Big Ideas - Freeze Frame

The Twilight Zone pushed the edge 50 years ago, and it still holds up today.  Rod Serling couldn't take on McCarthyism head-on, so he used allegories - terrible things happening to good people in good little towns imbued with 'American' values.  Although a few of the premises have almost become clichés, many are as frightening today as they were when I was 10 years old...  Martians arrived to get food - but the food is us... a nuclear  bomb goes off and the sole survivor, a book loving hermit who has prepared with a library of thousands of books, breaks his only pair of glasses...   the devil is a beautiful woman. 

Here's a beautifully choreographed clip which shows the outsider notion in motion, or should I say with a lack of motion.  Something other worldly is happening all around us.....   Freeze Frame

What makes this clip work?  It's a HUGE idea.... big place, big idea, beautiful execution.  And, it's never been seen before.  It's original.   It's got that Twilight Zone edge.

Makeup for the Video Production Camera

CNN anchor Sean Callebs is a great friend.  I was his producer.  Alas, Sean had one extremely annoying habit: he enjoyed torturing me on air.  But he was also a huge flirt.  When I finally reached my tipping point (normally around lunch time), my revenge was often to point out the fact that he was wearing makeup to the cutest girl I could find, when we were getting lunch.  It worked.  They would take a closer look at him only to discover a man wearing a LOT of makeup.... because he was made up for work. Not that there's anything wrong with men wearing makeup!

The point here is that video and film do not see makeup the way the human eye sees makeup.   An incredibly smoked up room will often barely look smoky on film.  The art of makeup in television is rarely subtle.  Enter the HD camera and now aging actresses (and actors) who have been relying for years on film tricks like silks (they soften the light and fill in those rascally nooks and crannies) now must get their makeup spray painted prior to going on camera at the academy awards.

 While the consumer loves the HD (high definition) cameras, the on camera talent does not because these HD cameras see everything... spying into those little age lines, wrinkles and smile lines never seen by prior generations of cameras.   According to a recent Trendcentral column, cosmetic makers such as Christian Dior, Smashbox and Cargo have now introduced every day lines of cosmetics that are HD friendly.  So rest easy the next time you are out with Paris Hilton partying and the Paparazzi starts to swarm, if you are wearing the right makeup, the HD camera is going to love you!

Watch Now, Watch Often.... Pure Beauty

Dancing with the Universe is one of those videos that you need to watch every morning.  You will surely be seeing it everywhere if you haven't already.  It was posted June 20, 2008 and it already has been viewed a million times.  What's so beautiful about it?  It's a simple idea, yet it works in every culture, on every point of the earth.  So please, take a second out of your busy life and watch this video, and  then watch it again when you are stressed out.  Where the Hell is Matt?

Quite a Production!

Beer.  It's an advertising favorite.  We all have seen the Bud Bowl and the Miller ads, but the creativity doesn't stop at the US border.  Here's a wild beer commercial -- done for Guiness.  Not sure how much they spent on this little puppy, but it wasn't cheap.  While I think it's quite original, I am left wondering why this is a beer commercial?  Answer -- we have to remember that in Europe they play it subtle.  Tag line makes sense -- good things come to those who wait, but I  would not hand this  commercial a Golden Lion.  But, as I always stress, when it comes to recognition. what's important is -- did it drive traffic or sales... did it achieve it's objective?

 The campaign has been around for a while, and boy does this advertiser spend money.  We don't see their ads much in the states, but they are very original.  Just click around YouTube for a while and you'll see.

Here's an all time favorite....  Guiness: Rhythm of Life.

Making Sense of the Online Video Jungle

If you are unenthused by the content your remote control's finding, your keyboard might be the a better fetcher, but where to begin?

Today TED announced that 50 million of its talks have been viewed on the web, with over half being seen outside the U.S. borders. So what's it all about?  Well here's a list of the Top 10 TED talks.  Great stuff.  TED's most watched talk has been viewed by 2.5M viewers to date and features neuro-scientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who had a stroke and understood what was happening as it all went down.  So who else made the Top 10?  Were they celebrities?  I believe only two are recognizable names -- Tony Robbins  (Why we do what we do) and Al Gore (Averting a climate crisis).  Great stuff here.

But just how do you sort out all the online content?  There is no TV Guide-like solution, or is there?  Well here's a half step from, you guessed it, TV Guide.  But, mind you, this is all about traditional TVs crossover with the online viewing universe.  Here's another one from Yahoo.

Here's a rather confusing site called OV Guide.  Hard to look at but they are packing a lot of info in there.

But on the Internet, you would expect a smarter way to do the traditional stuff listed above and here it is, brought o you by a big name from the Rock & Roll world has a new beta site that offers help making sense of the cavalcade of online video choices.   Rocker Peter Gabriel has helped launch a new site called The Filter...  which uses smart technology to help you find content you care about.  It uses an intelligent platform (through ranking evaluations) much like Netflix to help narrow down the areas of online content that you like and therefore might like in the future. 

Finally, here's a neat musical video from YouTube.  Nothing brilliant, nothing earth shattering about it... but it's good listening.  Hip Hop Violin.

 

Get watching.