documentaries-i-like

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The Late Movies: Los Angeles Plays Itself

Los Angeles Plays Itself is an unusual documentary by film professor Thom Andersen, about how Los Angeles is portrayed in movies. As the most-photographed city in the world, LA is excessively present in many movies, and lots of TV. Sometimes referred to as a "video essay," Los Angeles Plays Itself is assembled entirely from existing footage from other films and TV shows depicting Los Angeles; it was never released commercially due to licensing issues with the clips -- it's only available through... READ ON

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The Late Movies: The Sagan Series

Reid Gower has been assembling videos featuring Carl Sagan, primarily using Sagan's narration from Pale Blue Dot and assorted documentary footage. When I saw Gower's first video it wasn't part of a series -- but now he has made a bunch of them, and there's even a Facebook page for the series. While there are other Sagan tributes on YouTube (using similar source material), this is my favorite. Enjoy. Part 1 - NASA: The Frontier Is Everywhere "The open road still softly calls." Part 2 -... READ ON

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People in Order

People in Order is a series of four short films in which regular people are portrayed in some sort of order; for example, in the Age film, people from ages 1 to 100 are shown hitting a snare drum. The films were made when filmmakers Lenka Clayton and James Price drove around Britain in a van in 2006, filming 471 people along the way, later assembling their footage for broadcast. From the IMDB page for the films: A series of 4 short films that arrange 471 people from around Britain according to 4... READ ON

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A Mathemusician Explains How Sound Works

Self-proclaimed "recreational mathemusician" Vi Hart has posted an excellent short film explaining the science and mathematics of sound, frequency, and pitch. Basically Hart shows us how the chromatic scale was originally measured, how musical instruments work, and how we hear sound. It's playful and smart -- exactly what you need to watch right now if you have even the vaguest geeky interest in music, math, or sound. Sample lines (shown as speech bubbles on a map, when describing how some cultures... READ ON

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The Man Who Pressed His Luck...and Won

In 1984, ice cream truck driver Michael Larson set a record by winning $110,237 (a combined total of cash and non-cash prizes) in one appearance on the game show Press Your Luck -- and he did it by gaming the system. He had noticed that the Luck board did not rely on luck at all, but was actually running in five predictable patterns -- which he memorized over the course of six weeks, with the help of a VCR. By the time the show's taping was completed, everyone from the host to the contestants were... READ ON

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Off Book: Visual Culture Online

Off Book is a new online series from PBS Arts. In their fourth episode, shown below, various web people explain online visual culture -- web videos, animated GIFs, and (ugh) "memes." It's worth a look, at the very least for the origin story of Nyan Cat. For previous episodes check out: Light Painting, Typography, and some video that YouTube is reprocessing right now (perhaps it'll finish by the time you click on it). Stick around until after the credits. The smartest comments in this thing are just... READ ON

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How Pencils are Made

Here's another gem from How It's Made -- an exploration of a German pencil factory, using Californian cedar. I've always found it curious how we still refer to pencil "lead" although it's primarily graphite these days; the video explains that for these pencils, the "lead" is graphite and clay. It's impressive to see how the process is heavily automated, except for spot-testing by workers who hand-sharpen pencils and test them. I wonder what that job is like? Best part: around 4:30, when the pencils... READ ON

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Making "The Shining"

Now here's something special: a 35-minute documentary by Vivian Kubrick (who was then 17 years old) about the making of The Shining. Vivian was Stanley's daughter, and this documentary shows tons of behind-the-scenes material, as she follows actors through sets, performs interviews, and generally gives us a look at the creative process. Early on, we see Jack Nicholson psyching himself up before an emotional scene -- then the scene itself. It's downright scary how Nicholson works himself up. It's also... READ ON

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This Tetris Documentary Will Rock You

So I'll go ahead and assume you're aware of King of Kong, the videogame documentary that chronicles an epic struggle to dominate the game of Donkey Kong. Kong was a surprising movie mainly because it was supremely interesting to non-nerds, even though its subject was nominally a video game -- and who wants to watch a movie about a video game, much less a super-old video game? Well, the short answer is of course that the film was about people who play video games, and these days, that category extends to... READ ON

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The Late Movies: Inventors

Last week I pointed to a profile of Steven Sasson, Inventor of the Digital Camera. But his short interview is just the latest in a string of inventor profiles by David Friedman. I've collected some more of Friedman's videos below -- for the most part these are impressively humble people who have created very useful things. And the videos are bite-sized, so you can take a peek without committing to more than a few minutes. Enjoy! Jerry Ford: Safe-T-Chair "I invented an automatic brake system... READ ON