The Vimeo Video School

in Film | December 21st, 2010

You all know and love Vimeo videos. (We’ve fea­tured many here before.) Now Vimeo will teach you how to make your own videos. The new Vimeo Video School includes some nuts-and-bolts lessons (i.e., how to cap­ture good sound or improve your fram­ing & com­po­si­tion). And then there are some extra tuto­ri­als cre­at­ed by mem­bers of the Vimeo com­mu­ni­ty. Above, we give you a short intro­duc­tion to sto­ry­board­ing (part of a larg­er series on the sub­ject), which hap­pens to fea­ture orig­i­nal draw­ings from Mar­tin Scors­ese’s Taxi Dri­ver. And yes, by the way, Amer­i­can view­ers can watch Taxi Dri­ver online (for free) right here.

Note: The mak­er of Flip video cam­eras has also pro­duced a series of instruc­tion­al videos. You can find them on YouTube right here. Thanks to @TechSoup for the fyi…

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Richard Dawkins Plays the Piano: “Earth History in C Major”

in Science | December 20th, 2010

Oxford’s renowned biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins puts the his­to­ry of life on earth in per­spec­tive, using sim­ply a piano. This short video is a great jump­ing off point for this bril­liant lec­ture Dawkins gave back in 1991. It’s called “Wak­ing Up in the Uni­verse, Grow­ing Up in the Uni­verse,” and the 57-minute video pulls you deep­er into some big ques­tions. What’s the ori­gin of life? Where do we fall in the scheme of life on plan­et Earth? What’s our role in the larg­er uni­verse? And how lucky are we to have the brains and tools to under­stand the awe­some won­ders that sur­round us? Thanks to “Con­stant­line” for send­ing today’s video along.

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Watch “Ryan,” Winner of an Oscar and 60 Other Awards

in Art, Film | December 20th, 2010

Chris Lan­dreth turned to ani­ma­tion as a sec­ond career and even­tu­al­ly land­ed an Oscar with Ryan (2004), a short ani­mat­ed film based on the life of Ryan Larkin, an artist who pro­duced influ­en­tial ani­mat­ed films dur­ing the 1960s, before falling into a per­son­al down­ward spi­ral. You can revis­it two of Lark­in’s ani­mat­ed films (both ref­er­enced in the film above) on NFB.CA. Start with the Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed short, Walk­ing, from 1969, and then turn to Street Musique (1972). And don’t for­get to down­load NFB’s free iPad app where you can watch Ryan in a portable yet visu­al­ly com­pelling for­mat.

The Landreth/Larkin films men­tioned above have been added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

200+ Films by Indige­nous Direc­tors Now Free to View Online: A New Archive Launched by the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da Launch­es Free iPad App

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WikiRebels: New Documentary Tells the WikiLeaks‎ Story

in Current Affairs | December 18th, 2010

Ear­li­er this week, Swe­den’s pub­lic tele­vi­sion ser­vice, SVT (akin to PBS and the BBC), released a one hour doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling the his­to­ry of Wik­iLeaks, start­ing with its ear­ly leaks of Sci­en­tol­ogy doc­u­ments and end­ing with its recent release of Amer­i­can diplo­mat­ic cables. Since July, SVT reporters have fol­lowed Wik­iLeaks, trav­el­ing near and far to inter­view Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange and oth­er top mem­bers of the whistle­blow­ing orga­ni­za­tion, some of who have since left the embat­tled inter­net site. All in all, a decent intro­duc­tion to Wik­ileaks and its con­tro­ver­sial mis­sion. Thanks to @eacion for the heads up…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Werner Herzog Reads Twas The Night Before Christmas

in Comedy, Film | December 17th, 2010

Right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son. Faux Wern­er Her­zog reads an uber dark and satir­i­cal ver­sion of Twas The Night Before Christ­mas. Oth­er fun clips in this video series fea­ture Faux Her­zog read­ing Curi­ous George, Made­line, and Mike Mul­li­gan and His Steam Shov­el. via @eacion

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Google Visualizes Words & Culture

in Google, History, Literature | December 16th, 2010

Since 2004, Google has dig­i­tized more than 15 mil­lion books, most­ly to build its Google Books ser­vice. But yes­ter­day Google Labs released a nice lit­tle spin­off prod­uct, the Ngram View­er, that pro­vides a win­dow into how we have his­tor­i­cal­ly used words, and what these usages say about our cul­ture.

This new visu­al­iza­tion tool lets you map out the usage of a giv­en word, or series of words, over a 200 year peri­od (1800 — 2008). For exam­ple, the Ngram View­er shows us that we think less about  â€śwar” these days, as com­pared to the 1940s and 1960s, and more about “ter­ror­ism.” (Click the links to “war” and “ter­ror­ism” and you will see what I mean.) Sim­i­lar­ly, the Eng­lish speak­ing world has recent­ly renewed its love affair with the dog vis-a-vis cats. And if you invest­ed in sal­sa and bailed on ketchup in 1980, you would be a pret­ty wealthy per­son right now.

Over­all, the Ngram data­base con­tains rough­ly 5.2 mil­lion books (a sub­set of the larg­er Google Books data­base), with some 500 bil­lion words, and it fea­tures texts in Chi­nese, Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Russ­ian, and Span­ish. Get more details here.

via @webacion and @eugenephoto

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the New Google eBook­store (with Free Clas­sics)

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The Most Amazing Science Images Of 2010

in Science | December 16th, 2010

Not to miss. Pop­Sci has pulled togeth­er a gallery of “The Most Amaz­ing Sci­ence Images of 2010.” It fea­tures 72 pho­tos in total, includ­ing the image above – an E. Coli Sculp­ture that fig­ures into artist Luke Jer­ram’s “Glass Micro­bi­ol­o­gy” series of por­traits. Find a short video his Malar­ia sculp­ture right here.

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Five Free Philosophy Courses from Notre Dame

in Philosophy | December 16th, 2010

Last week, we added three phi­los­o­phy cours­es by John Sear­le to our big list of Free Online Cours­es (now 300+ cours­es). This week, we’re bring­ing you five phi­los­o­phy cours­es from Amer­i­ca’s elite Catholic uni­ver­si­ty, Notre Dame. You can access two cours­es in audio, and three in video via iTunes and the web. Here you go:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s the Right Thing to Do? Pop­u­lar Har­vard Course (by Michael Sandel) Now Online

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