A first look at Animatable from Andy Clarke on Vimeo.
Animatable is a promising new CSS3 tool to create animations deployable across Webkit browsers on any platform or device – this means web browsers and mobile devices such as Android, BlackBerry and iPhones!
Guy Kawasaki is a wonderful technology and social media icon to follow. Check out this recent talk he gave on his new book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions”.
Also check out my blog from Guy’s “Entrepreneur 2.0 Tips for Success” talk from last year.
I just had a chance to check out The Johnny Cash Project – an amazing crowd sourced interactive music video dedicated to the late Johnny Cash.
The video is created by site visitors using an online drawing tool where all are invited to artistically create a single frame. The frames are combined in an ever-changing visual experience – you will never see the same sequence of frames twice. As of right now, it is estimated over 250,000 people have contributed frames worldwide.
I took some time to contribute my own frame: The Man in Black standing behind a cross grave stone – there’s a very cool feature that allows you to playback your own frame creation in an animation.
The creative idea came about through collaboration of music producer Rick Rubin and director Chris Milk. Milk was also behind the technically-acclaimed HTML5 interactive online music video project, The Wilderness Downtown, for the band Arcade Fire – which I wrote about a few months ago.
The creators intentionally limited the interactive drawing tool’s available styles resulting in imagery that beautifully complements the haunting melody of Cash’s final studio recording “Ain’t No Grave”. According to Mashable, the interactive music video is the first of its kind to garner a Grammy Nomination.
Below is an overview video of the project featuring some of the artist contributors. Be sure to also check out the main project website: The Johnny Cash Project.
Yes, seems like an unlikely comparison – it just happens to be the last 2 films that I’ve watched! Interestingly, however, they have a great deal of elements to compare and contrast. This isn’t intended to be a full review of either movie – both are well worth watching simply if you enjoy great storytelling.
Let’s start with quick overviews:
Inception is an American big-budget film, categorized as a science fiction heist, released in 2010 starring (what some would claim) one of the great young actors of our time, Leonardo DiCaprio. While it covers now familiar ground in tone as a psychological thriller with a science-fiction element, it has generally been regarded as a ‘thinking’ movie. It has some incredible M.C.Escher reminiscent special effects that seamlessly carry the nested story along at a quick pace. The film was written, produced and directed by Christopher Nolan.
Metropolis is a German expressionist silent film released in 1927 and is regarded by cinephiles to be a highly influential film, especially in the science fiction genre. For its time, it was an incredibly ambitious and daring project in subject, scope and style. It is quite notable that up until a few years ago, there had been many edits of the film, the best of which was considered to be about 75% of the surviving original. In June 2008, an archived, but badly damaged, copy of the original film print was discovered in the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Re-discovered scenes were re-inserted to create “Metropolis Restored (The Complete Metropolis)“, restoring the intent of filmmaker Fritz Lang. Although his wife, Thea von Harbou is credited as the screenwriter, Lang is widely acknowledged as co-writer.
Beyond the sheer filmmaking scope of both films, they also have a few interesting points to compare and contrast.
Story Length
At first, duration doesn’t seem like a big point, but stay with me for a sec. Today, as in the past, films are often edited down to a duration that “feels” like an acceptable length, often due to budget and theater schedules as much as to create a more concise experience. The average film length is 90 minutes, with bigger budget blockbusters usually getting closer to 120 minutes. Both Inception and the restored version of Metropolis clock in at 148 minutes. (Until the 2008 discovery, most edits of Metropolis were around 90 minutes.)
The notable point for both films is that they don’t feel long. They each have a great flow and the right amount of intertwined sub-plots that kept me engaged. I think this may be due to the fact that both were created initially as screenplays, rather than adapted from previously written works. Clearly, the screenwriters had well-constructed stories for each respective film.
Plot: Corporate Structure/Espionage
The catalyst in Inception’s story is an espionage plot to influence a young businessman, Robert Fischer, to break up his father’s corporate empire. The corporate setting is a more a minor point in that film whereas in Metropolis it is the foundation for the story’s social commentary. Those at top of the ladder control from high above Metropolis (literally and figuratively) and the masses live and work to service the machines below that run the entire city. There are several machinations to bring down or disrupt that structure.
Relationships
At the heart of both stories are a few key relationships.
In both films, a father/son relationship is very prevalent. Inception features a plan that hinges upon the manipulators’ ability to cause the target, Fischer, to question his relationship with his recently deceased father. In Metropolis, the calculated Joh Fredersen runs the city coldly, but continually expresses concern for his son’s whereabouts and well-being.
Inception contains a tragic love story sub-plot about the primary dream manipulator, Cobb and the loss of his wife in his past. In Metropolis, Freder’s primary motivation for entering the underworld is to search for Maria, with whom he has a love-at-first-sight experience.
There are several other complex relationships in Metropolis that greatly add to the depth of the story, including one re-established by the re-inserted film scenes that clear up some questionable character motivations as seen in earlier edits.
Science Fiction
Inception explores sophisticated real-world science suggesting that through chemistry and shared consciousness, it is possible to extract and manipulate information in someone’s mind just as it is possible to extract or manipulate information on a computer system. It is somewhat easy to question “What is real?” in the multi-layered dream environments of the story, just as it was in similar sci-fi epics like The Matrix.
Metropolis, on the other-hand, is considered one of the seminal science fiction tales in that it features one of the earliest robot characters on film. This “Man-Machine” is created to impersonate the character Maria in order to incite the workers to revolt. It should be mentioned that actress Brigitte Helm gives an incredible dual role performance as the altruistic Maria and her evil manipulative robot doppelgänger. Helm was masterful in portraying emotion and sentiment via exaggerated gesture, facial expression and erotic behavior (for the time) - especially as the creepy robot. The character is a clear predecessor to Pris, the Bladerunner replicant played by Daryl Hannah or any of the sexy Cylons from the Battlestar Galactica modern television series.
Now Go Watch!
I’ve only scratched the surface of what makes both of these films worth seeing. There is so much more to compare and share, but I’ve already strayed too close to spoilers.
I’ll end this with one last critical comparison that arises due to the difference of 83 years between the creation of these films. Metropolis tells an amazingly deep story with no live dialogue, only displaying handfuls of title cards for setting and speech throughout the film. Inception, on the other-hand, doesn’t give the audience enough credit – someone found it necessary for certain characters to continually explain what is going on in the story and how “deep” they were. I really feel it is to the detriment of the story’s sophistication.
I absolutely recommend watching both Inception and Metropolis. Inception just for a good story and Metropolis if you’re more into film history or science fiction roots. If you really want to go deeper, read some real reviews or the IMDB or Wikipedia entries for either film.
Let me know if you you’ve enjoyed either or both of these films.
Well, not exactly, but I thought it was a catchy headline – more on that later.
Dieter Rams is considered on of the greats in the realm of Industrial Design. He’s most often associated with the global consumer products company Braun and the Functionalist school of design. There is no doubt that he has influenced a great number of today’s product designers.
In fact, according to a Gizmodo article, there is an amazing resemblance between products designed by Dieter Rams to the now iconic design by Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design for Apple. In the image below, you can see products by Rams along the top with seemingly influenced Apple product counterparts, below.
Image Credit: Gizmodo
It’s fair to say that, in the least, Ive’s dedication to “honesty” and “simplicity” in his Apple product designs follow Ram’s ten principles to “good design” (sometimes referred to as the Design Ten Commandments):
Good design:
I encourage you to head over to Uzi Shmilovici’s post What Every Entrepreneur and Product Manager Should Learn from Dieter Rams at Future Simple, where he shares his thoughts on Rams and how PipeJump applies the 10 principles in their web product design.
As a designer or product manager, it’s easy to lose track of these core principles when fielding the overload of “feature requests”. It’s good to be reminded that one should step back and remember to meet basic objectives, first.
This is also the foundation of the Minimal Viable Product theory popularized by Eric Ries. Ries has been blogging about this concept on his Lesson Learned blog for years and has been spreading the word via the Lean Startup movement which is catching on with many technology-based product companies.
Now for that story: As an Industrial Design undergrad, I certainly spent some time studying Dieter Rams. Our 3rd year class was even assigned a project in which we were to “redesign” a shaver and pair of shears for Braun. I’d like to think that I asked for an alternate product because I had already developed a respect for Braun’s design (established by Rams), but I think I just didn’t want to design a shaver or pair of shears… I ended up designing an airbrush concept.
In our 4th year, as a follow-up to the Braun project, we were given another small appliance product design assignment – such as a hairdryer. Although I had (and still have) a tremendous appreciation for physical product design, by this time I was frustrated that our program was too focused on physical products. So again, I humbly asked for an alternate assignment (at least I recall the request being humble).
Our new professor, who had just joined our school that year, took my asking as rebellious and denied the request. After some “heated” discussion, I was “asked” to leave his class. Well, there was only one 4th year Industrial Design session. After taking up the issue with the ID School Director, the professor and I reached a compromise. While my classmates were designing another small appliance, I worked on a project of my own choice – an exhibit display system (mostly developed, and presented itself, in 3D graphics and animation).
That’s the story about how I was almost kicked out of Design School over Dieter Rams… (sort of).
Image at the top of this blog is a poster of Ram’s ten principles created by design firm Bibliotheque that is available for purchase here.
As if being the co-founder of Twitter and involved in all kinds of other technology companies didn’t keep him busy enough, Biz Stone has become involved with a new kind of startup. Biz agreed to be an advisor to his friend and colleague Abdur Chowdhury‘s new venture – a school in San Francisco that emphasizes math, science and art with small class sizes – all coming together in the past few months. By the way, Chowdhury is Twitter’s Chief Scientist.
The Alta Vista School opens in three days with sixteen children from Jr Kindergarten to Kindergarten and First grade. New grades will be added each year as the current batch of kids advances. Biz notes another twist – classes will be conducted in English and playtime in Spanish to add a bilingual experience.
Being involved myself with two young children in a parent participation, hands-on learning program called Indigo in the Oak Grove School district (and working in technology) – I have a great appreciation for Chowdhury’s vision and the support of Biz Stone. Our Indigo Program also started with a small group of dedicated founding families and has been growing year after year.
Great work guys and best of luck!
Read Biz Stone’s blog on his experience at: http://www.bizstone.com/2010/09/startup-time-machine.html and also check out the article the San Francisco Chronicle ran a few days ago covering the school: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/31/BAR61EMIJP.DTL
Indie band Arcade Fire, who has been catching a lot of buzz lately, released a very impressive “music video” on the Internet today. However, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill music video, probably given away by the fact that it was announced on the Official Google Blog. The video is billed as as “music experience” and, I have to say, it is pretty cool.
The project was created by Writer/Director Chris Milk with Arcade Fire and Google. The experience, called The Wilderness Downtown, uses some of the latest emerging Internet web standards including HTML5, Google Maps, and some neat drawing tools. Given that it is a Google project and somewhat experimental, it is best experienced using the Google Chrome web browser.
I’m not so sure about the whole storyline that integrates Google Maps view of your “childhood home” (after you are prompted to enter an address), but the integrated multi browser windows, beautifully synchronized videos/animations and great track are cool enough on their own.
Interestingly enough, when checking the project out earlier today with a colleague, I remarked “Hey, that [scene] kind of reminds me of [the movie] Brazil.” It turns out that Terry Gilliam, Writer/Director of Brazil, directed a live stream project for Arcade Fire earlier this month; so guess that wasn’t coincidence.
It’s definitely worth your time to experience The Wilderness Downtown.
Read more about this project and other very successful ways that Arcade Fire has been tapping into social media at Mashable.
I am a self-professed info-fiend who strives to know a little something about everything. This is my personal blog where I occasionally write about random things that I find interesting.
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