Here's Looking at YouTube

October 21, 2009 9:07 PM

My sweetie gave me a Flip (UltraHD) for my birthday. I've never had a video recorder before... besides the obvious recording of fambly events and such, what sorts of cool, interesting, and potentially artsy things can I do with it?

I've actually somewhat carefully skirted the world of video for a long, long time, worried at some level that I might be bitten with a virus that would make me an annoying Spielberg / Lucas / Kubrik / Capra wannabe.

Maybe I'm grown up enough now to keep things in perspective. Maybe.

posted by deCadmus to media & arts (10 comments total)

One thing that I love about the Flip is the ability to not only take video, but to take snapshots out of the video later when you are watching it. My iphone camera has no resolution at all (old model), but the Flip's is quite good, and I can get great stills out of the feed for emailing relatives, etc., even if sometimes the video turns out longer and more boring than I intended.
posted by misha at 9:15 PM on October 21

I've been very much enjoying timelapse video lately (many examples on Flickr). I made a couple (sorry to self link) that I'm very happy with using a FlipHD and iMovie on my mac. Timelapse video is really just a long movie played rather quickly, making it look like like stuff is happening much faster than in reality. iMovie does take a little bit of time to learn, but the controls for simple editing and speeding up video are relatively easy to use.

I also like using video to capture the mood of a place I'm visiting more than panning around to capture an entire scene. 10 years from now I think I'll relate more to a video pointed in the direction I was facing in a cafe, capturing the sound and the view, more than a shaky video panning around the room.
posted by pkingdesign at 11:06 PM on October 21

I've been toying with the idea of attaching mine to a balloon or kite.
They are so light, it shouldn't take much lift to get it pretty high.
posted by madajb at 11:26 PM on October 21

If you have some creative friends, you could do Improv Everywhere-type video skits. Film a 3-minute sitcom while waiting in line at the DMV. Make a zombie movie in the supermarket, etc.
posted by xingcat at 4:00 AM on October 22

Infiltrate Improv Everywhere, disrupt/monkey-wrench one of their "missions", and film how they react.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:18 AM on October 22 [2 favorites]

You could experiment with stop motion (other software is available depending on your OS), but be careful, it can get pretty addictive.

Even just moving coins or other stuff around on your desk becomes magical when it's on your screen seemingly doing it all by itself.

Otherwise make use of the size/ lightness of the camera: mount it to your dogs collar and take him to the park, put it on the fork of your bicycle to get a tires-eye-view, set it to record what's behind you and go out wearing a silly hat so you can see people's reactions once you can't see them anymore.

Fun stuff like that.
posted by quin at 8:55 AM on October 22

I think something I would like, going forward, is a collection of photos or videos of my day-to-day, to help me remember some smaller things. This is what my office was like at my first job, here is some footage of the route I biked every day for a year, etc.
posted by craven_morhead at 9:00 AM on October 22

I've started using mine basically as a video memo. In a store, and see a thing I think might be the thing my husband was talking about? Twenty seconds of video while I read the price or small print or whatever. Comparing slow cookers? Fifteen seconds of each with voiceover and maybe a demo of how it opens or how the buttons work. See a used book I don't want to pay $100 for -- film the title page, or read into the audio, then search eBay later.

Always have it in your pocket. You never know what you want to take a picture of.
posted by anastasiav at 10:17 AM on October 22

A marine case turns it into a decent little underwater vid rig, even when just used at the bottom of swimming pools.
posted by jamaro at 10:34 AM on October 22

Making video letters for people can be interesting.

It can be as simple as walking from interesting location to interesting location, recording a little bit of dialogue at each one. Then, you can cut away the seconds spent getting into and out of position, and merge the videos into a single file.

The Flip software lets you do all this.
posted by sindark at 12:10 PM on October 22