I shot this film over 4 trips to NYC 2011-2012. The time-lapse sequences you see here were made (mostly) from hundreds of thousands of still images. A Canon 7D and T3i were the main cameras, with backup from a couple of older Nikon Coolpix 5000 point and shooters. A few clips are sped-up video.
Many thanks to the generosity of the musician/composer who allowed his great celtic track “Sawjig” to be used;
Ben Rusch aka Jasmine Brunch benrusch.com jasminebrunch.com
The “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid” video, uploaded to YouTube on the evening of December 18, was made by Normand Archambault, Loïc Mireault and Félix Marquis-Poulin, students at Centre NAD, in the production simulation workshop class of the Bachelors degree in 3D Animation and Digital Design.
The video shows a royal eagle snatching a young kid while he plays under the watch of his dad. The eagle then drops the kid a few feet away. Both the eagle and the kid were created in 3D animation and integrated in to the film afterwards.
The video has already received more than 1,200,000 views on YouTube and has been mentioned by dozens of media in Canada and abroad.
The production simulation workshop class, offered in fifth semester, aims to produce creative projects according to industry production and quality standards while developing team work skills. Hoaxes produced in this class have already garnered attention, amongst others a video of a penguin having escaped the Montreal Biodôme.
Was that enough YouTube views to guarantee an A in the course?
I’ll wager the students who made the film are not “désolée” at all.
.Gif showing shadow inconsistencies used to debunk video: Caption at Poynter.org: “Earlier, social media verification experts at Storyful point to evidence of fakery, including Twitter user @thornae’s animated GIF showing inconsistencies with the eagle’s shadow.”
Brilliant little film about a wonderfully creative guy, a war refugee, who developed a wind-powered device that can find and detonate anti-personnel mines. It’s part of the GE-sponsored FOCUS/FORWARD film contest:
MINE KAFON is a Finalist in the $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition and is in the running to become the $100,000 Grand Prize Winner. It could also be named an Audience Favorite if it’s among the ten that receives the most votes. If you love it, vote for it. Click on the VOTE button in the top right corner of the video player. Note that voting may not be available on all mobile platforms, and browser cookies must be enabled to vote.
A short documentary portrait on a designer who has created a low cost solution to landmine clearance.
Check out his website: massoudhassani.com
or for other films by us at Ardent Film Trust: ardentfilm.org
DIRECTOR
Callum Cooper
DOP
Michael Latham
CAMERA
Michael Latham
Mahmud Hassani
Callum Cooper
SLOW MOTION CAMERA
Ed Edwards
EDITOR
Anna Meller
COLOR GRADER
Chris Teeder
SOUND MIXER AND DESIGNER
Sandy Milne
TITLE DESIGNER
Ray O’Meara
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Bobby Kapur
PRODUCERS
Alicia Brown
Michael Latham
Callum Cooper
THANKS
Lucie Kalmar
Slowmo High Speed
Optimism Films
The RNLA explosive ordnance disposal service
Copyright Ardent Film Trust 2012
Another video from super teacher CGPGrey, right up our Texas alley, on the issue of Texas secession:
Minor error: No provision I can find in any Texas Constitution to allow Texas to split. Language to allow a territory to split into as many as five states was pretty standard for new U.S. territories organized during the 19th century; but that didn’t carry over to the Texas Constitution approved by Congress, not in a unilateral way. One needs to recall that when Texas entered the Union, it carried with it lands that eventually became parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wyoming — which was part of the scruff with Mexico, which led to the U.S.-Mexico war of 1846 to 1848.
Still a teacher from another state demonstrates a much clearer conception of Texas history and state and federal law than some of the nutcases in Texas. That so many Texans hold so many false perceptions of law and Texas history is an indictment of Texas education, and Texas’s governor and legislature.
For “Origin of Species Day,” November 24, the anniversary of the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin’s most famous book, Paul Andersen sent out this Tweet:
Happy Origin of Species Day! Celebrate by learning the story of the comeback stickleback: youtu.be/VE2q5IhjdYM
Who is Paul Andersen? He’s Montana’s Teacher of the Year (for what year, I don’t know). He teaches science in Bozeman, at Bozeman High.
Plus, he’s produced 224 videos, most of them on science issues. They’re short, they’re informative, and they work. Salman Khan, not yet — but here’s one more piece of the great big puzzle, how do we marry education and technology.
Where does he offer continuing education for teachers on how to produce videos? Why isn’t Texas paying big money to him to get him to do that, to teach Texans how to use YouTube to teach?
Andersen’s on the right path, and he’s running hard. Teachers, are you paying attention?
(By the way, I’d quibble a bit on his history — I think Darwin did a fair deal of experimentation on evolution, breeding pigeons for a decade, among other things. But Andersen’s use of stickleback evolution is very good; the little fishies have been observed to speciate in the wild, and then to duplicate that speciation in captivity, thereby confirming what was observed out in the lakes. Thank you sticklebacks!)
Very quickly this gets into serious territory.
Look, I’m an out of the loop teacher in Dallas, Texas — and for all its money and size and importance, Texas is mostly a cultural and educational backwater. It’s not that there aren’t great people in education here, or no great resources — we are shackled to an ancient political system that puts more value on fealty to not-quite-superordinate ideas than on cutting edge education, or mass educational attainment. There is a powerful anti-intellectual stream in Texas politics that believes a hobbled education system will not threaten the political, social or cultural order. Too many Texans take great solace in that, covertly or overtly.
As a nation, we are engaged in a series of great education experiments, using our children as testing subjects, as guinea pigs. How does video fit into making education work better?
Here we’ve got Paul Andersen and his science videos.
Despite my grousing about his not being in Texas, he is active in national circles where the serious questions get asked about how to use video, and other technologies.
A YouTube Education Summit on October 18 and 19 got Andersen out of Montana, where Andersen ran into C. G. P. Grey, another guy who uses video.
Grey responded with this ode to a “digital Aristotle“:
Links and other information Grey offered:
Some thoughts on teachers, students and the Future of Education.
The book kid me is holding in the video is The Way Things Work. If there’s a bookish child in your life, you should get them a copy: http://goo.gl/QdreH
Also I don’t think that the idea of Digital Aristotle is sci-fi, but if you *do* want to read the sci-fi version, I highly recommend The Diamond Age: http://goo.gl/uvbx6
Game on, ladies and gentlemen. Which one is closer to being right?
There you go, from evolution, to evolution of teaching and education. What’s the selection tool for quality education? Which species of learning will survive to reproduce?
It’s enough to make an old typewriter guy drive to Arizona, for more than the air (with a stop in Albuquerque at the Owl Cafe for an Owl burger, of course).
Polymath reporter Bill Geist from CBS News reported this piece for Sunday Morning, in February, featuring Mesa Typewriter Exchange in Arizona, and more:
Teacher and education blogs were all atwitter — and Twitter was all ablog, I suppose you could say — about the opening this past weekend of the movie “Won’t Back Down.”
“Parent trigger” laws bubble up in discussion a lot recently — laws that allow a group of parents to petition a school district, or the state, and say that they want to take over a local school. Conservatives and other anti-teacher groups promote these laws as a means of education reform. Generally, in the few cases in which a school is taken over by parents, teachers and local administrators are fired, and the school operates much like a charter school.
“Won’t Back Down” professes to be “based on a true story.” I am reminded that both “Psycho” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” also professed to be based on a true story — the same story, in fact. I’ve written about this before – based on a true story, except not in Texas, no chainsaw, no massacre, nor was there a hotel and a shower. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is more carefully based on a true story — there is a Mississippi River; or The Bald Soprano — there are bald people, and there are sopranos. But I digress.
The film has a cast of some great star power — Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter. It was produced by the documentary group that also produced Al Gore‘s “Inconvenient Truth,” and then moved to the popular but wildly polemical “Waiting for Superman,” another hit on teachers. They should have stopped with that one, instead of raising the ante (raising the “anti?”).
Audiences don’t like films that cast teachers as villains, it would appear.
(Reuters) – Education reform film “Won’t Back Down” opened Friday to terrible reviews – and high hopes from activists who expect the movie to inspire parents everywhere to demand big changes in public schools.
The drama stars Maggie Gyllenhaal as a spirited mother who teams up with a passionate teacher to seize control of their failing neighborhood school, over the opposition of a self-serving teachers union.
Reviewers called it trite and dull, but education reformers on both the left and right have hailed the film as a potential game-changer that could aid their fight to weaken teachers’ unions and inject more competition into public education.
Even an Oscar-caliber leading cast couldn’t save this one. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s latest film “Won’t Back Down,” also starring Viola Davis and Holly Hunter, set the record this past weekend for the worst opening of a film that appeared in more than 2,500 theaters, making a mere $2.6 million [via Box Office Mojo].
Yes, all three of these former Oscar nominees — Hunter having won a golden statuette in 1994 for “The Piano” — now have a pretty bad blemish on their resume. But they aren’t to blame, say industry watchers, who are reacting to the film with a resounding face palm. “‘Won’t Back Down’ wore the dunce cap last weekend, mostly because its marketing was almost non-existent,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.
“Record for the worst opening?” Ouch.
Back to the “based on a true story” issue: We may understand why the screenwriter and director of the first Texas Chainsaw movie, Tobe Hooper took the liberties he did to add elements to the story. He knew the original story of a disturbed man in Wisconsin who was jailed for corpse mutilation. He knew that was the foundation for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” How to update it, to make the story bankable from the box office? Move it to Texas, add a chainsaw with all its terrifying whine, and add in the standard teenager murder story elements; maybe put a mask on the villain/evil beast, to make it more terrifying — there is great terror in being pursued by nameless, faceless folk as Orwell showed us. Both Hitchcock and Hooper fully understood that the real, dull story, wasn’t something people would pay to sit through while eating grossly-overpriced popcorn.
“Won’t Back Down” suffered from sticking too close to the facts. If you’re going to claim the antagonist is psycho, you have to give them a big butcher’s knife or a chainsaw, and a costume, in order to make really, really scary.
Teachers just are not that scary in real life. Teachers are not the villains, in real life.
National Review’s Rich Lowry likes the movie because it pokes unions in the eye — it’s all about crushing unions, isn’t it, Rich? (Most teachers not unionized, many “unions” banned from collective bargaining.) (via Oregonian) Lowry: ” . . .a film featuring a hooker with a heart of gold, or pretty much any romantic comedy.” Teacher bashing as romantic comedy?
You wondered how anyone could ever fall in love with the modern megalopolis that is Los Angeles?
Along comes Colin Rich with this video ode, visual poetry to an essential chunk of America. Oh, yeah, it’s got lots of time-lapse. Notice how the photography turns simple airplanes into something akin to shooting stars, and notice how even an ugly old radio tower crowded with microwave and digital communication antennae turn into things of grace, if not beauty:
A big thanks to Matthews MSE (msegrip.com) especially to Bob Kulesh, Tyler & Ed Phillips for their generous support and patience of this lengthy endeavor. Most of the linear motion control shots were captured using their FloatCam DC Slider, a wonderful piece of engineering for the time lapse world.
‘Nightfall’ is a three minute tour of light through the City of Angels.
I shot “Nightfall” in an attempt to capture Los Angeles as it transitioned from day to night. As you probably know, LA is an expansive city so shooting it from many different angles was critical. Usually I was able to capture just one shot per day with a lot of driving, exploring, and scouting in between but the times sitting in traffic or a “sketchy” neighborhood often lead to new adventures and interesting places.
Nightfall in particular is my favorite time to shoot time lapse. Capturing the transition from day to night while looking back at the city as the purple shadow of Earth envelopes the eastern skyline and the warm distant twinkling halogen lights spark to life and give the fading sun a run for her money- this will never grow old or boring to me.
In this piece, it was important to me for the shots to both capture and accentuate the movement of light through the day and night and the use of multiple motion control techniques allowed me to do so.
I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed creating it.
An English translation of the lyrics-
“It is late. I am looking for my other home, taking an unfamiliar path: a small trail near the factories and the city, cutting through the forest. I can barely see nature when suddenly, night falls. I am engulfed by a world of silence, yet I am not afraid. I fall asleep for a few minutes at the most, and when I wake up, the sun is there and the forest is shining with a bright light.
I recognize this forest. It is not an ordinary forest, it is a forest of memories. My memories. The white and noisy river, my adolescence. The tall trees, the men I have loved. The birds in flight, and in the distance, my lost father.
My memories aren’t memories anymore. They are there, with me, dancing and embracing, singing and smiling at me.
I look at my hands. I caress my face, and I am 20 years old. And I love like I have never loved before.”
Surely this film can be used, at least for a bell ringer or warmup, in geography classes.
Hidalgo himself was captured by the Spanish in 1811, and executed.
Statue of Father Hidalgo in Dolores, Mexico.
It’s a great story. It’s a good speech, what little we have of it (Hidalgo used no text, and we work from remembered versions). It’s important to Texas history, too — it’s difficult to imagine Tejians getting independence from Spain in quite the same way they won it from Mexico.
Why isn’t there a good 10- to 15-minute video on the thing for classroom use? Get a good actor to do the speech, it could be a hit. Where is the video when we need it?
Update from 2008: Glimmerings of hope on the video front: Amateur videos on YouTube provide some of the sense of what goes on in modern celebrations.
The Grito de Dolores (“Cry of/from Dolores”) was the battle cry of the Mexican War of Independence, uttered on September 16, 1810, by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a Roman Catholic priest from the small town of Dolores, near Guanajuato, Mexico.
“My Children, a new dispensation comes to us today…Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen 300 years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once.”
Although many mistakenly attribute the Cinco de Mayo holiday as the celebration of Mexican independence, Sept. 16 was the day the enthusiastic Indian and mestizo congregation of Hidalgo’s small Dolores parish church took up arms and began their fight for freedom against Spain.
Portals to the World contains selective links providing authoritative, in-depth information about the nations and other areas of the world. Resources on Mexico include information on the country’s history, religion, culture and society to name a few.
September is also a notable month for Hispanic culture with the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month Sept 15 – Oct. 15. Sept. 15 is significant because it is the anniversary of independence for Latin American countries Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. In addition to Mexico’s independence day on Sept. 16, Chile recognizes its independence day Sept.18. Also, Columbus Day or Día de la Raza, which is Oct. 12, falls within this 30-day period.
The theme for the 2009 Hispanic Heritage Month was “Embracing the Fierce Urgency of Now!” To coincide with the celebration, the Library and several partners present a website honoring Hispanic culture and people. [Nice idea, calling it "Heritage Month" instead of "History Month;" maybe we can change February to "Black Heritage Month," and study Hispanic and black history every day.]
Specifically on the Grito de Dolores, see the Library of Congress’s American Memory Project:
Cry of Dolores
My Children, a new dispensation comes to us today…Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once.Cry of Dolores, attributed to Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, September 16, 1810.
Early on the morning of September 16, 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla summoned the largely Indian and mestizo congregation of his small Dolores parish church and urged them to take up arms and fight for Mexico’s independence from Spain. His El Grito de Dolores, or Cry of Dolores, which was spoken—not written—is commemorated on September 16 as Mexican Independence Day.
Father Hidalgo was born into a moderately wealthy family in the city of Guanajuato, northwest of Mexico City, in 1753. He attended the Jesuit College of San Francisco Javier, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Mexico in 1774, and was ordained into the priesthood in 1778. He soon earned the enmity of the authorities, however, by openly challenging both church doctrine and aspects of Spanish rule by developing Mexican agriculture and industry.
In 1803, Hidalgo accepted the curacy of the small parish of Dolores, not far from his native city of Guanajuato. Between 1803 and 1810, he directed most of his energy to improving the economic prospects of his parishioners. He also joined the Academia Literaria, a committee seeking Mexico’s independence from Spain.
In September 1810, Spanish authorities learned of the group’s plot to incite a rebellion. On September 13, they searched the home of Emeterio González in the city of Queretaro where they found a large supply of weapons and ammunition. Warned of his impending arrest, Hidalgo preempted authorities by issuing the ElGrito de Dolores on the morning of September 16. Attracting enthusiastic support from the Indian and mestizo population, he and his band of supporters moved toward the town of San Miguel.
The rebel army encountered its first serious resistance at Guanajuato. After a fierce battle that took the lives of more than 500 Spaniards and 2,200 Indians, the rebels won the city. By October, the rebel army, now 80,000 strong, was close to taking Mexico City. Hidalgo, fearful of unleashing the army on the capital city, hesitated, then retreated to the north. He was captured in Texas, then still a part of the Spanish empire, and executed by firing squad on July 31, 1811. After ten more years of fighting, a weakened and divided Mexico finally won independence from Spain with the signing of the Treaty of Córdoba on August 24, 1821.
Learn more about Mexico:
View the Huexotzinco Codex, one of the Top Treasures in the Library of Congress’ American Treasures online exhibition. The codex is an eight-sheet document on amatl,a pre-European paper made from tree bark in Mesoamerica. It is part of the testimony in a legal case against representatives of Spain’s colonial government in Mexico and dates to 1531, ten years after Mexico’s defeat.
Read the Today in History feature on the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, which celebrates Mexico’s defeat of French troops at the town of Puebla in 1862. This event is also widely celebrated by Latinos in the U.S.
Hispanic Heritage Month.gov, from the Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, National Endowment for the Humanities and several other federal agencies and institutions
To locate resources for the study of Mexico and its history, search the Handbook of Latin American Studies, an online bibliography of works selected and annotated by scholars of Latin American history and culture, or visit the Hispanic Reading Room, which also offers a portal for online information on Mexico.
Windom may have been surprised at being called either rich or famous — but he should have been.
William Wiindom, in the orignal “Star Trek” television series
William Windom, an actor whose face and voice most Americans would recognize, died yesterday. I became a fan of his years ago when he starred in a short-lived, quirky and ground-breaking television series, “My World and Welcome to It.” The series was based on the work of humorist and cartoonist James Thurber. Windom played a cartoonist whose drawings occasionally came to life, complicating his troubles with job, women and family. The program ran for one season on NBC, 1969-70, with 26 episodes.
Too few guffaws for network television.
Buried in most notices of Mr. Windom’s death was the information that he was a pretty good chess player.
A few of his games got captured on film.
William Windom, left, playing chess against John Wayne – image from Batgirl at Chess.com. Wayne, known to friends and the chess world as Duke, played chess on almost all of his movie sets, and at least once in a movie role.
Windom’s game against Wayne is undated.
Windom, right, playing Erik Estrada. Image from AnatolyKarpoveChessSchool.com, undated (Is this photo by photographer Irwin Fisk?)
Windom, left, playing chess against Claude Akins. Image from AnatolyKarpovChessSchool.org
Windom playing Adam Baldwin, Los Angeles, 1988 – Anatoly Karpov Chess School image
“My World and Welcome To It,” Christmas show part 1 (hey, this stuff is worth it for the advertising history), part 2 and part 3 (in which Windom’s character gets a visit from a local veterans’ organization concerned that he is flying his flag inappropriately — that is, too much; how times change!)
In this promo for “My World and Welcome To It,” one may get the idea NBC didn’t know what to do with the show, how to market it.
I’m up for a brilliant little idea not carried on too long.
Stumbled into this film from four years ago. The producer/director/creator explains it:
Noteboek (English title: Notebook) consists of 4 short experimental films where I try to confuse the reality.
In these films, illusions and expectations are challenged.
Noteboek is a short film and part of my graduation project.
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Posted by Ed Darrell 
![Viva la república! Viva el Cura Hidalgo! Una página de Gloria, TITLE TRANSLATION: Long live the republic! Long live Father Hidalgo! A page of glory. Between 1890 and 1913. Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Information: Reproduction Nos.: LC-USZ62-98851 (b&w film copy neg.), LC-DIG-ppmsc-04595 (digital file from original, recto), LC-DIG-ppmsc-04596 (digital file from original, verso); Call No.: PGA - Vanegas, no. 123 (C size) [P&P] Catalog Record: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.04595](http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/sept09/images/Mexican_A.jpg)
![A street in Guanajuato, Mexico. Between 1880 and 1897. Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction Information: Reproduction No.: LC-D418-8481 (b&w glass neg.); Call No.: LC-D418-8481 <P&P>[P&P] Catalog Record: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/det.4a27131](http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/sept09/images/Mexican_B.jpg)
