Kanye vs. Deadmau5: How it relates to my thesis

As some of you may or may not know, Twitter is a ridiculous place. So ridiculous in fact that there has recently been a Twitter war between a man who performs in a mouse head and a man who named his child North. Thats right, Kayne and Deadmau5 are beefing.

You may ask yourself why two equally successful yet equally egotistical men have gotten into it on the social media giant. In an attempt to make a long story short, a photo recently surfaced of Kanye West's laptop screen showing a Sufjan Stevens track. This is unimportant. What is important are the tabs open on Kanye's browser. You see a tab for the 50 best VST plugins, a tab for Xfer Records Serum (a VST plugin that Deadmau5 helped design) and tab for the pirate bay... a known torrenting website.

Deadmau5, otherwise known as Joel, took it upon himself to put the pieces together: Kanye was torrenting Serum. Kanye West, uber super star, reported 53 million dollars in debt (which his wife remedied) couldn't afford a $189 plugin. This is where the war began. Insults were thrown left and right (Kanye got REKT if you ask me) and we now have a piece of internet gold.

How does this relate to my thesis you ask? I used Serum to make a few of the sounds :)

Jimmy Fallon's Guide To Trend

Since taking over Late Night and later the Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon has pretty much created the manual for how TV personalities should utilize social media. In today's world, it had become much more rare for viewers to sit down and watch television live. With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and other subscription based streaming services, the appeal of live TV just isn't what it used to be. So for shows to get into public view, they need to take advantage of all the mediums now available. While all programs should utilize Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, I would argue that it is most valuable for talk show and late night programs. These type of programs often play more like variety shows then one long piece, making them perfect for Internet. With so many different blocks/segments on late night TV, internet videos services are the perfect way to share chunks of the show without having to push the entire hour of content.

Over the last few years, no late night personality has done this better then Jimmy Fallon. A staple of Fallon's Tonight Show has been his many different comedy bits. Fallon consistently rolls off hugely popular segments, with great celebrity cameos and his popular band The Roots. He does everything from funny games, to musical numbers, to surprise reunions. Each of these 2-10 minute segments, instantly goes on to Youtube, where they are viewed, and shared and a rapid rate. These blocks are perfect for Youtube and almost always build enough buzz to start trending on social media. The great thing about sharing these individual segments is that they show the greatest part of Fallon's show while allowing viewers to skip the rest of his program. On a show like the Tonight show that airs five times a week, not every bit hits, but with Youtube, Fallon fans can skip the mediocre parts, pretty much getting a best of highlight reel instead.

Last night, Fallon continued his streak of popular segments, when he reunited Kenan and Kel, popular Nickelodeon stars from the 90's for a "Good Burger" sketch. A big chunk of the Tonight Show's audience has been college students, a group the Fallon usually plays to in his segments. During his run he has staged a series of 90 reunions from "Full House", to "Save By The Bell." These videos have millions of views on Youtube and I'm sure his latest bit will reach high numbers. The "Good Burger" sketch is just the latest example of how Fallon uses perfectly utilizes YouTube, something I'm sure we'll see more of during his reign.

Jimmy Fallon, Best Tonight Show Host Ever??

Jimmy Fallon used to host Late Night With Jimmy Fallon before he took over for Jay Leno and became the host of The Tonight Show. Since he has taken over he has completely raised the show to new heights and increased the ratings immensely. Steve Allen started as host and was succeeded by Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and now Jimmy Fallon.

Starting on Saturday Night Live Jimmy Fallon has been a well known name for a while, and he's stolen the hearts of many people that watch him. Since he has been host, he has brought a youthful vibe back to the show and many entertainment and comedy based sketches. He's done various fun skits including, classroom instrument versions of songs with famous music artists and lip-sync battles with celebrities such as Emma Stone and Joseph-Gordon Levitt. He's "mom-danced" with Michelle Obama, done 90's dance sketches with Will Smith, created the famous "EW!" video with Will.I.Am, and so many other famous skits that people quote on the daily.

Fallon was named Entertainment Weekly's 2014 Entertainer of the Year and the viewership of the show has gone up 31% since Jay Leno hosted the show last. He's had guests range from Taylor Swift, to the late Joan Rivers, to Nicole Kidman and Bill Cosby. With all of the excitement of this show, not only viewership has sky rocketed, but also social media. The Tonight Show twitter raised from 514,000 to 1.8 million followers and went from 1.5 to 5.2 million subscribers on Youtube. The Tonight Show is one of my favorite shows to watch on weekday nights, and it's a show that a lot of people look forward to every day as well. It has a laid back vibe filled with plenty of jokes, musical numbers, and famous guests and it's never boring to watch. Jimmy Fallon has brought late night television back to life and made it 10 times better.

The Impact of Vine

As most of you guys know, there's this app called Vine. Vine is a little app that allows any smart phone user to create and share 6-second looping videos on Twitter, Facebook, Vine, and other places. Since it's release on January 23, 2013 Vine has exploded in popularity. It was originally just for iPhones, but it has since branched out to all other smart phone platforms like Android and Windows phone. Vine was first created and founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus, Yusupow, and Colin Kroll in June of 2012 and the company was acquired by Twitter in October of 2012.

Vine is an immensely popular app for a few reasons. First of all, Vines are very easy to make. It uses the camera in your phone so it is accessible. It also features the touch and record process. You touch the screen for the duration you want to record and all you have to do to stop recording is let go of the screen. This makes is easy to use for even the most novice videographers (or Viners). This technology also makes it easy to make stop motion videos. All you have to do is just tap the screen for the duration of the video and there you have it!

This app is also immensely popular for viewing purposes because the videos are so short. You don't have to invest a great amount of time to watch a vine since they are only 6 seconds long. They also loop so you don't even have to click replay if you missed something in the last 6 seconds. This makes it perfect for people to get out their short stories and it is even now being used for news and marketing. The possibilities for this little app are endless. It is just the start and I can't wait to see where it goes.

Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex

The summer before last I had the opportunity to attend a few lectures at an equipment rental and sales facility near my home in Boston, MA. The company, called Rule Camera, hosts lectures every summer called, "pub night" where they serve pizza and beverages and invite a guest speaker to discuss some aspect of the entertainment or media industries, offer advice, and take questions. My favorite lecture, and by far the most memorable, was one given by a sports television camera operator and DP named Tom Guilmette.

Tom talked a lot about his job, which admittedly, is really cool. He works at Fenway Park in Boston, as a  camera operator. It's his job to film all the fly balls over left field. Now, I might be a little biased- I'm from Boston and I'm a Red Sox fan, but it seemed like his job would be really awesome. And a lot harder then you might think. He has to track the ball across the sky (which is really tiny from a distance and moving so fast) while maintaining his focus, all while precariously perched on the scaffolding of Fenway Park. DAMN.

In addition to making us marvel at his cool job, Tom talked a lot about social media and its impact on the film industry. While Tom works as a DP, he also rents equipment out to people and uses social media to help out people with questions about how things work. 

SO. That's a lot of stuff right? That's not even the part I wanted to talk about. Since Tom is a DP and has been in the industry for a while, he often gets to test out awesome and expensive equipment- such as the Phantom Flex camera. I don't know how many of you are familiar with extremely high definition cameras, but this one pretty much takes the cake. Shooting at 2,564 fps, it can capture images at ridiculously crazy speeds. This video, shot on his first day experimenting with the camera, was made in Vegas at a television conference. He decided to test out the capabilities of the camera, and the results are both amazing and hilarious. Be sure to check it out, and if you like it, his website has a lot more really cool videos shot with a Phantom Flex...

If you ever have camera questions, you can tweet them to @tomguilmette 

he really knows his stuff and he'll always respond if he can/if he can help!

Spark Mini-Course

I'm typing this while sitting in a Park mini-course called Spark (it's okay, they encourage us to go on Facebook/Twitter/everything and post about the class during class). We're about to Skype with David Muir and Diane Sawyer, among other people. While I know it doesn't have much to do with film, I just thought it might interest you to know that we're about to talk with some pretty cool household names in a few minutes. If they say anything ground-breaking, I'll set up another post and give you a rundown of what's going on.

Right now they're ordering me to set up a Twitter account. When Twitter first came out, I thought it was the dumbest thing and I swore that I would never get one. And now it seems like I must break my promise to myself. Sadface.

information anxiety

Hey everyone! Below is a rough write-up of my idea. I would really like some feedback on what you guys like/don't like about the idea and any questions. Thanks so much.

We are constantly bombarded with information. We are suffering from image anxiety. I check twitter too much. What if their was a way to gauge how active twitter was by looking at a visualization?

Using the data from twitter I want to make spontaneous generated murals. Murals are already somewhat immersive because of the relation of size to a human. This mural would change every time someone tweeted and also change due to topics that are currently trending. That way you wouldn't have to look at twitter to know that a new topic has broken.

I want to use my aesthetic in the art piece I create. I am interested in nondigital art as well as digital (including painting, drawing, & printmaking) so I would like to create interactive pieces that still have that artistic sensibility. I am interested in mark-making that still looks handdrawn or painterly. A lot of my pieces have texture and visual movement so I would like to try to translate that to the immersive environment. Patterns created could also be exported and used as digital design elements, printed artwork, or textile design.