The next video is not ready yet and I’m still working on it.

But now there’s a hip NEW way you can watch and share my videos. I’m on iTunes! All the episodes* are available there, in the form of a free video podcast. Now I’ll be right alongside all your favorite skeptical podcasts. Yay!

The YouTube channel will continue to be the main outlet and new videos will premiere there, then appear on iTunes within a couple of days. YouTube is great for browsing and sharing when at a computer while iTunes is convenient for subscribing and streaming to mobile devices. So, pick your poison!

But before you drink the poison, please consider leaving me a positive review and rating in the iTunes store. That will help me become more visible and may shame me into working faster.

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*Several of the most recent episodes are still in the process of being published in the iTunes stream and will appear soon.

I mean it. For artists/filmmakers/performers/other showers-off like myself, there’s no greater feeling than knowing people are watching something you’ve made. Having not released new videos in a while I’m starting to forget what that feels like :(

So maybe it’s not the best strategy to suddenly put out a DVD and offer it for sale… Nevertheless, that’s what I’m about to do and I’m excited about it.

That promo has prompted some questions. Let me start with some quick facts:

1. The YouTube web series is not over. It will continue. This DVD does not affect it.
2. There’s no big distributor involved. The DVD is my own personal effort. I put it together with my own skills and at my own expense.
3. I’m selling it in order to generate a little bit of cash to put into the series and help produce new videos in a timely manner at the same production quality you’ve come to expect.
4. While I will debut the DVD at TAM9, I’ll certainly figure out a way to make it available online for everyone soon after! TAM is simply a way to figure out demand and get some feedback.

And honestly, I’m quite proud of this DVD. I worked very hard to make sure it’s professional and pleasant to watch. Every episode has been remastered (remember that old buzzword?) in the highest available quality. The commentaries are hopefully interesting to the trivia-minded. The bonus features are fun and geeky for all.

A technical note: if you are outside of US or Japan, please be aware that this DVD is NTSC, so you need a multi-system player to view it. However it’s region-free, so it will play on devices from any part of the world and no one should have any issues playing it on a computer.

I hope you’ll consider buying a copy!

~CD

After promoting his own name and films in the first 20 seconds, indie UK filmmaker George Clarke spends the rest of the time introducing a 6-second-long piece of old footage taken at the Hollywood premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 film “The Circus”. The shot shows what looks like a woman talking on a cell phone. An amusingly anachronistic illusion, to be sure. But Clarke’s conclusion is that this might be a time traveler.

Now, the obvious reasons for why this couldn’t possibly be the case have already been pointed out - like the fact that a cell phone requires a wireless network of transmission towers, relay stations and satellites to work. Here’s a casual and hilarious dismantling of the whole thing by the Skepchicks.

But I think we’re all missing the real mystery right in front of us:

COULD THIS BE AUTHENTIC FOOTAGE OF A GUY WHO IS NOT A REAL FILMMAKER, BUT JUST… A POSER??

Think about it…

First of all, neither of his films (“Battle of the Bone” and “The Knackery”) appear on the Internet Movie Database, even though he says one of them won an award, which would mean it’s been in some kind of festival and hence should be listed on IMDb…

Furthermore:

• -His video is painfully devoid of any sense of pacing.
• -His camcorder is not properly white-balanced, making everything look orange.
• -He filmed the Chaplin footage off his TV screen rather than pull it directly from the DVD which any amateur filmmaker could easily do.

And finally… he failed to make the most significant observation about this footage that a filmmaker might contribute:

THE LIGHTING!

Look at the deep, sharp, long shadow cast by the woman. The late afternoon sun is blasting her from the side on what must have been a very bright day, considering the low sensitivity of such old film. The woman is simply shielding her face from the light. She may or may not be holding something (like a coin purse or whatever it is people in the 20′s carried around) and she is speaking (perhaps to the man ahead, as the Skepchicks propose) but the reason her hand is up is for shade.

"Arrgh, it burns!"

The only other person we see passing by – the man in the light suit- isn’t shielding his face. But it would’ve been great to see a larger sample of people. Something tells me a few of them would have been holding their hands up, in a similar way.

So yeah, I’m not saying that George Clarke is a hack. I’m totally not saying that. But… you know… a real filmmaker would’ve noticed this.  And his video is quite orange. And long. You be the judge. And don’t forget to watch my award-winning YouTube series “Captain Disillusion”.

Well, I guess we all learned a valuable lesson here. Extraordinary claims require…

I’m sorry, what? … This crap has almost 3 MILLION VIEWS???

FFFFF –

Just wanted to check in, as it’s that time again when little probing questions from viewers begin to trickle in.

“So… when’s the next video coming?”

“W-what’s it gonna be about?”

“I wanna have like, ten thousand of your babies! [?]“

Rest assured I am working on a new episode and I will try to bring it to the screen in short order. As always, I’ll try to push the envelope and make something streets ahead of what came before.

But I’ve been thinking a lot about how to address this problem of delays. The reason new videos take so long to put out is because they take a long time to make. Plus there’s much other secret superhero stuff I have to do in-between. Also, Mr. Flare is turning into a diva and is totally unmanageable.

(I mean seriously, just waking him up for a shoot is a whole big thing…)

The obvious solution would be to make the videos simpler, shorter and to release them on a frequent, regular schedule. But I wonder if that would defeat the whole purpose…  I don’t really want to get rid of the main strong point (in my opinion) the videos have – higher production value.

So maybe the answer is a dual strategy: I will continue to bring you the same kind of videos I have been, but in addition I will introduce a shorter, simpler format that can come out bi-weekly. These videos will be released on the same YouTube channel, but the title will differentiate them.

Imagine actually KNOWING when the next video will come out. Won’t that be something?…

I really think this could work and I already have a pretty good idea of how exactly to set it up.  But if you have any thoughts or suggestions for it, I’d like to hear them too.

See you soon!

~CD

It’s a worthy sequel! The same clever, escalating scene transformations, but faster and more outlandish compared to the first one. It also looks like this outlandishness came at the cost of more digital enhancements. While the ad still adheres to the “all in one take” philosophy, I spot several tell-tale signs of post-production manipulation. Here’s my early, (utterly un-researched) analysis of how it’s all put together:

Phase 1

The initial beach vista is revealed to be a flat backdrop, but I don’t think it was actually printed on the panels as they get pulled apart. Instead the panels were painted a flat chromakey-able color with tracking markers and the beach image was placed on them in post.

Why? Because the cloud patterns in the real sky match exactly the ones on the flats at the moment they are pulled apart. That’s a key part of the whole illusion. Now, it’s possible that the real sky in the deep background was instead replaced to match the flats, but this wouldn’t be very practical, whereas chroma-keying the beach vista helps with the additional task of getting rid of any unwanted shadows the actor may cast onto the flats.

Phase 2

Once the panels are pulled apart, the actor appears to walk on a spinning log in the water, then marches across the water surface like Jesus. Hmm… Well, there are simple ways to physically create the illusion of walking on water and maybe even the log-walking, but there is a very obvious clue against this: watch carefully as he walks from the log scene in to the kitchen scene. The surface of the water is “parallaxing” from the change in the angle in a strange way. To me this indicates that a digital patchwork of water was used to mask the real foreground.

This real foreground probably consisted of a pedestal that approximated the shape of the log (and even spun in a safe, controlled way for the actor). This was surrounded by a solid platform which was also painted in a keyable color and was reflective. Such an arrangement would make it possible to replace the whole foreground with “fake” water and a digitally animated log while using the reflections to simulate ones that would appear if the actor was actually over water.

Phase 3

Nothing suspiciously extraordinary happens in the kitchen that could not have been done live on set. However there are some interesting reflections in the window ;)

Phase 4

As he does a SWAN DIVE off the waterfall, I’m sure we all recognize the familiar movements of a person suspended on a flying rig. This would mean that from the very start of the commercial, the actor was sporting 2 cables which extended from his shorts, up behind his torso and were digitally erased throughout the entire shot!

Phase 5

Here in the grand finale everything is probably once again real and physical (apart from the removal of the flying rig cables).  But what’s this?… Did you notice he’s wearing jeans and boots at the end? Here I’m stumped. Well, not so much stumped as I just don’t have enough data to draw a solid conclusion from the YouTube video alone. I see 2 likely possibilities:

• Digital – The jeans and boots are composited into the image in post.
• Physical – The jeans and boots are really there, but not as real clothes. Instead they are sculpted over the bike in the exact pose you see them, as a kind of half-mold, facing the camera. When the actor lands in the hot tub, he moves himself into position, putting his legs and feet exactly into the mold so as to appear that he’s wearing it.

I can only imagine the kind of noise the breakaway hot tub really made as it exploded open to reveal the motorcycle. Incidentally, the handling of the audio in the commercial is also interesting to consider. I doubt the actor was forced to preform the lines every time, shouting over the electric saw, the waterfall and the exploding tub. Instead I think the entire monologue was pre-recorded in the studio and then played back (very loudly) during filming for the actor to lip-sync to, as would be done on a music video. The audio track might have even contained additional audio cues to help the actor and the special effects crew execute actions at precise moments.

As I mentioned, this entire explanation is not based on any inside knowledge from the production. These are really my own deductions from observing the finished commercial. But in time, as the special effects secrets are hopefully revealed by the filmmakers, I’m curious to find out how much of it I got right! :D

The subject – a series of popular viral videos featuring NFL football players performing impressive stunts.

From the first few minutes the 3D feature is already a point of contention with many viewers. Many don’t have glasses on hand and some dislike stereoscopy altogether, which is why I posted both a 3D and a standard 2D version of the video. But interesingly enough, the view count of both videos in neck-in-neck so far…

The 3D version can be viewed here.

2D:

You want me to talk jive? I’ll talks some jive. I’ll talk jive like you’ve never seen! In this column I’ll be writing about things that annoy me, things that annoy me because you’re annoyed by them as well as things that should annoy everybody. Hopefully it will relate to skepticism. And if you don’t like it, well… you know where the light switch is at. Bring it on!

But overall the videos seem to be a success. I am especially proud of the finale – my humble take on the popular Symphony of Science song “A Glorious Dawn“. Upon seeing it, the composer and creator of the original video, John Boswell, seemed to be extremely impressed which made me happy!

But you know, what? That’s ok. It just goes to show that you can’t always be right. What’s important is that you admit it and learn from it. A scientist or a critical thinker is not set in his/her views, but rather adapts their views to reflect the latest available facts. Also, a scientist or a critical thinker doesn’t notice little factual inconsistencies in a webisode when they are distracted by an awesome parody of the movie Contact.

After re-examining the evidence and realizing my error, I issued an addendum. Both the episode and the addendum were later shown at the Amazing Meeting 7 to an audience of a 1,000 people!

The viewer comment response has been fascinating to watch. Many fans of skepticism seem to feel that religion is an off-limits topic. I respectfully disagree…

Techie note: this episode marked the show’s switch to HD and featured some pretty cool traditional-style animation sequences. Always fun.