Every spring, the Short Film Corner at Cannes features hundreds of the world's best shorts. Now, for the third year running on YouTube, you'll be able to watch 10 of the best, courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada's 7th Annual Online Film Competition.
How does the competition work? The curators at the NFB picked their favorite films from the Short Film Corner, choosing an eclectic mix of languages and genres. To vote, all you have to do is watch and thumbs up the ones you like. Voting is open to users across the globe. NFB will tally the votes and the winner will be announced at Cannes and on the NFB's YouTube channel on May 19.
Diposting oleh
Greatest on Jumat, 11 Februari 2011
Another month, another crop of talented video-makers! February’s On the Rise nominees are in, and we need you to check out the four nominees below and choose your favorite. Cast your vote in the top right-hand corner of this blog.
Here’s how On the Rise works. We identify channels who’ve gained a lot of subscribers in the past 30 days but haven’t yet reached the 100,000 mark. You vote on your favorite, and we feature the winner on the YouTube homepage and the videos page, Facebook and Twitter. Past winners like emilynoel83, justjesse197 and joshsundquist have seen their subscriber numbers jump, thanks to your support.
This month we’re featuring four channels that have been moving from a simmer to a boil -- and for good reason! Check them out, and don’t forget to cast your vote by February 16, 2011, so we can feature the winner on the homepage on February 23.
fouradipuntnl Pop music (and good-looking guys) need no translation. These two Moroccan-Dutch brothers formed the hip-hop group Fouradi back in 2009, and in 2010 their single “1 Ding” scaled the Dutch charts. Their YouTube channel has also garnered mad love.
RMG209 Graphic designer and heavy metal DJ Rick Gurnsey is the mastermind behind this genuinely comic, self-described “creepy” animated series. Once you start watching, it’s very hard to stop; imagine a Simpsons in which every character is Mr. Burns, and you’re partway there.
theDOMINICshow Dominic “d-trix” Sandoval has turned his life into a one-man show. He’ll teach you to rap, he’ll spoof the Bieber phenomenon, he’ll sing (sardonically) the praises of mother’s milk. On theDOMINICshow, nothing is sacred, but just about everything is funny.
TornadoVideosdotnet Reed Timmer has made a living chasing and filming tornadoes, and we’re willing passengers on his wild ride. When he’s not running away from an oncoming twister, he’s filming the gorgeous weather that’s about to produce one. Warning: not for the adrenaline-phobic.
If you’re inspired by what you see here, check out other awesome, up-and-coming channels. Visit our channel of On the Rise nominees, trending partners and winners, and look for more featured rising partners on the browse page.
Diposting oleh
Greatest on Selasa, 07 September 2010
Today on our homepage, we’re featuring a new batch of StoryCorps videos animated by the Rauch Brothers. If you want to be moved by the human experience, watch them now.
StoryCorps is a massive oral history project during which 50,000 everyday people have already interviewed friends and family. A handful of these are transformed by the Rauch Brothers, who look to animate universal stories that capture the joys, struggles and extraordinary lives of regular people. Here, in our ongoing series of Creator’s Corner posts, the animators take you along their creative journey and name the YouTube users who in turn inspire them.
1) What is your process? We receive an edited voice track from StoryCorps' Peabody Award-winning production team, which we then research. Time, place and personality of the main characters are all important. After digesting what we've learned, we determine which details to leave in, and which to take out in order to tell the story in a clear, engaging, and honest way.
After the initial research, we create character designs, a storyboard, and rough background layouts. When those stages are complete, we move on to animation and final background layouts. The last step is to paint everything and pull it all together in the computer.
2) Sounds like “Danny & Annie” was the first time you met your subjects in person. Was that unusual? Whenever possible, it's very important to us to meet the storytellers in our animation. It gives us a chance to get input from them, and helps add authenticity to the final piece. "Danny & Annie" wasn't the first time we met one of our storytellers — we met the Littmans while working on "Q&A." Seeing them interact was important for Tim (who draws all the animated characters), because it helped him capture some of their mannerisms in animation.
"Danny & Annie" was the first time we had the opportunity to actually visit the home of one of our subjects. It was particularly important to get good reference photos of their Brooklyn apartment because the majority of the story takes place there. We also referenced some of their wedding photos in the final animation. Through that process, we were able to add authenticity that reflects the documentary nature of the original recording.
3) How close do you try to get to the person's true likeness? We use photos for reference as we work on character designs, but we find that people are more than just the face one sees on the surface. They have a personality and a spirit that isn't necessarily captured in a photograph. Luckily, StoryCorps' terrific recordings of these voices and stories help tell us a lot about what we can't see in a photo. As StoryCorps founder Dave Isay says, the voice is like a window to the soul. Focusing on that aspect of the people in these stories has been the most effective way for us to capture something that feels honest and real.
4) What do you hope your work conveys? We would like this work to serve as a reminder and a celebration of our shared humanity.
5) Who on YouTube is making great animation? Pes - Pes uses everyday objects in unique and unexpected ways to tell short, funny stories that leave you wanting more. Blu - Animated graffiti takes over the world! Fran Krause - The quirky characters and stories that Fran develops with his brother, Will, are always fun. Nina Paley - Nina tells entertaining stories and makes them freely available to watch, download, and remix. She is an animator perfectly suited for the age of YouTube. Bill Plympton - The King of Indie Animation still reigns supreme.
We recently announced that we’d be adding some new kinds of posts to this blog, and today we’re happy to run the first from the Creator’s Corner, which is devoted to the process of videomaking and all of the people who wow us with their creativity, ingenuity and passion. You can now find posts that used to be in the Creator's Corner in this blog, and we encourage you to leave a comment below with the username of anyone you'd like to learn a little more about.
First up, we caught up with kamapazzo, a 26-year-old motion-graphic designer who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and has spent time in Beirut teaching workshops about visual and stop-motion animation. His “escalator animations” surprise and delight; read more about how they came to be below.
1) What gave you this idea? I was at the Istanbul airport, standing with my luggage next to a very long escalator. I had nothing to do; I was just intensely watching the handrail, when suddenly I thought, “Hey, I can use it for an animation!” Then I realized how easy it could have been sticking on the handrail. Also, in that period I was studying the great work of Norman McLaren; at the beginning of his career he was painting directly on film. I thought that my escalator animation could have been a kind of tribute to his wonderful work of abstraction. McLaren is my first inspiration. He was always experimenting with new techniques, including inventing a way to make sound painting directly on film.
So, when I came home from the airport, I made a test with the stickers, as I was not so sure about the result. But actually it was working; I liked the images and I decided to develop a full abstract movie. I started to prepare all the shapes and stickers without having a script or even thinking about a story. I just wanted to use this public space and play with it as a kid, letting my imagination flow. Having fun in the creative process is very important for me; that’s the only way I know to do something fresh, something that could catch the audience unprepared.
The escalator animation could be considered as the following chapter of a video I did last year in Berlin, using a photocopier. I'm enchanted by creating animations starting from things and objects people use in everyday life. With a little bit of imagination, you can see motion and animation everywhere around you.
2) How did you do it? I started preparing all the paper's shapes: for each one of them I did nine different sizes so that when they moved on the steps you can also see the dimension changing. Then I went shooting for a full day with four friends of mine. A friend and I were on the bottom of the escalator and we were just leaning the shapes on the steps that were going up, and another friend stayed on top sending the shapes back on the steps that were going down. On the opposite side the camera man, Jacopo, was shooting just the side where the escalator was going up.
It was a very funny day, actually. The escalator was located close to a university, and it was full of students that got really surprised. Some students even asked me if they could take some hearts or clouds. Then I drew all the animations on the stickers and I went to the escalator a few times during the night while it was stopped. We pasted the stickers on the handrail, and then in the morning we went back there to shoot them. Actually, I had lots of troubles due to the winter cold: the stickers didn’t stick to the handrail.
3) How long did it take you? Building all the materials and shooting took me about two months, and editing, the longest part, about three months. I've also spent one week preparing the soundtrack. So in the end the whole work took me about six months.
4) Why did you pick this escalator? First off, I was fascinated by the hypnotic movement of the escalator; it runs all day long in the same way. I wanted to break this repetition with a kind of game and let people imagine public spaces in a different way -- more funny and more creative. I like to imagine this world as a place with no rules, where you can act more freely and take life less seriously. Another reason is that I wanted to mix my passion for animation with my passion for urban installation.
5) Tell us something about this video you'd never know by looking at it. During one of the shooting days a police officer came to us asking what were we doing and if we had a permission. We said we were just shooting a commercial for a very famous Italian pop band. At this point he said he loved them and left without even asking [to see] the permission.
6) What's next in your world of escalator animation? I will go on working in public spaces. The final result always surprises me. When you make experimental videos, a lot of problems come up that you never thought about before; until it's done you don't really know where you're going. Maybe you start with an idea and then it's not going fine, so you have to change everything. I already started drawing a new animation with a script, and it will be done on a common object that people use everyday. Can't say more until it's done. It will be a surprise!