Zach Kmiec – mmmff


Mmmff Activities Workshop 2006: Call for entries (2006, 10.1MB, 1:58)


Mmmff Activities Workshop 2006 (2006, 13.8MB, 3:44)

Here’s the setup:
Jennifer Proctor taught a videoblogging class at the
University of Iowa in 2006. Every student set up
his/her own videoblog and made vloggy goodness.
Then, many abandoned their work, though I’d
personally expect nothing less.

While I knew one of the students in the class
(UI is one of my alma maters), a guy I didn’t
know – mmmff – caught my attention more.
Using a cell phone I’m pretty sure he just found
somewhere, Zach then made collage videos of the
five seconds or less the phone would capture in every go.

In the first video, the premise of the phone and
its limitations are introduced, and in the second
follow-up piece, the plan – to make a compilation
of activities you can do in 5 seconds or less – is executed.

It’s pretty much the opposite of boring, predictable,
talk-to-your-camera vids that litter so many hosting
services these days.
This is video functioning within constraints.
It’s also wildly hilarious.
Some of the very best random and weird videoblog
work I’ve ever seen.

3 from Kinetocast


Kinetocast – To Watch While Smelling Summer (2007, 8.2MB, 1:30)


Kinetocast – To Watch With Any Spectacle (2007, 8MB, 1:21)


Kinetocast – To Watch Feeling Betrayed (2006, 2.7MB, 0:35)

Three from the wildly amusing, all too infrequently updated kinetocast.
All based on the idea that these short videos can be watched as they
are labeled appropriate to time or event, this entire videoblog is fairly
genius conceptual work. Also worth checking out from Mack McFarland,
The Portland That Was….

More of these to come…

Rupert Howe – Sun

sun
Sun (2008, 5.4MB, 30 secs)

Utterly ravishing Lumière from the never predictable,
always interesting, Rupert Howe.

On that summery note, we’re going to take a rest in the sunshine.
We love doing DVblog, but the daily deadline definitely takes
its toll after a bit.
We’ll be getting ready to hit the ground running again around 16th Sept.
& we’ll still keeping our eyes peeled for the new, for the weird &
(best of all!) for the wonderful.

Have a great summer!

Brittany, Doron, Michael.

Two from Robert Croma

Thibaut Is Singing On Oberstein Road
Thibaut Is Singing On Oberstein Road (2008, 15.5MB, 2:36 min)

Rules of Engagement
Rules of Engagement (2008, 18.1MB, 2:15 min)

Tremendous work from Robert Croma.
The Iraq piece is harrowing but you should watch it nonetheless.
The Thibaut piece is simply exhilarating.
I was trying to figure out what exactly makes this work so outstanding.
I don’t think it’s just the fact that it is technically so good (although it is).
It’s to do with Croma’s taste, judgement & instinct, or at least how he
deploys these to tell us something, or rather to intuit-to-us something
about being a human being.
You couldn’t make a rule of it, for that would render it inert & mechanical,
but, loosely, in these two pieces, it seems to me to lie in a going-beyond
-the-expected – a process with its heart in the little codas which open
out the pieces in a quite extraordinary way.
So the Iraq piece, though supremely well done, is initially not a
million miles away from much other remix type work, but it is the final
calling-to-attention, the framing, of the gait of one of the people
whom we have just seen obliterated that re-doubles its horror
but also creates the tiniest ground for hope in the inescapable
(thanks to Croma) clear recognition of our common humanity.
A similar process occurs in the Thibaut piece
– its potency initially seems to reside in the simplicity of the
camera exploring the still, the conjunction of the new and old
imaging technology and the simple & moving fact of evocation
of time passed.
It’s beautiful; and many would have been tempted to leave it there.
The final section is a risk – it could have have the opposite effect
to what it actually does; it could have closed off, made pat.
Here perhaps the technical fluency does play a defining role but the
effect is the exact opposite of closure -we’re left, once again, in a very
different way, filled with a sense of the mystery & complexity & possibility
(& the fragility) of being human.