VJ Piece 2 - Straight News

An interview with Nobel Laureate Ei-ichi Negishi:

Podcast

Here is Group One's Podcast:

Nature Montage Inspiration

With our nature montage projects due in a few weeks, I thought I'd post some inspiration. Tom Lowe is an absolute master of his craft and the best part is that he is willing to share how he works.

Timescapes: "Death is the Road to Awe" from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.

The Dude Abides

I saw this article from Flowtown on Digg today. Comparing best practices for social media to The Big Lebowski? I'm there.

Story Telling with Photos

http://purdueexponent.org/?module=slideshows&slid=64

http://mediastorm.com/publication/the-marlboro-marine

http://www.life.com/image/ugc1012452/in-carousel/14361

This one image tells so many different things...

Chilean Miners

I thought this would be an appropriate video for today's assignment as the miners are now finally being brought to the surface.

Can Design Save the Newspaper?

I overheard a conversation today between the managing editor and the graphics editor. It went something like this:

ME: What can we do to have a different layout

GE: Well lets use a cutout of a photo to help shape the page and be the main element

ME: Okay, so how are we going to do this

(both are now looking at a few rough sketches)

GE: I've got all these great ideas, but the composer's don't always know what I'm trying to do

ME: Not to put more work on you, but then why don't you just design the front page?

I remembered after hearing this conversation that the photo editor had mentioned a TED talk regarding this exact same topic - newspaper design.

I went to TED.com and searched for the video and low-and-behold there it was, all six minutes and eight seconds of it. [EDIT: It appears the embed code isn't working, so here is a link]

Now isn't that totally badass?!

I know personally, the thing that prevents me from picking up a regular paper in the morning (Exponent excluded) is that its just boring to read. These, on the other hand, are vibrant, living pieces of art that help to display the news.

Can page design save the industry? It did for one publisher in Eastern Europe. Could it work here in the good ol' land of opportunity? Maybe for someone brave enough to try it. Will it work for The Exponent? Probably not.

For one, layouts like these require immense amounts of planning and very skilled designers. While I'm sure our designers could develop something like this, doing it every day between classes probably isn't feasible. Secondly, lets face it, most of our news is niche and, if you aren't a student/faculty of Purdue, you aren't going to care much.

Where I do see something like this fitting in, however, is special issues. Entertainment guides, Tailgate Guides, Welcome Back, Semester in Review, etc.

Could it help The Exponent? Lets just say I don't think it would hurt to try something new every now and then.

8 Minutes Late

But its here, sort of. I wasn't able to get player interviews after practice last week because the light dropped off too fast. But soon, soon...

Another two-video post

Here is a recent Ad spot from RipCurl:

Now here is the Creatives' and Directors' thoughts on the production:

I know where my first million dollars is going :D

Pre production saves time AND money

First, watch this video:

The Satin Dollz in "Whatever Lola Wants" from Dan Blank on Vimeo.

Now Watch this video:

The Making of "Whatever Lola Wants" from Dan Blank on Vimeo.

A couple things to watch. 1) The upper left corner is a pre production animation of what the director wanted the video to look like. 2) The bottom left corner is what was actually shot. 3) The right half is the finished product.

While a few of the scenes are easy to tell they were green screened, several of them look seemless. I've tried Green Screening before and frankly I sucked it up. However it was a valuable learning experience and I fully recognize where I went wrong.

The lesson here is to plan everything, literally everything, out so that you don't waste time (and thus money) on the set.

Oh and by the way, the final budget for this music video was around $2,000 - that's pretty darn cheap.