Monthly Archives: January 2014

Social filmmaking: Do people actually *want* to make videos together?

Instagram, Mobile

You’d think so, right? Weddings, concerts, school projects, etc. could all be made so much more interesting through varied points of view. And yet…

  • MixBit (the YouTube founders’ way to share & combine short clips) cratered, and I haven’t seen JumpCam (“Just start a video and invite others to add their own clips”) or Cameo (which enables easy pooling) take off.
  • I likewise haven’t seen much traction for WeVideo, Vidmaker, or other hosted collaborative video editors.
  • Groovideo made it easy to for groups of friends to contribute clips (e.g. to make a birthday card), but they died.
  • Vyclone, Streamweaver, and the Rashomon Project take an interesting approach, auto-aligning simultaneously shot clips (e.g. from a concert) to easily create a multi-cam shoot, but I’ve yet to see anyone I know use them.

The bigger question, of course, is how much do people want to make videos at all? I think it’s safe to say that…

  • Most people like to capture videos on their phones, and they’ll watch/show some of these via the phone.
  • Only a fraction of those people will upload even a fraction of those vids.
  • Only a fraction of those will get combined into multi-shot videos.
  • Instagram has helped far more people create multi-shot videos. (I’m less convinced that any appreciable number of people make rather than just watch Vines, but feel free to prove me wrong.)
  • Watching one’s own (often dull) footage to pull out good parts is laborious. Watching other people’s dull footage is likely even worse.

So, will we see widespread social filmmaking in the future? Will totally automated upload + automatic video creation move the needle? I’m curious to hear your take. Do you have a problem here that you care about having solved?

Adobe Inspire Magazine for January 2014 is here

Uncategorized

Check it out on the Web and the App Store (for free). Articles include:

Instagram vs. The Paradox of Choice

Instagram, Photography

“80% of life is showing up,” Woody Allen said. If you never post your photo or video, you can pretty well guess the number of likes it’ll garner.

Instagram knows that the #1 predictor of whether a photo or video will get engagement (i.e. likes, comments) is how quickly it gets posted. (There’s a reason it’s not called “Latergram.”) The limitations of Instagram are what help people get across the finish line.

I used the nicely executed YouTube Capture app a bit over the holiday break. To my surprise, although it works just as advertised, I never shared anything I made with it, whereas I shared half a dozen videos I made with Instagram.

Instagram battles against “the paradox of choice.” Studies show that for every additional 401(k) plan a company offers, employee participation goes down. Why? Because when people have the option to dig in & do more research (work) to achieve the ideal outcome, they get paralyzed and don’t actually complete the mission.

That’s how I’m finding YouTube Capture: It’s easy to capture a bunch (i.e. more than 15 seconds) of footage, then optionally go back and trim, edit, re I’m on the hook to go back and review/trim it, meaning that I… oh sure, I will, soon… I swear… {life intervenes}.

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week,” said George Patton. Same goes for pics & vids, General.

Now available: Stand In (UI prototyping straight from Photoshop)

CC, User Interface

According to the team, the new Stand In will let you:

  1. Share your prototypes with teammates and clients. Let them experience your designs on their devices instead of scrolling through PDFs on their computers.
  2. Design and use your prototype in real time. As you make changes in Photoshop, Stand In sends the changes to the fully functional prototype.
  3. Move past boring static screens. Add buttons with press states, content that scrolls, modals, and more!
  4. Bring your prototype to life with screen transitions and animation. Stop telling people how the app is supposed to work. Start showing them.

The tool costs $25/mo. & requires a Mac running Photoshop CC.

“Much more than image extraction,” writes Photoshop’s Tim Riot, “Stand In takes positioning, styling, state, even motion data, from PSDs and creates prototypes that feel like real apps which you can view on your iPhone. This capability, to fluidly create in Photoshop and seamlessly output designs to any context, is at the heart of the Generator technology.”

[Vimeo]

Zipline madness

Photography

Devin Supertramp’s NFL stadium shoot features flying cheerleaders, mascots, and all things ‘murica:

Adobe’s Dave Helmly made the shoot a family affair:

I had Dave Jr. on site working with Devin as a shooter as the shoot was near his college in Florida. He was using a new wearable camera from Panasonic. They also mounted these small cameras all over the stadium for a multicam edit in Premiere Pro – saved them a ton of shooting – camera triggers via WiFi.

Take a look behind the scenes:

In memoriam: Thank you, Whit.

Uncategorized

Whit

I remain, as do so many people in the extended Adobe family, in sad disbelief at the passing of our dear friend Whitney McCleary—warm wit, defender of the little guy, fighter for what’s right, twinkling soul—on New Year’s Eve following a long illness.

I struggle to find the right words—any words, really—to share here, and yet I just don’t feel like writing about anything else for a while. I think she wouldn’t want us to dwell too long in sorrow—I think instead of good Irish wakes, full of laughter and tears—but it’s right to pause for just a bit.

Perhaps you didn’t know Whit personally, but if you’ve spent any time as an Adobe customer, she probably touched your life in some small, positive way. To say just that she marketed InDesign, Creative Suite, and imaging apps seems like absurdly short shrift. As folks are pouring onto Facebook to say, Whitney was always quick to take a chance, support a new creative conference, find work for a promising designer. Her love of creative people & delight in helping them was infectious.

Big companies are inherently bonkers, I think, and I’d always look to Whitney to cut through fog & silliness. As my old Photoshop boss Maria puts it, “I don’t know what we’ll do when we can’t call her mobile in a crisis. I keep thinking ‘What would Whit do?’ and a silly smile comes to my face.”

Oh, Whit—we miss you terribly. Thank you for making things better, for so many people over so many years. May we all aspire to do the same, with even half the good cheer you did. God bless.

Time lapse: "City Lights"

Photography

Two years ago filmmaker Colin Rich did the impossible, making me find LA beautiful. Now he’s back with a vengeance. Behold City Lights, created for (and featuring the music of) M83:

Colin writes,

‘City Lights’ is the final chapter from my “Trilogy of Light” series that began a couple years ago with ‘LA Light’ and then followed up with ‘Nightfall’. It was a nightly adventure that took me to almost every angle of Los Angeles.
It was an exercise in patience. A lesson in light. An understanding of what it is to live amongst each other and to understand the system and order of a city, the seemingly complex organics that make it up and the life form that the city truly is. A visualization of sonder. It was a daily jaunt to watch the arterial freeway systems pump car cells through its body and channel them to the capillaric avenues that are our neighborhoods and homes. It was a chance to break away from the 70mph freeway perspective and to observe the sun slip from view and watch the electric dance of nightfall begin. It was challenging. It was frustrating. Definitely dangerous at times. Sometimes it hurt. I was chased. Yelled at. Warned. But the overall context of things learned, people met, things seen, and places discovered over the past three years shaped who I am today.
I didn’t always love Los Angeles but I learned to and discovered that this city is much more than temperate weather, palm trees, pretty girls, and beaches; to me the true beauty behind the city lies hidden on the other end of a rusted fire escape to a view no one else has seen.

Check out more info in an interview on LA Canvas. Colin will be running a limited series of high quality Kodak Endura VC metallic prints. Contact him if interested in purchasing them.
[Vimeo] [Via Rick Miller]