On the 30th anniversary of its release, Marques Brownlee unboxes and explores how the Game Boy came to be, it’s impact on society, and why it’s leaving us feeling so nostalgic.
Veritasium:
This is a video I’ve long wanted to make, about what makes video look like video and, up until 10 years ago or so, not as appealing as film. I grew up with the two technologies (film and video) in parallel and to me they always seemed like two ways of achieving the same ends: recording and replaying moving images. But their histories are quite distinct. Film was always a way to capture moving images for later replaying. Video started out as a way to transfer images from one place to another instantaneously.
Danny Dimian, Visual Effects Supervisor, and Josh Beveridge, Head of Character Animation, for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” share exclusive breakdowns and talk about their inspiration and the techniques they used to create a new visual language for their Academy Award-winning film.
A great little documentary about the birth of the web, featuring Tim Berners-Lee front and center.
FOREVERYONE.NET connects the future of the web with the little-known story of its birth. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet creating the world wide web.
David Ehrlich writes about the upcoming Apollo 11 documentary, made using recently discovered 65mm footage:
It’s rare that picture quality can inspire a physical reaction, but the opening moments of “Apollo 11,” in which a NASA camera crew roams around the base of the rocket and spies on some of the people who’ve come to gawk at it from a beach across the water, are vivid enough to melt away the screen that stands between them. The clarity takes your breath away, and it does so in the blink of an eye; your body will react to it before your brain has time to process why, after a lifetime of casual interest, you’re suddenly overcome by the sheer enormity of what it meant to leave the Earth and land somewhere else.
This looks absolutely incredible.
A remarkable visualization of emergence at work. The close-up shots of the circulatory system look straight out of a trippy sci-fi horror film.
Lovely.
This is one hell of a tiny homemade documentary.
Jeremy Keith:
Now when we look at new things added to HMTL, new features, new browser APIs, what we tend to ask, of course, is: how well does it work?
How well does this thing do what it claims it’s going to do? That’s an excellent question to ask whenever you’re evaluating a new technology or tool. But I don’t think it’s the most important question. I think it’s just as important to ask: how well does it fail?
Nothing like a full hour of Jeremy Keith to get the year’s work started.
BDG shows how Celeste relates to real-life rock climbing and it totally clicks.
While most games will make you grind to improve your character, Celeste makes you grind to improve yourself. When you succeed, you keep that skill and that knowledge. And just link in real climbing, when you go back to a route you’ve already completed, you ask yourself: “how did I ever struggle with this?”
And that’s when you know… you have become the genius beefcake.
Will we ever run out of Celeste praise videos? I hope not.
Michiel de Boer:
It is believed that the most seen photo is this Windows XP background. And I’m convinced that the most viewed shape is the mouse cursor.
This is packed with great quotes from filmmakers that I hadn’t heard before.
David Lynch:
I never talk about themes. It’s a very big shame when something is finished and then people want you to translate it back into words. It never will work. It never will go back into words and be what the film is. It’s like describing a piece of music; you don’t hear the music, you just see the words. It’s better to let people conjure up their own ideas, having seen and experienced the film.
Kubrick on explaining the ending of 2001:
I tried to avoid doing this ever since the picture came out because when you just say the ideas they sound foolish, whereas if they’re dramatized one feels it.
Great perspective on the current political situation in the United States.
Most people would say that “the ends justify the means” is a crap moral philosophy. Democrats would agree. But liberals often overcorrect to the point where thinking about the ends at all is thought of as - in a vague, reflexive kind of way - innately immoral. There’s a very Enlightenment way of thinking that implies that, with the right means, the ends take care of themselves, and immoral behavior becomes functionally impossible.
We can call this Values-Neutral Governance, and you can see why it would appeal when you’re trying to sum all the demands placed on a politician. Under this thinking, you don’t need to engage with the needs and desires of your constituency, your donors, or even your opposition, because, if democracy is working, everyone deserving will get what they need as a matter of course.
And you can see how utterly paralyzing it can be when half the participants of the system refuse to play by those rules. Values-Neutral Governance is an engine that only runs by mutual consent.
By sheer coincidence, I came across the Classic Tetris World Championship final stream just as it was happening live. I only caught the final moments, but my interest was piqued. There is clearly something special happening here.
A look at the 12 principles of animation developed by Disney to give life to an image.
Explainers about Disney’s animation techniques have been done to death, but Kristian’s stellar editing and compositing make this one worth watching. He uses some great examples that I hadn’t seen before.
Eye-opening and surprisingly poignant.