Tag: video

Documentary: Broadway and Prince St.

For a Video for New Media project, I worked again with Lucas Werthein, and also Krystal Banzon, on a documentary featuring an intersection in New York City. Eventually we chose Broadway and Prince St., the home of Dean and Deluca and my hair salon. It’s a pretty hectic intersection in Soho that always seems to be busy.

Lucas, who was undeniably the most experienced person in our group, was inspired by a short film called “Latitude_Redux“:

Latitude_Redux is a condensed extract from D-Fuse’s live sonic cinema performance with the split screen representing the 2 screens used in the live show. It is inspired by the notion of drifting through the land + soundscapes of China and uses fragments of conversations, lights, + architectural forms to trace the multitudes of paths, identities + influences which make up the rapidly changing urban environments of Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing.

It’s a really fast-paced short film and you get a sense of the selected urban environments in China, something that could easily be translated to New York’s urban scene. Due to serious schedule conflicts with our team, Lucas ended up doing most of the editing. One of my favorite parts of our video happens about 46 seconds in and last for just two to three seconds. What you see is a blur of many still images of people’s feet walking across the crosswalks in the intersection. We used a Panasonic Lumix and a Canon G10, both on tripods, to record those shots. We probably could’ve gotten many more, but it was really cold that day and the buildings kept blocking out the sunlight as time went on.

Pulse from Allison Walker on Vimeo.

Subjective/Objective Migration of the Caribou

Caribou from Allison Walker on Vimeo.

For an assignment intending to investigate our chosen animal, Caribou, from a subjective and objective perspective, Jenine Durland and I made a pseudo-documentary of the Porcupine Caribou. I dressed as our character, while Jenine provided the voice-over in the video. Video editing by her; voice editing by me.

The mask is the same mask I used in a previous assignment. (Check out this video I made for another class using those stills.) For the antlers, I just used a coil of wire I found on the junk shelf and made a headband out of it. The car adapter serves the purpose of not only looking interesting but also keeping the antlers on my head.

It was a fun time, but I can’t say I’ll do it again. The weirdest feeling I had was definitely on the train. You can’t imagine the stares I got when I started to put on my mask and antlers. The dog in the video was also pretty confused with me and didn’t really seem to know how to react.

Phys Comp Midterm: Balance board video controller

For my Physical Computing midterm, I worked with Andrea Wolf and Sindy Butz to create a balance board that controls a video in Processing.

Here’s a video of me demonstrating for our class.

Balance Board Media Controller from Allison Walker on Vimeo.

The way it works: User steps on the board, which completes a switch inside the board. An accelerometer inside the board reports back to Processing which way the user is leaning. Right – fast forward. Left – slow down. Tilt forward – screen gets darker. Tilt backward – screen lightens.

Here are some photos of us during prototyping stage and assembly. Here’s a slideshow on Flickr.

Peaking, at Chez Bushwick

Peaking is a four-person exhibition of video by Janet Biggs, Heather Cassils, Molly Davies, and Andrew Sroka curated by Maya Ciarrocchi. I attended on October 17, 2009 at Chez Bushwick, in Brooklyn, NY.

While all the videos were impressive, my favorite was by Janet Biggs. A clip called ‘Performance of Desire’, from 2007. In this short video, Biggs cut shots of cadets from The Citadel practicing and then performing a drill using rifles with bayonets, with inverted shots of two synchronized swimmers practicing.

I think what I enjoyed about this film was the distant look of concentration in the cadet’s eyes. In one short clip he looked in the direction of the camera, but it didn’t quite register. I also liked the fact that the synchronized swimmers were in their underwater environment and if distraction was a possibility, they would be virtually immune, except that they had the added distraction of coming up for air.

If you’re interested, you can find a clip of that video on her website. Performance of Desire.

Little Red Riding Hood, with design twist

I’ve been posting this on all my accounts today. As was said on Flowing Data, this video is totally worth 3 minutes of your life. What a fun take on a classic fairytale. Apparently, it was based on this Röyksopp video, which you can catch on YouTube.

I really like the way all of the parts of the story are presented so matter-of-factly, especially Grandma’s calorie count of 10,000 kcal. Actually, after watching this video I was reminded of one key fact/mishap of the story. Even after Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood are saved, Grandma’s still sick. What about that part of the story? I’m sure it doesn’t end well. Well, at least I found the next song I’m gonna get on iTunes.