A Brief History in Video Form
A couple of years ago, when my friends and I all lived in the Garden of Eden, we had tons of spare time on our hands. We spent this time doing lots of hard drugs, and also making short films. Focused on comedy, we made a few video blogs, a couple of one offs, and a pair of video game related videos that garnished a bit of recognition.
“Good Morning, iPhone” was something we came up with and shot in a few hours one weekend. We thought it was silly and a pretty good example of us Apple fanatics. A keen eyed observer will see some of the original jailbreaking in action with ApolloIM and Customize.app. This video was featured in The New York Times’ comedy section and got a quaint amount of views.
“Rock Band: One Man’s Journey” was our tour de force. As gamers, we were looking forward to the dethroner of Guitar Hero, and from that a concept of a pathetic loser character who’s way too overconfident, with way too high of expectations (and a bit mentally troubled) was born. Rock Band was shot over the course of two or three days with a 3 man crew. We did some guerilla filming inside and outside a GameStop and got some really fun material. RB was really well received and got on the front page of Joystiq (thanks to the great taste of Alexander Sliwinksi), and featured in the comedy section of The New York Times. This got us over 100,000 views and kinda blew us away.
“Wii Fit: One Man’s Journey” was the final story of our troubled “One man”. Being quite a bit overweight, he obviously got excited about Wii Fit and its ability to help him instantly shed pounds. Obviously this isn’t the case, and he reacts as you’d guess. Wii Fit wasn’t as popular as Rock Band, getting a little less than half the views, but still at nearly 55,000, which is still pretty cool! I’m much fonder of the WiiFit short myself. I think we really honed in on the comedy & characters. It’s a great sequel. At this point, viewers were really ceasing to see the line between realism and comedy, and plenty of them sounded off via comments that this wasn’t all you had to do to lose weight. That made me/us laugh.
A flurry of location changes, new jobs and life evolutions kinda swayed us out of filmmaking range, but we still have the passion and still want to make comedy for people to enjoy. We have scripts and everything. And since we’re all in the same state now (albeit different cities), we have faith we’ll be able to (hopefully) make you laugh again.
On a personal note, rewatching these videos 2-3 years later is kinda crazy. I’ve lost more than 50lbs since my weight in these videos, and this is the first time I’ve really seen a direct comparison to how I look now, and it’s pretty crazy.
Also, we’re pretty sure “Friend” is dead. If he isn’t dead, he must be pretty crippled.
Hope you enjoy!
M
The Journey of Mattcraft…
I’ve recently become quite smitten with a little game called “Minecraft”. It’s a simple yet deep game of quite humble origins. One man has been coding for little over a year, and his product is snowballing into heavy recognition. Word is Minecraft has already broke $2 million in profits. It’s a true indie story.
Having played several hours of the game, and falling absolutely in love with it, I felt like spreading the word of Minecraft to everyone I could. Following Sebastiaan de With’s lead, I decided to try my hand at doing a small video series of my journeys in Minecraft.
I think it came out really fun, and the responses I’ve received so far are quite positive. I definitely plan on continuing the series!
Enjoy,
M
YouTube Link
Hulu+ And You
So the oft-rumored and highly anticipated “Hulu+” is going live ‘soon’ and will bring the huge video streaming service to tons of devices all over the country. These devices include Apple’s iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. I received my invite last night, and promptly did some test viewing to see how it held up.
In general, I’ve noticed that loading the app and all its content happens pretty quickly, over Wifi and 3G. The app will open and display all the content available at a very decent speed. It’s when you choose a video that the delays start.
I noticed between a 5-10 second pause every time I started a video, either on WiFi or 3G. This is almost ten seconds of a straight black screen, so I’m never quite sure if something froze or if its just loading. Once the black screen goes away, you see the typical network bumper, and then a “brought to you by” message. After that, either your show starts or a commercial plays. I’d say it has been about 50/50 for me. Maybe a bit more in the “video starts instantly” boat. I’ve also noticed that resuming your place in a video takes a little longer as well. It’ll either jump right to your spot after the initial messages, or will play the beginning for a few seconds before pausing and jumping ahead to where you left off.
On 3G I was more impressed than on WiFi. Videos loaded nearly as quickly as they did on Wifi, maybe even slightly faster believe it or not. The black “waiting” screen wasn’t as prevalent, and the video quality looked very smooth and impressive on the iPhone 4’s screen. It wasn’t super-HD quality, but for streaming off the cell network, onto a phone, I was pretty impressed.
So far, for having tested during the last 12 hours or so, I’d definitely say this has tons of potential. After all, it’s still in the “preview” period, and will only get better with time. I’m not saying this because it’s bad now, but because I can’t imagine how much better it’ll get in time. Loading up Fallon while at a stoplight and having it play pretty quickly on the fly was very cool. Having my iPad in bed and watching the latest Cleveland Show episode was very cool too. This service shows a lot of promise.
I took some comparison shots over the course of last night and this morning. They were taken under a few different conditions:
A. At home on Wifi.
B. At work on Wifi.
C. Out and about on 3G.
Here are some comparison screenshots of all the different conditions and devices. As I spend more time with the service I’ll continue to post my thoughts and more screenshots.
iPhone 4:
iPad Wifi:
iPad Wifi (Low Quality):
