2009 Round-up

For the convenience and enjoyment (?) of those who've asked what I've been up to lately, here is a selection of a few exerpiental videos I've hacked together at in the later half of 2009. It's been a rare year in many ways, but was far from unproductive.

The process of producing a Pale Blue Dot episode involves, among other things, the consumption and digestion of a lot of media, in the ongoing search for the perfect bits. This sometimes leads to strange ideas, which can lead to the production of irrelevant side projects and one-off videos that tend to explore some aspect of audio-visual juxtaposition that I found interesting at the time. They're not masterpieces by any means, but they were enjoyable to create and contain some footage that may well survive into the next episode of PBD.

First up is a music video, created initially as a background video for a more complex Final Cut "Motion" project; it's set to Vangelis' track "Albedo 0.39". It's officially untitled, but currently lives on YouTube as "Albedo3":



Next up is a video stitched together from some BBC video ("British Isles, a Natural History") set to a Sphongle track called "Shpongolese Spoken Here." I'd been looking forward to the new Shpongle album for a while, but I initially detested "Shpongolese Spoken Here", especially what I felt to be its jarring and rather unmelodic beginning. Yet after a few listens, though, I began to appreciate what the track was about and the video magically clicked together in my imagination; I cut it together in a few hours and am quite pleased with the result. It baffles most, and bewilders the rest, but give it a shot. I could explain more, but what fun would that be? If nothing else, enjoy the BBC camera work, which is impeccable as usual.



With that out of the way, an update on Pale Blue Dot: Episode 2 will follow soon. To all who've waited -- thanks for hanging in there! Happy new year...