History Eraser Button » Videos

Video: Party on the last V Train

Daryl Lang — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 03:55:47 +0000

Because of budget cuts, the New York City MTA canceled two subway lines on June 25, 2010. This video shows the party that subway fans threw on the last V Train, which departed 2nd Avenue at 11:33 p.m. on June 25.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Vegas

Daryl Lang — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:00:55 +0000

I’m flying to Las Vegas today for a conference. It’s been 10 years since the last time I was there. I expect the experience to be much like this video:

Related: I found a post about Las Vegas from 2000, when I stopped there for one night with my friends Tim, Brian and Ryan on our cross-country road trip. During the trip, we were posting real-time, text-only updates on a web site using a little hand-held gizmo called a Philips Velo 1. The device had to plug into a phone line, which then e-mailed my PowerMac back at the university, which then posted our updates on a rudimentary web server I set up. This was pre-blogging. Rather than gambling and gallivanting, we went driving around Vegas looking for a Kinkos. Good times.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Epic Stop Motion Monster Mashup

Daryl Lang — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:01:23 +0000

Here’s a video and a story. First, the video:

Now the story:

Earlier this month, my brother Gerritt and his wife Melanie hosted a party at their house. Gerritt made a playlist of party music, and I suggested we play a movie to serve as “visual noise” for people to talk about and smile at. I went on Netflix queued up the 1963 epic Jason and the Argonauts.

As we played this movie at the party, we were all amazed at how every scene seemed to sync perfectly with whatever song was playing. When the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling” came on, it was truly a Pink-Floyd-meets-The-Wizard-of-Oz moment.

We imagined a video: the greatest scenes from Jason and the Argonauts condensed and synchronized to “I Gotta Feeling.” Making that video felt not only logical, but mandatory.

The following week, I attended a panel discussion about Internet video at the South-by-Southwest conference in Austin, at which I heard two film/video artists (Brett Gaylor and Elisa Kreisinger) talk about the creative energy that goes into remixing other people’s work. I felt inspired. People really enjoy creating and watching these mashups. This helped me justify investing some of my spare time in this editing project.

Back at my computer, I started clipping and ordering the best scenes from Jason and the Argonauts. I soon realized that “I Gotta Feeling” is a stupefyingly long song. To make this project as fast-paced and funny as I envisioned, I would need more monsters. This led to a month-long obsession with the brilliant work of special effects artist Ray Harryhausen. I scanned through The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Mysterious Island (1961), One Million Years B.C. (1966) and Clash of the Titans (1981). One scene at a time, I built this video synced to the Black Eyed Peas song.

I find digital video editing to be good stress relief. I get lost in the positive feedback loop of every scene coming together, getting better with each hour spent. One reason I appreciate the precision of digital video so much (other than that I’m a control freak) is that I learned video editing in college using VHS decks, which were an exercise in frustration and creative compromise. The most basic editing tools on today’s home computers are a thousand times better than the old way.

I made this video for fun, but I think it improved my editing skills, too. I also found a renewed appreciation for the hand-built, analog creations of Ray Harryhausen. His stop-motion models still hold their magic decades later, viewed frame-by-frame on a digital screen.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Video: The bats of Austin

Daryl Lang — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:38:16 +0000

Last weekend I attended a conference in Austin, Texas. While I was there, I walked over to the Congress Avenue Bridge to watch the nightly flight of the bats. Here’s a video:

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Everything I know about “Alice in Wonderland” I learned from Tom Petty

Daryl Lang — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:00:20 +0000

“Alice in Wonderland” has been recycled so many times in so many mediums that every living American probably has some childhood association with the story. Here’s mine: The 1985 music video for “Don’t Come Around Here No More” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Here’s Tom Petty at his coolest:

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Kart attack

Daryl Lang — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:24:34 +0000

Here’s a little video of a company trip this week to Grand Prix New York, the indoor go kart track in Mount Kisco.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Video: Snow falling in Brooklyn

Daryl Lang — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:41:57 +0000

The snow’s not too bad here—just enough to make the city feel abnormal. Here’s a video I shot on my way to and from work today.

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

Three videos from Christmas in Maryland

Daryl Lang — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 17:00:44 +0000

More fun with my new digital video camera. Three videos follow. Two of them are short and supposed to be funny, one is longer and just supposed to be nice.

Vinnie Makes a Sandwich:

Wii Wish You a Merry Christmas:

Christmas Morning 2009:

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.

“Friendster was only meant to exist temporarily”

Daryl Lang — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 12:59:28 +0000

I can’t decide who comes out looking worse in this devastating Onion video—Friendster or archeologists!

New adventures in hi-def

Daryl Lang — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:17:26 +0000

For my birthday, I got a pocket-size high-def camcorder, the Kodak Zi8. Here is my first experiment with it—a video of my Gramma and my cousin Sandy visiting New York. I haven’t figured out exactly how to get the best video yet with this thing, so some of the shots are dim, shaky and out of focus. I’m trying two different versions here to see what looks best on the blog.

The first version was uploaded to YouTube in 1080 resolution:

The second version has music and was uploaded in 720 resolution:

(For those of you reading this on Facebook, here are links to the videos: 1080 version without music, 720 version with music.)

For now, it looks like 720 is the way to go. The resolution may be less sharp, but the frame rate of the bigger, 1080 video is so slow on my computer it’s difficult to watch. It also took much, much longer to process and upload the sharper video. With video technology, something just a little closer to perfect is always right around the corner. Still, I’m happy with this new camera and look forward to making more movies!

This post first appeared on the History Eraser Button blog.