Q&A WITH SAM O'HARE
March 15, 2010
by MOTHERBOARD
You may have already lost your socks to Sam O’Hare’s short paean to New York, The Sandpit. It’s inspired by lyrical films like Koyaanisqatsi and time-lapse tilt shift photography, the meticulous technique that can make bulldozers look like Matchbox cars. Though the video isn’t true tilt-shift, O’Hare managed to get the impressive effect of a miniature New York in post-production using not video but thousands of continuously shot stills. Think of it as an exercise in visual Auto Tune.
How did you shoot The Sandpit?
SAM O’HARE: It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills. I used my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of these shots. Most were shot at 4fps in DX crop mode, which is the fastest the D3 could continuously write out to the memory card. The boats had slower frame rates, and the night shots used exposures up to two seconds each. The camera actually has an automatic cut off after 130 shots, so for longer shots I counted each click and quickly released and re-pressed the shutter release after 130 to keep shooting.
Read the rest and watch The Sandpit on Motherboard.
ISRAEL'S NEW COMMERCIAL
March 15, 2010
by JAMES TENAFLY
Out along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean there’s a little vacation hot spot called Israel, and your girlfriend is totally down to give you a 24/sev beej if you two take a trip there. At least, that’s what the Israel Ministry of Tourism would have you believe. In their latest attempt to make Tel Aviv look like a Delhi Mardi Gras, Israel’s put out the tiredest, lamest ad campaign we’ve seen since Taco Bell used it.
THE UNOFFICIAL EMBASSY OF IRELAND’S GUIDE TO DIPLOMACY
March 15, 2010
by CONOR CREIGHTON
After a month in Kosovo, the Unofficial Embassy has shut up shop and moved home. The money ran dry and the gig was up. The ambassadors said ciao to the newest country in the world with moist eyes and trembling lips. We had enough laughs for a lifetime but we also learned some valuable lessons about diplomacy that we’d like to share with the rest of you not fortunate enough to have had your own embassy.
Read the rest on viceland.
OMAR'S #2 VBS VIDEO PICK
March 15, 2010
by OMAR SALAZAR
Omar Salazar is a pro skater from San Francisco who is really into outer-space, going fast and crazy stories. He just happens to be one of our favorite stuntwood riders on the planet. Nike SB just released a shoe with his name on it, so to celebrate we asked Omar to pick his favorite VBS segments and tell us why he loves them. Welcome to Omar’s Outerspace.
REAL VAMPIRES OF FLORIDA
March 15, 2010
by VBS STAFF
Today we’re keeping out link-list legit with a few stories of actual relevance to the world, and the titular vampire post. Happy Monday-after-Spring Forward, everyone, it’s not the worst day of the year. but it sure feels like it.
- Cheney 2012.
- Scientists have finally learned how to make opiate painkillers cheaper and potentially more powerful.
- James Cameron’s making plans to get even richer this fal.
- Whoa, True Blood is real: Some vampire from Florida’s running for President!
- Here’s a decent explanation for why Toyota refused to research complaints about their accelerators for so long.
DELHI CAR CIRCUS
March 12, 2010
by CARMEN MCGEARY
If you waste one minute watching Youtube videos today, let this be that minute. In Delhi, the Diamond Maruti Car Circus combines all the recklessness of Nascar with the carnival’s totally dismissive attitude toward safety and the results will not disappoint. Zooming around in late-model Japanese cars and scooters, riders in the Car Circus use centrifugal force to keep their vehicles clinging to a cylinder’s walls, 25 feet off the ground. In the video you can hear the cameraman whining like a little wimp; please note that the actual riders are totally “whatever” about this activity.
GRANDMA JUSTICE
March 12, 2010
by CESARE ALEMANNI
A new ice age might be approaching, but for the Milanese, “the great cold” will always be January, 1985, when it snowed nonstop for three days and the city was paralyzed under six feet of ice. All the snow made the roof of the glorious Palasport collapse, and only two weeks before what was supposed to be U2’s premiere Italian gig.
On July 21st of the same year, when 60,000 people filled the San Siro stadium for Bruce Springsteen—the Boss—’s Italian debut, in the adjacent projects of Comasina, it was as if it had never stopped snowing. Comasina was known as one of the greatest dealing squares in all of Northern Italy, partially for its coke, but especially for its heroin. Junkies would regularly come from as far as Switzerland to buy and shoot up in the square.
Read the rest on viceland.
BOA STEALS MACAW
March 12, 2010
by JAMES TENAFLY
Just the other day I was talking about those bad apples at Bank of America, and practically on cue they went and illustrated my point perfectly. Yesterday, the BBC reported on a Pennsylvania woman whose pet parrot was bird-napped by the evil financier.
OMAR SALAZAR'S FAVORITE VBS VIDEO
March 12, 2010
by VBS STAFF
Omar Salazar is a bit of a madman on a skateboard, and he’s a big VBS fan. So to commemorate the release of his first ever signature shoe, we asked him to pick his favorite 10 clips from our archive. Omar’s first pick is Cardiel on Epicly Later’d. We asked Omar for his thoughts on the episode:
CHECK OUT THIS HYPERREALITY VIDEO
March 12, 2010
by JAMES TENAFLY
If you’re not yet familiar, hyperreality is a scary, old, dystopian sci-fi vision that’s creeping into our everyday lives. It started with innocent and totally benign technology like the CueCat; slowly evolved into Google Goggles; and now that we’ve been lulled into acceptance, hyperreality’s gearing up to go full-blown Minority Report. Just you wait, pretty soon you’ll have commercials playing on the backs of your eyelids.
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