DEEP SEA SKIVING

I know Banarama has been covered on this blog already, but this album might be one of my favorites of all time. If you haven't listened to it, I recommend it for this spring season.

Marco Brambilla

I recently saw the teaser video for Kanye's song "POWER", and I was blown away. I looked into the director, Marco Brambilla, and was really inspired by his work. Apparently, he directed Demolition Man, starring Sylvestor Stallone and Wesley Snipes, a personal favorite of mine. But, after Demolition Man, Brambilla turned to more experimental installation pieces. His work is really incredible and you can even see one of his installations, CIVILIZATION, in the elevator at the Stand Hotel in NYC.

DATAMOSHING II- NIGHT SHIFT

In my previous post about datamoshing, I mentioned that I was working on datamoshing a music video. The video, posted below, is for Astro Club Blonde's latest single, NIGHT SHIFT. Astro Club Blonde has their next album, BLUSH, on the way and we thought this video would be a fitting time to give everyone a sample. Make sure to check back for leaked tracks from the album in the next few weeks.

NIGHT SHIFT was shot on both the Canon 7D and on the Canon 550D. Our DP, Joel Neville Anderson, shot our exterior scenes in Upstate New York on his 7D. The rest of the video was shot in Brooklyn and in Adolfo Vargas' photo studio in midtown. I want to thank Adolfo Vargas for his kindness in letting us use his space and Tom Perry who waved a flashlight around at me while I ran in place.

DATAMOSHING

Recently I have been working on a music video that is incorporating a glitching technique called DATAMOSHING. Datamoshing is kinda 2009, but whatever, Wikipedia has this to say about datamoshing...."

Datamoshing occurs when the I-frames or key-frames of a temporally compressed video are removed, causing frames from different video sequences to bleed together."

Basically datamoshing takes advantage of an aspect of compression in encoding. To make the videos smaller, encoding creates Key frames (or I frames) and it references other frames based off that, to make the file smaller. So, it takes one frame, and says hey, these next 30 frames are pretty similar, lets base the video information off that frame and use it as a reference. So what datamoshing does is take out those keyframes and leaves in the P-frames, and p frames reference I frames for information, the main ingredient in a p-frame is motion information. So, you take a video with an i-frame and couple it with a video with nothing but p-frames, it makes the second video work off the first video, applying its motion information to the other information of the clip..... thats datamoshing.

Here are some examples.....

and obviously...

Chairlift - "Evident Utensil" Music Video from Data Mosher on Vimeo.

I think its amazing that datamoshing works as well as it does, but I am surprised no one has created a plug in yet to mimic the results. I feel like there is whole world of glitch manipulation out there that is completely uncharted, and is being hindered by programs like Final Cut and Avid, which make everything work properly...... But hey.

Now, it just takes a while and it has really made me alter my workflow. Here is a really nerdy explanation of it...... Basically what I do is I line up my clips that I want to datamosh in Final Cut , then export the seperate .movs . I then encode the clips in FFMPEGX, which pulls out all the i-frames and creates an .avi file. You then have to take those two encoded files and put them into a basic editing program (one that won't put the i-frames back in), then you pull out the remaining i-frame and export it as an .avi. And then you see what it looks like, you can kinda guess what the final product will be based on the videos motion content, but its really trial and error. You then convert the .avi back to an .mov and plop it back into Final Cut.

Here is a great video with a tutorial and all the links you need to start datamoshing. I think this guy does a great job explaining how to do it. It's 3 videos in total, but he makes it pretty entertaining and datamoshes the whole tutorial.

When the music video is done I will post it up on this blog.

KOBROWSKI

Millennium Blonde recently completed shooting its short film "KOBROWSKI". The film is co-directed by Michael Borowiec and Nathan Rogers-Hancock. KOBROWSKI has been in the works for some time and after six days of shooting in Schenectady and Valatie, NY the film moves into the editing room. We threw out script after script until we landed upon KOBROWSKI, which is co-written by Nathan Rogers-Hancock and Michael Borowiec. We wanted a great story, but more so, a great character, that we could work with in other films and stories. Also, we really wanted to bring a strong, action-hero-type character to independent films. The story of KOBROWSKI goes......

"KOBROWSKI- the boy-genius detective who joined the force at 16 years old. KOBROWSKI instantly became a media and tabloid sensation, inspiring American's across the country, becoming a legend in his own time- an American hero. But, at 23 years old, involved in a turbulent court case, he found the public scrutiny too much. Facing a quarter life crisis he retired from the force and moved from New York City to Upstate New York, where he goes into retirement. But, even in this small town, he could only avoid trouble for so long...."

The film stars Michael Borowiec as KOBROWSKI, and Camille Balsamo as MARIA. (below). The film also has appearances by Mike Oshins, Zach De Sorbo, Paul Ruth, Robert Nevulis and many more.

We were fortunate to have a great crew on this film, which was small, but incredibly efficient.

We had Logan Olberg (line-producer), Steve Levine (director of photography), Darcie Wilder (assistant camera), Alan Lapointe (Sound), John Hogan (grip), and Joseph Borowiec (special effects). Check back for more KOBROWSKI updates and photos from set.

Check back for more updates on KOBROWSKI.

Updates and Downloads- New As Tomorrow

In January Astro Club Blonde released our first EP, New As Tomorrow. We gave a limited amount cd's away at some of our shows, but never made the EP available for download online- until now. Below you can download New As Tomorrow. The album has tracks like the motorcycle pop-rock song "My Girl", an electronic-dance cover of Rod Stewart's "Young Turks", the Chinese-American love song POWER_LOVE, and the glam-pop title track "New As Tomorrow". All in all every song on the album is an upbeat anthem dedicated to love in the modern world. Enjoy.

NEW AS TOMORROW

DOWNLOAD

Astro Club Blonde recently played at the Free Art's Society. Apparently, they are losing their space that they have on Grand Street, but they promised us they are going to be holding events in the future in a new location. We will keep you posted with future events and gallery openings.

Next week Astro will also be having t-shirts available for purchase. We will keep you updated on where you can get your hands on one.

Updates and Downloads

It's been a while since we've updated everyone on Astro Club Blonde's activities- and there is a lot to update on. The band is currently recording their first full length album- DEBUTANTES. The album is currently scheduled to be released October 1st and will be a big step forward for the band. If you have followed the band over the internet you most likely know Astro Club Blonde's first EP "NEW AS TOMORROW". But, the band has grown considerably since then and mostly perform their new material which will be the basis for DEBUTANTES. The band also has two new music videos which will be released with the new album.

Astro Club Blonde has also been working on a new live set up and has been practicing to get it all ready. The band will be playing this Sunday in the Lower East Side, it will be a good opportunity to see what we are doing now and all of our new material. The event is hosted by the Free Arts Society, the info is below....it's actually really strange.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Sunday, August 1st, 9pm to ?

This is an after party for the Mad Hatter's Tea Party in Tompkins Square Park. Basically the event location is undisclosed as of now. You will have to wait until the Tea Party is done to learn the location. Check out all the info on Facebook, it is usually a pretty good time with these people.

Over the next few weeks there is going to be more updates and downloads. But, until then, you can download the Power_Love ipod video. (I know it's old, but we got new stuff coming.) You can download this file and plop it on your iPod video, or iPhone and watch it till your heart's content.

POWER_LOVE for your iPOD/ iPHONE

DOWNLOAD HERE