vimeo:

This Week in Vimeo! September 26th

What’s the word, Vimeo? Monday is upon us, and it brings tidings of audio-visual awesomeness. Shake off those post-weekend blues and settle in for This Week in Vimeo!

To start the party, we’d like to introduce you to Carlton Evans. Carlton is a long-time Vimean, and is the co-founder of The Disposable Film Festival, an event that celebrates the creative potential of short films made on humble equipment like cell phones, point and shoot pocket cameras, and other inexpensive video capturing devices. We had the pleasure of sitting down for a little chat with Carlton when he stopped by the office last week. In addition to seriously bonding with Handstick, he talked to us about all things video. Read on!

First thing’s first, introduce yourself!
Hi, I’m Carlton.

Can you recall the first time you felt that you wanted to be involved with video?
Kinda. I saw Jarmusch’s DOWN BY LAW at a film festival when I was in middle school and in retrospect that was a big moment for me. The characters, the story, the 16mm aesthetic, everything about it appealed to me, and I decided that I wanted to be part of that. After that I took some film classes in high school and made some Super-8 pieces that we’d manually splice. But the industry always seemed to overwhelming to me. The expense of the art form seemed prohibitive.

Where did the idea for the Disposable Film Festival come from?
In some sense, for me it came from that feeling of wanting to be involved and not having a lot of money to do it. Then I met Eric Slatkin, the co-founder of Disposable, and he showed me this one time use digital video camera that came out around 2006. All I could think about was how cool it would have been to have that kind of access when I was a kid. It seemed like a whole new generation would be growing up with cameras and editing software and that was going to spark a creative revolution. So we started the Disposable Film Festival to support, celebrate, and inspire that movement.

Interested? Submissions are open for this year’s Disposable Film Festival until November 30th. Click here to learn more or watch the festival trailer above!

How does watching video on a big screen differ from viewing videos online?
It’s completely different. Watching a video on a big screen with a proper sound system and a live, expressive audience is an experience that can’t be replicated. The access that the internet provides is awesome and instrumental to what’s going on with video now, but when these videos that we are used to watching on our little screens get screened in theaters, it completely transforms them in to something monumental. Into movies.

First video you ever Liked on Vimeo?
Wow, I’m really not sure. I remember my first day on Vimeo. I had made a bunch of funny videos with my grandmother and was posting them. While they were uploading I started browsing around and checking out other people’s work and it was amazing. I saw so much great stuff that day.

One Vimean that inspires you? What is your favorite video from their repertoire?
I really love Kirsten Lepore’s work. In 2009, we showed a kind of multi-screen video journal that she made while working on a stop-motion piece. I thought it was a great way to talk about process while making that expression into an interesting work in itself. Since then I’ve been seeing the watching all the incredible work that she’s produced. It’s inspiring.

To read the rest of this post, head over to the Vimeo Staff Blog!

heyitseva:

The above is a clip from Season 1, Episode 11, the Christmas episode of the show Sports Night, titled “The Six Southern Gentlemen.”

One of the plots from this episode, featured in this clip, centers around Casey, a main character and Sports Night anchor, not knowing, and then learning the names of the different people that work on his show, in the Sports Night world.

I just rewatched this episode, and cross checked some of the names he mentions against the credits for the episode. They are the names of the actual people who were involved with the production of Sports Night, in the real world. When Dan, the co-anchor says, “We’ve got film on this show. Do you know who cuts it?” and Casey says, “Janet Ashikaga,” that’s the actual person who edited Sports Night. The script supervisor’s name they mention is the actual script supervisors name, and so on. They mention the grips, they mention the PAs, the wardrobe department, the hair stylists, and so on. 

It feels very special that a real TV show did this, and found a way to publicly recognize people on its staff. It goes a long way, I think— saying thank you, remembering people’s names, humility, humanity, and appreciation.

When people watch videos on CollegeHumor, I’m certain it’s for the writing. We have wonderful writers. But one of the things, in addition to the writing, that makes our videos different, is the production value. It’s a great product. The videos are great to watch. That comes from the production and post production departments. That’s 10 to 30+ smart, funny, enthusiastic, creative, talented, dedicated film and video industry professionals working on every video. 

When these videos post on the site, under a tab marked “Credits”, to the right of the “Comments” section, you can see a list of these people. It’s not quite the same as saying their names out loud on television, but if you’re a fan of the CollegeHumor Original Video content and you have a moment, I’d like to invite you to take a quick look at the credits. It’s really a team sport over here, and we have a great team.

Thanks everyone, and happy holidays.

(By the way, compiling and entering the credits is one of the millions of things done by the Production Coordinator. My Production Coordinator is Jon Wolf. Thanks, buddy.)