Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
Well, it’s about time: after writing a lot about Kickstarter projects for Fast Company, Wired, and New York magazine, I’m doing one myself. Well, sort of. It was Grist‘s idea to do one and they invited me along for the ride. Here’s the trailer: “I, Party Cup” Kickstarter Trailer from Small Mammal on Vimeo. Grist […]
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Here’s an experimental music video I made for Jascha, remixing footage from 2001, Moon, TRON, Robocop, and WarGames: I’ve been curious for a while about whether I could re-edit images, shots and scenes from well-known movies to tell different stories from the ones I borrowed them from. The music video for Jascha’s “Limited” seemed like a great opportunity […]
Filed under: Behind the scenes, Work | Leave a Comment
I was recently invited by the folks at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple Restoration Foundation to give a talk as part of their Break the Box series, which celebrates “creative nonconformity.” It was a real honor. I’ve written before about a design pattern in media/culture that I informally call “process value”, and this talk was […]
Filed under: News, Thoughts, Work | 5 Comments
I cross-posted this on Freelancer Hacks, but I don’t think anyone’s reading that anymore, and I want to get this down, even if it’s only for myself. The most important lesson I learned about successful, productive freelancing in 2010 was this: everything is generative. In plain English, that means this: Doing trumps planning. There’s no […]
Filed under: This Digital Life, Thoughts, Work | 7 Comments
I’ve known about the “P versus NP problem” in computer science for a few years. It sits right at the intersection (which I love) of weird math, technology, and philosophy. So when a new “proof” of the conjecture bubbled up into the news, I leapt at the opportunity to write a story about it for […]
Filed under: Thoughts, Work | 5 Comments
[This is a modified version of a comment I wrote on Ed Yong’s “On the origins of science writers” blog thread, which is really fun and you should read all of it.] My “about” text says I am curious for a living, but what does that actually mean? It’s not just a hand-wavey philosophical quip. […]
Filed under: Behind the scenes, Thoughts, Work | 1 Comment
While I was on vacation in Mexico last week, Small Mammal had its first viral video hit. NPR asked me to create a “clever intro video” for their CEO’s appearance at the annual All Things D technology conference, and this was the result: Not only did it not suck (somewhat surprising, given that straight comedy […]
Filed under: Behind the scenes, Video, Work | 7 Comments
NPR’s News app for Android has been out for a while, but it’s constantly evolving — did you know that you can submit ideas for new features by tweeting at @NPRandroid? Well, you can. Wanna know how we made the video? (I know I always do, when I see ones I like.) Read on.
Filed under: Work | 6 Comments
I wrote an article for Wired about Kickstarter.com, a site that crowd-funds creative projects using the following principle: If they come, you will build it. But as often happens at magazines, a lot of material got left on the cutting room floor. Here’s the “director’s cut”, breaking down what I learned about five successful projects:
Filed under: Clips, Work | 2 Comments
I’ve been dying to work with a DSLR for video for a long time. I finally did. It was a headache and a half. Part of this was due to my own rustiness at recording dual system audio in the field, but most of it was because of the technical issues of syncing the externally […]
Filed under: Video, Work | 1 Comment
John Pavlus 