Cities at Sea: How Aircraft Carriers Work
Wendover Productions on the logistics of these huge military cities at sea.
Tag Archives: explainers
The Dark Past of Sea Monkeys
Great Big Story: This is the story of how a tiny, magical creature was transformed into a cultural phenomenon by inventor, marketing genius and complicated eccentric Harold von Braunhut. Full of fun facts (both charming and disturbing), Just Add Water is a colorful short film about a half-century of marketing directly to children, the force of nostalgia in pop culture, and an unlikely meeting of flim-flam and hard science. A film by Penny Lane.
The Alt-Right Playbook
What are the rhetorical strategies the alt-right uses to legitimise itself and gain power? How do these strategies work? Why do they work? How do we keep from falling for them? And how do we catch ourselves when we start using them, too?
Ian Danskin (aka Innuendo Studios) creates video essays about games, art, politics, and culture. This is the first video in an ongoing series about how the Alt-Right operates.
Ian goes on to talk about how the Alt-Right controls the conversation, why they never play defence, the ‘mainstreaming’ of fringe groups, ‘The Ship of Theseus’ and most recently the death of a euphemism.
If you want to win, you have to understand why you’ve been losing.
See also
- The psychology of liberals and conservatives — Three theories of how liberals and conservatives think, compiled by Nicky Case.
- Umberto Eco on fascism — The key features of fascism, old and new.
- The divided states of America: A cartogram of the 2016 election results
What Is High Concept? Different Thoughts On Big Movie Ideas
Film Courage: What is a high concept movie idea? It’s something that has been brought up a handful of times in our interviews. We know it can be an elusive topic. Here is the best of what we have, hope you find it helpful.
See also
- Why every Hollywood movie feels the same — Peter Suderman writing for Slate on the 2005 screenwriting book that’s taken over Hollywood—and made every movie feel the same.
- Every story is the same — Will Schoder explains Dan Harmon’s story circle.
- Editing as Punctuation in Film — A video essay by Max Tohline.
Why this elbow is a Time Person of the Year
Vox: That elbow in the lower right-hand corner is attached to a young hospital worker from Texas, who anonymously reported her harassment for fear of the negative impact it could have on her and her family. It represents a much larger contingent than the women on the cover: the silence keepers.
The Story Behind the Woman You Don’t See…
Time: The worker, who made a sexual harassment complaint anonymously, told TIME she remembers vivid details about what happened to her, and she couldn’t stop wondering whether she could have prevented the encounter. She said: “I thought, What just happened? Why didn’t I react? I kept thinking, Did I do something, did I say something, did I look a certain way to make him think that was O.K.?”
See also: Other posts tagged ‘equality’.
Push Process
The Royal Ocean Film Society: I’ve been asked a lot what the process of making these essays is like, but rather than just droll on about recording voiceover, late night editing sessions, and falling into despair upon seeing the first cut, I want to take these few minutes to talk about how that working process has evolved creatively over the past year, and about where I’m trying to take these essays in the future.
See also
- Cutting on sound: David Lean’s scene transitions — Despite whatever presets there are in Premiere, scene transitions are not limited to wipes, fades, or dissolves.
- Explore the ‘filmmaking’ tag or my new ‘video essay’ tag for lots more like this.
SovietWomble – The Art of Subtitles
Project Kino on the invisible art of SovietWomble’s subtitling craft. I’m not familiar with this particular YouTuber, but clever animated subtitling work on gaming videos — typically online shooters — are definitely an artform.
See also: Vanoss – Crafting Cinema in Video Games
How realistic are the fantasy castles from films and games?
Shad M Brooks is a huge, huge fan of swords and castles, amongst other geeky subjects, all of which he enthusiastically explores on his YouTube channel, Shadversity. I’ve been really enjoying his castles playlist.
Skyhold from Dragons Age Inquisition apparently gets quite a lot right…
However, he’s less complimentary about the ‘castles’ of Skyrim, which get some basics right but completely fall apart when you look at the details…
There’s some praise for The Lord of the Rings, but also a lot about the castles that doesn’t make sense…
It’s worth starting at the beginning of the playlist with the first two videos on fantasy vs. reality and the names and terms of a medieval castle parts.
In those videos Shad shows off and explains his own rather cool design for a more realistic fantasy castle he calls ‘Honor Guard’.
See also
- Dyson Logos is a prolific and talented creator of Dungeons and Dragons maps
- How game designers make dungeons: Durlag’s Tower
- Chess set architecture
- The Shandification of Fallout — ‘What do they eat?’
Black MIDI songs will kill your brain and your computer
This Exists: Have you ever been listening to a normal song and thought, “I really wish this normal song had 280 million notes and took up 1.1 terabytes of data and was literally unplayable on any computer?” Of course, you’re only human. Black MIDI is the hypnotic madness you’ve been craving.
Black MIDI is a sequenced MIDI file so dense with notes, it literally just appears to be jet black.
[Black MIDI] Nyan Trololol
See also
- This Exists — Digging up the pop culture peculiarities and nonsense that exists in the darkness on the edge of town.
- Rhizome: The Impossible Music of Black MIDI
- YouTube Poop — …does YTP ⋮ qualify as a “statement” of sorts? Is it a way to reclaim these pop culture symbols and create something that is truly our own? Or are they just the annoying byproduct of having video editing software and too much time on your hands?
- Mechanical techno demonstration — Made at Lime Wharf Machines Room as part of Rhythm & Drone Research & Development residency, September 2015
- The “millennial whoop” is taking over pop music — The same exact whooping, melodic sequence has been showing up in a surprisingly high number of recent pop songs
Every Story is the Same
Will Schoder explains Dan Harmon’s story circle. (via Kottke)
Previously on this blog: Dan Harmon’s 8 point story structure, in text form.
You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky
The way you are using Excel causes errors, creates incomprehensible spaghetti spreadsheets, and makes me want to stab out my own eyes. Enough of the =VLOOKUPs with the C3:$F$38. You don’t even know what that means.
An Excel primer from Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software fame.
Shovel Knight and Nailing Nostalgia
Mark Brown: Some games are all about nostalgia – a reminder of how games used to be. No game nails this sensation quite like Shovel Knight, which expertly picks and chooses the right bits to emulate from old games. Here’s how Yacht Club Games pulled it off.
See also
Why Jump Scares Suck
Now You See It: Are jump scares cheap? Should we get rid of them? Short answer: No. They suck, but they have more potential than you may think.
See also
- Film School’d on movie editing — The point in a film’s production where a film comes together and becomes greater than the sum of its shots.
- Film cuts and transitions explained — RocketJump Film School: Cuts & Transitions 101
- Game of Thrones: Behind the Battle of the Bastards — The Battle of the Bastards is brutal and terrifying and this wasn’t even the only major conflict in episode nine!
How does YouTube actually work?
Nat and Lo: After making (and uploading) videos to YouTube for about a year, we finally decided to go behind the scenes of YouTube and ask the YouTube engineers how YouTube actually works.
What does YouTube do to your video after you upload it?
What actually happens when you watch a YouTube video?
See also
- YouTube compression — Brandon from RocketJump shares the settings he uses to get the best quality and the smallest file-size video possible before uploading to YouTube.
- YouTube: The Medium Is The Message — The largest ingredient of online video is the awareness that every consumer is a possible creator.
- YouTube Poop — The so-called ‘subversive remix’ is not a new phenomenon.
The Other Side
Three theories of how liberals and conservatives think, compiled by Nicky Case.
I’m posting this in large part because I like the format. It’s more interesting than just a text screenshot or tweetstorm when posted on social media, and it looks good in a blog post. I also appreciate that it’s explicitly public domain to encourage sharing.
It’s not a proper infographic, it’s not an essay and it’s certainly not a comic, but it is a little of all of these things.
See also: other posts tagged ‘politics’.
The psychology of liberals and conservatives
“Studies of identical twins have confirmed what we know deep down — it’s not Nurture vs Nature, it’s nurture AND nature.”
David Lean’s Scene Transitions
Despite whatever presets there are in Premiere, scene transitions are not limited to wipes, fades, or dissolves. Let’s examine the work of David Lean and see what unique ways we can find of cutting picture and sound together to make transitions really shine.
The Royal Ocean Film Society is a video essay series by Andrew Saladino devoted to the style, craft, and analysis of everything film.
Bloomberg: How U.K. and Europe Might Relate After Breakup
The U.K. and Europe can’t exactly go their own ways once their divorce is finalized. On trade, customs, defense and the global flow of capital, the European Union and its cross-channel neighbor will continue doing business after Brexit. The question is, how?
See also: Genetic map of the UK shows which invasions created Britain’s DNA
The political configuration of Europe as a Venn diagram
“The Norway model (also employed by Iceland and Liechtenstein) is getting a lot of attention as a potential path for the U.K. But while that would preserve most economic ties, it would also retain many features of EU membership that the British people rejected, such as free movement of labor and paying into the European budget. That’s the dilemma for policy makers.” — Bloomberg
“I feel like I should have a really good answer for this, but somehow I also feel that the question is wrong.”
The Function of Music
Mac Premo: I sat down with Jad Abumrad and talked about sound, music and the function of music. Then I turned that conversation into a film.
(via Boing Boing)
See also
The Peter Principle: the scientific reason everything is a bit s**t
Adam Westbrook: We live in times of seemingly unending progress – and yet somehow things still always go wrong: trains are late, broadband speeds suck and the promotion always goes to the wrong person. Well, it turns out there’s an explanation for all this – and progress itself is the problem. Meet The Peter Principle.
The Peter Principle
See also: The Long Game: The struggle for art in a world obsessed with popularity — A series of video essays by Adam Westbrook: All of history’s greatest figures achieved success in almost exactly the same way. But rather than celebrating this part of the creative process we ignore it.
The Secret World of Foley
Witness the magic of moviemaking and journey into the little known world of Foley Artists, who bring films to life with their perfectly-timed sound-effects.
See also
Every Frame a Painting: How Does an Editor Think and Feel?
Tony Zhou For the past ten years, I’ve been editing professionally. Yet one question always stumps me: “How do you know when to cut?” And I can only answer that it’s very instinctual. On some level, I’m just thinking and feeling my way through the edit. So today, I’d like to describe that process: how does an editor think and feel?
Includes a quote from legendary film editor Thelma Schoonmmaker who perfectly describes a problem I’ve long felt with today’s ultra fast cut-cut-cut movies:
“I think [modern filmmakers] are sticking stuff out there and asking you to believe it, but they’re not making you believe it.”
See also: Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Quadrant System’, David Fincher in the details and other posts tagged ‘filmmaking’.
Pixar – What Makes a Story Relatable
A quick look at Pixar’s approach to storytelling and character development.
See also
- Don’t be afraid of the blank sheets — Pixar production designer Ricky Nierva talking at TEDxAthens about the creative process.
- The Toy Story 3 you never saw — The plot for Circle 7’s abandoned film was radically different to the Toy Story 3 that eventually hit cinemas in 2010.
- Pixar’s Merida ‘sexualised’ for induction into The Disney Princess Collection — Merida’s creator Brenda Chapman: “I think it’s atrocious what they have done to Merida.”
- Pixar in a box! Animation lessons from the masters — A collaboration between Pixar Animation Studios and Khan Academy, sponsored by Disney.
- Jon Negroni’s The Pixar Theory & the true identity of Andy’s mom in Toy Story
Movies with Mikey is a YouTube series by Mikey Neumann which deconstructs some of my favourite films, including:
Scott Pilgrim vs. World
Mikey presents: an underrated Edgar Wright classic, Scott Pilgrim. Bask in the editing insanity that Mikey puts into a Youtube show that practically no one watches.
Hugo
Mikey dives deep on not only one of the greatest films of the last five years, but also the birth of cinema as an art form. This is probably important. Or maybe it isn’t? Who really knows?
Fury Road
Movies with Mikey: Scott Pilgrim, Hugo & Fury Road
“Movies With Mikey is a comedic look at films by Mikey Neumann. Unlike other review shows, the aim of MWM is to celebrate film, not tear it down. Check it out or Mikey will be very sad and eat everything in the nearest Dairy Queen snack freezer.”
Primitive Technology: Bow and Arrow
I made a bow and arrows in the wild using only natural materials and primitive tools I’d made previously from scratch (as usual). The tools used were a celt stone hatchet, a stone chisel, various stone blades and fire sticks.
Filmed in the wilds of Far North Queensland, Australia, our silent craftsman ventures out into the bush to camp and make these videos. Self taught from books, the internet and trial and error, this is a hobby and not a way of life: “I live in a modern house and eat modern food. I just like to see how people in ancient times built and made things.”
“Primitive technology is a hobby where you make things in the wild completely from scratch using no modern tools or materials. This is the strict rule. If you want a fire- use fire sticks, an axe- pick up a stone and shape it, a hut- build one from trees, mud, rocks etc. The challenge is seeing how far you can go without modern technology. If this hobby interests you then this blog might be what you are looking for.”
See also
Lord Of The Rings: How Music Elevates Story
Evan Puschak talks about Howard Shore’s use of leitmotifs in The Lord of the Rings.
“I think that we hardly grasp the importance of music in film. It’s an invisible layer of pure emotion that guides us or challenges us, or guides or challenges the drama itself.
“In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Howard Shore gave us perhaps the most complete and complex exploration of leitmotifs in the history of cinema, and the result is a score that is as alive as the world Tolkien gave us.”
See also
The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimus Bosch — an online interactive adventure.
Hieronymus van Aken honed his skills to become a world-famous artist. Once his fame had spread outside the city walls, he would sign his work with ‘Hieronymus Bosch’, after the name of his native city.
The Mountain Landscape
The Circuit
The Garden of Earthly Delights is a story about morals and sin in a particular time. The painting however is timeless. The journey that the visitor sets out on in the interactive documentary is a personal one. Beneath the surface we aim to invite the visitor to reflect upon and question their sins and morals.
Diabolical bird on potty chair
City on Fire
(via)
See also: Classic paintings brought to life & Ben Sack’s mad maps.
Explore ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ in high resolution
“In the late Middle Ages, a master-painter lived in the south of the Netherlands. […] Bosch was out to amuse and surprise us, he wanted us to enjoy the sight of this multitude of figures, animals, plants and objects.”
History of Japan
By Bill Wurtz.
See also
- A Complete History Of The Soviet Union Through The Eyes Of A Humble Worker, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris — “The food on your plate; now belongs to the state”
- World War I: The Seminal Tragedy — “The world hinges on small things”
- 4,000 years of human history in one chart — This “Histomap,” created by John B. Sparks, was first printed by Rand McNally in 1931.
RetroAhoy: Doom
Stuart Brown: Doom is a massively important step in the development of 3D action games. One that defined the first person shooter and changed gaming forever.
If you had a PC — you had to have Doom.
See also
- RetroAhoy: Nuclear Fruit — a five part exploration of the Cold War’s effect on video games.
- RetroAhoy: Iconic Arms — the history of famous weapons from games.
- RetroAhoy: Open World Origins — What was the first truly open world game? What other titles set the standard along the way? And what makes them so popular today?
- A collection of the best, pixel-by-Pixel handcrafted logos from the Commodore Amiga Scene
Composition In Storytelling
Lewis Bond: The cinema screen is just another canvas for an artist to create images. Composition is the tool that gives those images structure and purpose.
See also
- The History of Aspect Ratios — the evolution of the screen shape.
- The Quadrant System — Tony Zhou looks at Drive.
- Mad Max: Center Framed — By using “Eye Trace” and “Crosshair Framing” techniques during the shooting, the editor could keep the important visual information vital in one spot… the Center of the Frame.
Sockrotation 