attention.

They need to be short, because I’m editing a bunch of them together into a 3-minute trailer. I’m thinking 5-10 seconds each. I’d like to get about 20 of them and tie them all together.

Bonus points if they talk about vlogging in the clip.

I’d be very grateful for any links you could come up with.

Thanks.

(P.S. For this project we’re defining “personal vlogger” as someone who talks to the camera or uses voice-over to narrate personal accounts, although generally I think that term includes many more styles.)

A couple more short Lumiere clips, these shot from the roof of my apartment. Tina Fey and a large film crew have been on my street for several days shooting “Baby Mama“.

Action

Cooling Down

tagged lumierevideo

I joined the herd last week and started using Twitter. Ever since, I’ve been trying to come up with a name for the people who use it. Like a gaggle of geese, or a lamentation of swans. Because that’s just something I do.

There are a lot of people on there, spouting off about one thing or another. Sometimes it’s mundane, sometimes it’s poetic. Mostly though it’s illustrative of the phenomenon that may or may not have a scientific name yet, but has to do with the desire to tell other people about yourself and the relative ease with which this is possible thanks to El Internet. It’s why webloggers talk about their cats, and vloggers videotape their cats.

Charles Hope posted a link to a collection of aphorisms by Werner Erhard the other day, and one of them stuck out at me:

“I know that you know that I love you. What I want you to know is that I know you love me.”

We want to show people how human we are, how much we can love.

Anyway, my first thoughts about what to call Twitter users were along the lines of a “Trivial of Twitterers” or a “Trifling of Twitterers“. But digging a little deeper under the froth of Twitter activity led me to something more like a “Transport of Twitterers” or a “Thrive of Twitterers” or maybe even an “Indemnification of Twitterers“.

More collective names on this page.

A group of Twitterers is called a _________?

Play Quicktime Video

Here is a short video commentary I made for Jeff Pulver’s “How To Watch Internet TV” contest.

Featuring Nelson and Proctor.

Click To Play

A flower rises from the dirt, blooms, and punches its neighbor in the face.

This is one of the promos I made for Carp Caviar. You should make one too. If you don’t, a grown man in the Netherlands will cry himself to sleep.

The nextNY blog launched today, with an introductory post by Charlie O’Donnell:

We’ll be talking about NYC startups, personalities, and events. We’re not going to compare ourselves to anyone else… we’re going to promote ourselves just as every other good startup should.

I’m looking forward to contributing to this. My posts will be related to the world of online video in NYC, specifically the startups and companies based here, which is a fairly small family right now, but getting bigger every day.

Those of you in NYC, join us on our mailing list, then if you like what you see maybe you’ll want to contribute to the blog too.

We have some lofty aspirations for the blog, with talk of being competitive with some of the top tech blogs (which I don’t read). My personal goal is just to share my knowledge and theories about online video.

I like to write, and for whatever reason I’ve never felt like this (Bullemhead) was the place to do it. I’ve recently started using Evilvlog as a barf bag for all the meandering thoughts that pour out of my mind between the hours of 1:30am and 4:30am, but I haven’t had a venue to talk about my field until now.

So, please go check it out and subscribe. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see it develop in the next few weeks.

My first post is scheduled for about 2 weeks from now.

A Vloggie, and an evilvloggie.