The second half of the episode features innovator Jeff Linnell of Bot & Dolly, a local production company that specializes in using robotics in advertising.  Combining crowdsourcing and digital art, their  Halo “Reach” project is one of a kind: it required specialized software to be built to translate interactive data from web users into plotting points, as a robot laser moves and is read by cameras to create a 3D monument of light. Their work on the  Louis Vuitton Journeys campaign is another highlight, which uses their bots for  fancy camerawork and other-worldy shots.

Urgent Content teamed up with Good Magazine and Ford to produce the Edge of Progress Innovator Sessions. Here’s the first video of the series profiling two innovators in New York City: food blogger/writer/rooftop gardener, Cathy Erway, and metal worker/artist, Josh Hadar. Check out the vid and see what they had to say…

I just watched this video from filmmaker Sam O’Hare that he made while at Coachella Music Festival in the Spring. The stop motion, birds eye, style of this video really messes with your sense of scale. You’re watching this massive festival with thousands of people, but it makes you feel like you’re looking at one of those museum dioramas with tiny soldier figurines recreating a famous battle. Check it out below:

/Barbra Streisand (music video) Duck Sauce/

Turntablists Armand Van Helden and A-Track, AKA “Duck Sauce,” have only been releasing music for a year, but already individually have sold a resume of bangers under their belts.  The video for “Barbra Streisand” is an accomplishment in its own right, capturing the spirit of New York, in which real people and celebrities alike populate the crowded city streets.  The video was directed by So-Me, the artist who brought us the Justice v. Uffie D.A.N.C.E music video and who continues to push the envelope in the realm of creative innovation in a declining industry. With the likes of artists Kanye West, Chromeo, Pharrell, Santigold, Questlove, Just Blaze, DJ Mehdi, Buckshot, Fat Jew, Dust La Rock, Ryan Leslie, and Diplo (to name a few…), the viral hit boasts more celeb cameos than Ray Parker Jrs.’ video for  The Ghostbusters theme song. The result is an uplifting and colorful musical landscape where the intermixing of real and celebrity personas is thoughtful, not forced.  It seems that the only person left out of the street-party scene in the video is Barbra herself, although her cross-dressing body double does make an appearance narrating the beginning and ending of the video, in a truly New York state of mind: “New York is the place of opportunities. If there is any place in this world that you want to come to to be able to make it big or go after your dreams, it is New York City.”

The other day Google put out this bizarre video to hype their location-based mobile search engine, but at 10 minutes long, it’s hard to believe most people would sit through the whole thing. I…almost did. But it’s worth checking out for the hidden humor throughout the whole video. My favorites from when I skipped to the middle of the video are at 4:05, 4:16, 4:34, 5:17 and 6:07. Go wild!

via Mashable

The latest branded viral video win goes to Gillette for putting out this amazing trick shot demonstration with Roger Federer. The company claims the footage was captured in one take during a real commercial shoot with the British Skin Foundation. Somehow Roger manages to knock a water bottle off a guy’s head not once, but twice with a powerful serve. The video has not only reached over a million hits, it’s left everyone debating about whether the clip is real of fake. But even if it is fake, what matters is everyone is talking!

Today I watched the Twitter movie trailer, a parody of the upcoming Facebook movie that tells the story of the popular website’s young founders. It seemed crazy to me at first to have a feature film about Facebook’s roots when it’s not that old of a company. Maybe a documentary – but a glorified, big budget film? When I watched this Twitter movie trailer it hit me. This is all just a big social media stunt to keep up the buzz. We’re still way too in the moment to seriously start looking back at how it all came to be. Social media has yet to mature…if ever.

Still, watch the video below for a few laughs. We’re all a part of this social media madness, so you may as well embrace its absurdities.

We had this very cool video sent to us today and couldn’t help but notice the strong presence of the Vitamin Water brand. The amazing dancing is clearly the reason this video has received close to 170k views, but Vitamin Water is in frame long enough to make you wonder if they were involved. However, this street view proves the ad was already there and not placed in the shot intentionally. Still, it makes you think about how brands can insert themselves gracefully into genuine viral content and ride out the views on YouTube. (via Ben Stein)

]]> http://urgensia.com/2010/07/vitamin-water-cameo-in-successful-youtube-video/feed/ 0 http://urgensia.com/2010/03/votd-i-hates-christmas/ http://urgensia.com/2010/03/votd-i-hates-christmas/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:46:54 +0000 Henry Goldman http://urgensia.com/?p=779 So, for those of you casual Urgensia readers, Urgent Content has been sourcing content for Flip Video’s fall campaign from a wide variety of creators. We’ve gone out to Flip’s user base to see what kinds of clips they have, and I wanted to share one of the better ones we’ve received. It’s a little off season, and is probably too long to work as a :15, but it’s just one of the better, organic, cute kid virals i’ve seen in a long time. Enjoy.

Futurists, tech-bloggers and assholes are always harping on about what’s next in technology. One year, it’s virtual world social networks. Remember in 2007 how we were all going to be on Second Life within 6 months? Didn’t happen. It was a good story, but it didn’t happen. The year before that, we were going to only watch tv on our mobile devices. Also, didn’t happen (at least not in the timeframe the bloggers had predicted). Well, in 2010, everyone has been overhyping the existance of augmented reality apps. It’s a fun sounding trend, seems super futuristic and there’s a few real-world examples you can actually point to. For example, Yelp’s Monocle Feature for the iPhone is genuinely cool. (You can point your phones camera in a direction and see what all the restaurants listed over the image. It’s neat.)

Still, hype is hype and should be taken with a grain of salt. Augmented Reality is a kinda cool thing, but whether it’s going to take over our lives is the wrong question to ask. The question is, why will certain augmented reality apps be more useful to our lives than others?

I’m digressing, though. I don’t feel like opening that can of worms in this blog post (though feel free in the comments). This is an awesome CGI video that imagines a world entirely colored by augmented reality. I don’t know if I would want to live there, but I’m thoroughly impressed that someone could so full realize this vision in a video. Enjoy.

(via New Work)