New York Time Lapse

I love this city :) and this spectacular time lapse series by Josh Owens

Mindrelic - Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

Kickstarter

This post has been a long time coming and I'm so happy to be able to share some truly awesome projects. For those of you not familiar, Kickstarter is a GREAT site that serves as a funding platform for creative projects. Its been featured on just about every major site you can think of and every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields. On the site, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands.








Some awesome projects that have been funded through Kickstarter include:
The Noun Project which started on Kickstarter here
TikTok+LunaTik started on Kickstarter, going on to raise nearly one million dollars and soon to be sold through Apple (via FastCo Design article)
Designer Frank Chimero's new book The Shape of Design was fully funded almost immediately on Kickstarter













So here's the best part - there are some really great causes on Kickstarter as well as some great projects from friends of mine. Check these below that friends of mine have been involved in -



Parsons Splash House - a graduate architecture project providing lockers and changing rooms for a Washington Heights pool so that the areas rec center can remain open throughout the summer. The project must reach its funding goal by June 1 2011. See the project website here.




Switch Hooks - a great project by Andy, a friend of a friend, converting light switch panels into multi-functional objects for holding things like keys or phones. See the project website here.




Trade in Hope: Fighting Child Sex Slavery in America - a powerful project to create a feature length documentary about American children being sold for sex. See the project website here.

BP Oil Spill

This is an interesting animation of the BP oil spill data called Oil'd by Chris Harmon. I'm a huge fan of infographic videos anyways, but I think this was does a really good job adding helpful context to these numbers.

Its one of Fast Co's Daily Infographics - an excellent source of high quality and content data visualizations.

Oil'd from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Aurora Borealis

For everyone who has the Aurora Borealis on their bucket list...if you never make it to see the in person...this seems to be the next best thing to real. This super high quality video captures the incredible beauty and intrigue of the aurora borealis. Per suggestion of Steven, watch it full screen with the music as loud as possible.

See more work by the Norwegian filmmaker Terje Sorgjerd here.

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Photo from here.

Everynone

Absolutely stunning!! These videos are by Everynone, an amazing filmmaking team based in NYC with Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercandante and Julius Metoyer III.

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

Thesis sneak-peekery

Visualizing food a bajillion different ways (official explanation)

The Johnny Cash Project

See the full project at The Johnny Cash Project



This is a project by Aaron Koblin, with director Chris Milk, that is, of course, completely amazing. He's the brillant mind behind The Sheep Market, Flight Patterns, Radiohead's House of Cards video, and Arcade Fire's The Wilderness Downtown video, among others.

This latest project again uses the crowdsourcing method of The Sheep Market and Ten Thousand Cents where participants are asked to create small bits of the project, that when put together create something spectacular. The Johnny Cash Project is a collective effort to create the final Johnny Cash music video for his final studio recording - Ain't No Grave. Participants draw their own portrait of Johnny Cash from a still within the video creating an always evolving video and images are always able to be added. Over 250,000 images have been drawn by people from 172 countries - and this number is always growing.

Babies

A beautiful story of the first year of life of 4 babies born around the world, you watch them grow and learn, in radically different environments, essentially all the same things. Located in Japan, Namibia, Mongolia, and the United States, the babies have nothing in common except for the fact that they all must learn the same basic essentials - crawl, walk, talk, play, explore, etc.

Centered strictly around the 4 babies, the filming is spectacular. It creates a more personal feel for the viewer and leaves the sterile qualities of some documentaries far behind. The shots are close and really focus on the baby. There are no scenes of parents talking, no subtitles, no parenting advice. You are introduced to life at its purest.



Babies is available for instant play on Netflix. See the official movie site here.

OFFF 2009 Main Titles

Main titles from Prologue for OFFF 2009
by Kyle Cooper, Ilya Abulhanov and Elizabeth Newman

Spectacular imagery paired with crazy sound and great vector animation

Similar aesthetics to the intro for Stranger Than Fiction with typography and vector imagery laid over video, just with the added elements of weirdness and suspense - love it

OFFF 2009 Main Titles from Prologue! from OFFF, let's feed the future on Vimeo.

Fage - Plain Extraordinary

A rare gem in the jumbled mess that is commercial advertising today, this is both stunningly beautiful and marvelously simple. Fage engages the viewer with a lovely and intriguing voice-over paired with imagery that looks nothing like any yogurt commercial you've seen before.

Enjoy.




And on a side note...greek yogurt is amazing...if you haven't tried it...you need to.