“Goodbye London” an Animated Music Video
Luke Jackson is a Canadian musician who recently collaborated with animator Murray John to create this music video, using stop motion photography and 2-D animation, for Luke’s song “Goodbye Londonâ€. Here’s what Luke has to say about the video’s production:
As far as the video itself is concerned, I approached London-based animator Murray John with the idea of creating a video that highlighted the bittersweet sentiment of the song’s lyric. I suggested that some of the video be very literal interpretation of the lyric, but that he should feel free to depart from that at will, which I think he did beautifully. He came up with the photo/animation idea as well as the characters and drafted a rough storyboard, most of which wound up in the finished piece. All the stop motion photos were taken around London, and Murray added the drawn 2-D animation using After Effects. There’s no actual video at all…it’s all photos. We never met each other until the video was almost finished, it was all done via email correspondence. I was in London on a family visit in May and he shot the photos of me for the start of the second verse.
PEZ Candy Goliath vs PEZ Fanboy David
You’ve heard this one before. Big faceless corporate giant who makes adorable product goes after small-time fanboy who loves adorable product. In this case, it’s the PEZ Candy Company suing Gary Doss, the owner and curator of a museum of PEZ memorabilia. Gary has run the Burlingame Museum of PEZ Memorabilia for 14 years and this isn’t the first time evil faceless PEZ has tried to shut him down. PEZ’s latest demand includes the destruction of Gary’s adorable oversized snowman dispenser of PEZ that you’ll see in this video.
Our tour of Gary’s museum of PEZ was shot 2 years ago, long before his current legal situation, so we’re rerunning it. Irina and iJustine, who happened to be in town then, take you on a tour of the amazing, wonderful and hopefully, longer lived Museum of PEZ Memorabilia.
Episode links: Burlingame Museum of PEZ (david), PEZ Candy Company (goliath), Boston Herald: Co. sues Pez ‘museum’, San Jose Merc News: All we are saying is, give Pez a chance, iJustine
Kevin Moore is a Geek Pornographer (SFW)
Irina met Kevin Moore on Flickr a while back, swooning over a photo of his black kitty kat. Little did she know this geek was a specialist in a different kind of kitty! Turns out Kevin shoots, directs and edits adult movies. Who knew! With his nerdy background as a Unix admin, a wrangler of college intranet tubes for his buddies gaming pleasures, a WoW and Quake player, and a committed boyfriend to Nina — his one-time attention seeking girlfriend who let him take photos of her and charge cash money for letting other dudes see her nekkid! So, when we ran into Kevin back in Jan at the Adult Entertainment Expo, Irina sat him down for a dorky session of chit chat. Enjoy!
Episode links: Kevin Moore, Kevin’s Flickr Pix, AVN Adult Entertainment Expo
The Making of Browncoats: Redemption, a Firefly Fan Film
Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Serenity left a giant indelible mark in the wild west of modern science fiction, leaving rabid fans wanting more, much more. Rather than wait for Fox or NBC to come around and maybe give fans what they crave, some fans have taken it upon themselves to extend the Firefly story themselves. Browncoats: Redemption is not your typical fan flick. This one has a compelling story, a tight script, elaborate well lit sets, actors who know how to act, all shot on RED cameras and to top it all off, for charity! Well into principal production, Redemption is looking a lot like what die hard fans have been clamoring for. Joss Whedon has reportedly given the production his thumbs up, with some of his and Serenity/Firefly cast members’ charities standing to benefit.
Scott Stead, GETV Field Contributor in Washington, DC, visits the Redemption set during principal shooting and speaks with creators/producers Steven J. Fisher and Michael C. Dougherty as well as several of the film’s cast members.
Episode links: Browncoats:Redemption, Scott Stead, Serenity, Firefly, Joss Whedon
Chris Anderson Speaks for Free
When our pal Kevin Smokler slid us the opportunity to interview one of the legendary thinkers and writers of the geekosphere, we pounced on the chance. Chris Anderson resuscitated Wired magazine back from the brink of the geek deadpool and is notable for coining the term The Long Tail, which he penned a book on. Chris is about to release his second book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which is already generating controversy on a couple of fronts.
One never to rest, Chris also recently launched BookTour.com, a site for authors to more easily line up and promote their book tours and for fans to easily find and meet up with their favorite authors. Chris, like us, is also a big fan of ‘maker’ culture and is busy building drone airplanes based on open source hardware. A subject we’ll save for another episode.
Episode links: Chris Anderson, The Long Tail blog, Wired, BookTour, Free: The Future of the Radical Price, DIY Drones, Ning, VQR (criticism)
Video Guitars are the Future of Music
Which comes first, the music or the video? The question is moot now that artisan Ben Lewry of Visionary Instruments, has built an LCD video display into his guitar. After several prototypes, his custom video guitars now can run visualizations or movies by simply popping in a USB thumbdrive into a back panel. Visualizations can even be triggered with MIDI signals by playing the guitar. Steven Wilson, of Porcupine Tree, was so taken by Ben’s designs that he’s now rocking a video guitar to sold out shows around the world.
Episode links: Visionary Instruments, Porcupine Tree, Diane Nitschke [photos], Maker Faire
MakerBot Dreams of Evil Darth Vader Heads
It’s true. The future is here. Really. Anything you can dream in 3D can be made real. MakerBot’s affordable Cupcake CNC, a slightly larger than a breadbox 3D printer, will take your 3D modeled dreams and make them manifest. MakerBot’s Bre Pettis, a man who knows how a lot about making robots and dreams come true, gives Irina the skinny on what MakerBot is and how it works.
Episode links: MakerBot, Bre Pettis, Thingiverse, Google SketchUp, Blender, Forkbot, Martha Vader, Maker Faire 2009
What’choo Talking About, Todd Bridges?
You may not want to run up to legendary American TV actor Todd Bridges and yell “What’choo talkin’ bout, Willis?” (in case you were born in the 90’s, Bridges played Gary Coleman’s older brother Willis on the historic TV series “Diff’rent Strokes” — the molestation episode is classic!) For the past few years, Bridges has joined the ranks of professional wrestling. If he gets annoyed by Willis fans, he just might body slam them! Bridges is known in the ring as Mr. Not So Perfect — and if you check out the internets, you’ll see his grown up days have been exactly that, including some serious criminal charges. That’s why we love him so. Building his own computers from the ground up, playing PC games, and talkin’ smack online, Willis identifies as a true computer geek. Watch the interview to hear his politcal thoughts on Cary Coleman’s run for governor and the current California Governator. Also, watch for his online gamer tag so you can wrestle him yourself! Don’t forget to peep past the credits for a special challenge from the Slutsky.
Episode links: Todd Bridges, Fog City Wrestling
TechCab Confessions: MC Frontalot
For our third installment of TechCab Confessions we have uber nerdcore rapper (the one who coined the term!) MC Frontalot take the hot seat, err, back seat of the taxi. For those of you joining us in medias res, GETV’s TechCab series takes geeks for a ride while they confess their technological sins to a live streaming camera for all the world to see. In this episode, we are honored to have Front — as he’s known to his fans — take a break from performing at SXSW and promoting his latest album Final Boss to tell us a whopper of a story for which, we are happy to say, the statute of limitations has TOTALLY and COMPLETELY expired. A great hacker caper of yore, involving the inaugural Lillith Fair, the Levi’s website and an amateur musician’s online contest — all this, and someone ended up in jail after all! We’ll just leave that to the great nerdcore rapper and elegant hacker to tell you the rest.
Episode links: TechCab Confessions, MC Frontalot, essence, Lilith Fair, guest editor: Madge Weinstein, photo credits: jeans, cookie, steel barbie, angy barbie, stiff barbie, pants down, seattle coffee
Woz Plays Serious Segway Polo in the Park
This is rewind week as we delve back into the archives to pull out this favorite geek gem from 2006. We attended a hoity toity Segway Polo match for charity with GETV alums Steve Wozniak and Victor Miller where GETV Guest Segway Sportscaster Nicole Shipley (daughter of Veritas Software founder Dale Shipley) asked hard hitting questions about a serious issue with the Segway. The match was part of the 22nd annual Polo in the Park and the money went to the James S. Brady Riding Program for Special Children ? so all kinds of horseplay went on. Yeah, we do hang with chopped liver. MMM, chopped liver. Special thanks to Diego?s Umbrella for the soundtrack. We?ll keep our pants on, thanks.
Episode links: SF Polo in the Park, Segway HT Polo, Victor Miller, Steve Wozniak, Segway of Oakland, Diego’s Umbrella