Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: autumn, box, camera, carousel, chair, cinematography, container, earth, eco, editing, environment, experiment, film, flickr, fossil fuels, future, green, impossible, japanese, land, leaves, living, maple, materials, no sunlight, non-renewable, packaging, photo, photoshop, pizza, plates, post-it, recycle, renewable, resources, sky, sticky notes, stop motion, sustainability, toilet roll, transformers, tree, youtube, yuken teruya
This blog will be back to “normal broadcasting”, so to speak; it’ll be about some more art and videos that I’ve found on the net recently.
The emphasis on “living green” and “sustainability” has experienced a rising trend in the past decade or so as people have come to realise that some of the things we take for granted may not be around in the not-too-distant future. This is mainly resources such as land, soil, fossil fuels, metals and other non-renewable resources. As a result, so many people have been constantly searching for renewable resources to use and new inventions or devices that could potentially reduce the use of energy and resources. Environmentally Conscious Organization (ECO) is a design and manufacturing firm dedicated to improving outdated and wasteful food packaging. Its first product is by far one of the simplest solutions I’ve seen, with the potential for worldwide use. The video below is of a pizza box they have designed made of 100% recycled materials. But the eco-friendliness doesn’t stop there. This is not one of those boxes that gets thrown away after everyone’s taken a slice and put it on their plates. The lid of this box breaks apart to form four serving plates, while the base of the box can be easily folded into a very convenient storage box for leftover pieces. This means that there will no longer be any washing up to do, saving on water and electricity (if you use a dishwasher). The need for a plastic container to store the leftover pieces will also be eliminated. This box would not cost much more to make than a regular box, either; I think all pizza shops should consider switching their boxes for these.
The next video kind of defeats the whole purpose of the eco-friendly box. It’s called “The Sticky Note Experiments”, using ordinary sticky notes to produce art, in a sense.
Below is an amazing video called “Carousel”. Somehow, the camera is able to move around a scene while stopping/slowing time- showing all angles. It speaks for itself, really. It’s about a battle between some clowns and the cops.
On the topic of stopping time and impossible camera shots, try to figure out how they did these two photos. The man has no safety equipment and no parachute. As always, click for a larger view. (These were found on FFFFOUND!)
After looking at the photos, the only way they could have done it is either by sticking the pictures of the men on to the photo of the building, or else there was safety equipment that was erased afterwards.
Speaking of editing, ever wondered how stop motion videos are made? It’s a lot more complex than just taking a whole lot of photos of something. Take a look at this video showing a battle between two Transformers figures and the process involved in making it.
And going back to the green theme, here’s an eco-friendly alternative to the ordinary wooden/metal/plastic chairs which are all made out of non-renewable resources. This one, like the pizza box, is made out of 100% recycled materials. Again, it even puts the packaging to use as part of the finished product. For more photos of it being assembled and used, go here.
One of the most interesting art forms I’ve seen are these sculptures by Yuken Teruya. There’s really not much to say about them except that they’re sculptures made out of toilet rolls, books and bags. For more photos go here, or go to his website here.
And on the topic of trees and the like, I have some photos of my own.
As I came home from school today and was just about to walk into my house, the Japanese Maple in my front yard caught my eye. The sun shining through the red autumn leaves had a really nice look to it, and I just had to capture it, so I quickly went inside and grabbed my camera and took many photos. The photos below are the only ones that stood out from the rest after editing in Photoshop. I highly recommend you have a look at the larger versions in the set on my Flickr. I love autumn colours. The pole going across the first photo is the top of our broken swing set which is now used as a sort of mini-goal for soccer.
“No Sunlight” is off Death Cab For Cutie’s latest album, Narrow Stairs.
9 Comments so far
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the passenger seat 
Carousel is amazing =O
Comment by materix01 May 20, 2009 @ 3:28 amI’ve seen people produce the stop motion sets for Heroes when Hiro freezes time. They use quite alot of string to hold the props in place. For most of those people they just stand still. Not sure for the others, they get support blocks or string. But for the policeman at 46 seconds, you will notice a blackstick jutting out of his bottom, which is probably a chair used for stop motion. They did a bad job concealing it though.
That first photo(kicking)is definitely against a blue screen but that second one…it has that reflection which ruins my theory 😦
Comment by bk201 May 20, 2009 @ 9:18 amI like the first one. Try blurring the background on the fourth, maybe, for a bokeh effect. It’ll make it less distracting and just put emphasis on a few of the leaves in the foreground.
Comment by James May 20, 2009 @ 2:09 pmYou can’t see it in the small version, but in the fourth photo the camera chose to focus on the background rather than the leaves in the foreground, so a bokeh effect isn’t possible for that one. I’ll give it a go on another photo.
Funny how you like the first one. It’s the only one I used the Green/Purple/Orange gradient map on Screen for, I thought the others looked better without it.
Comment by thepassengerseat May 20, 2009 @ 5:12 pmAh, true. Now that I look more closely at it, the background is more in focus. I think there might be a way of tricking your point-and-shoot’s autofocus by just pressing down fully on the button while it focuses haha, but it’s a hit-or-miss kind of technique with unpredictable results. Just gotta hope you get it at the right time, I s’pose.
And I noticed that the first one had a different tone (which I like) since it was a lot “softer”, say, than the others. Plus the composition was the best also I’d say. The rest are only okay to me. I thought the fourth had more potential with more PS, but yeah.
Comment by James May 20, 2009 @ 5:56 pmSTOP MOTION. I made a mini film 8 seconds with HEAPS of photos. but no fancy editing. bahaha. digital editing is too hard for me.
Comment by mishmashmosh May 20, 2009 @ 11:47 pmI agree with James, 4th would have been mad if focus was right.
Comment by Bosco May 21, 2009 @ 12:22 amSick videos. I like the 5th picture, really nice silhouette.
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