Comments on: Future Shock, "Late at Night"

Future Shock, "Late at Night"

planetkyoto — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 01:27:38 -0800

Just what you wanted, break dancing Japanese geezers
Still photos, live action and animation melted into a music video (streaming Quicktime) by Neo, a duo made up of Londoners Jake Knight and Ryoko Tanaka. More clips on their site. (via Jeansnow.net)

By: quonsar

quonsar — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 02:19:25 -0800

[this is great!]

By: moonbird

moonbird — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 04:31:09 -0800

[ditto!]

By: KnitWit

KnitWit — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 05:03:14 -0800

Oddly disturbing

By: adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 06:14:28 -0800

Mmm, the suppressed homoerotic vibe of the middle-aged salaryman. This is classic, and the more time you've spent in Tokyo, um, late at night, the better it gets.

By: woil

woil — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 07:11:12 -0800

Heh. That's quite a talented group!

By: dazed_one

dazed_one — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 07:41:08 -0800

Wow. I loved that. More like this please.

By: xmutex

xmutex — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:06:56 -0800

I expected to dismiss that with a brief, callous, but shockingly witty remark with just a touch of condescension but damned if I didn't really really like that. Very cool.

By: Aaorn

Aaorn — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:33:43 -0800

Awesome, awesome stuff. Anyone able to ferret out a direct link to the video? The Flash navigation makes it tricky.

By: xmutex

xmutex — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:34:35 -0800

Aaorn: I was able to extract it from my cache, using Moz. It's about 14mb if that helps. And it's a mpeg. Just start renaming ~14mb files w/ a .MPEG extension and give it a whirl.

By: daHIFI

daHIFI — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:38:13 -0800

I can't wait to get home and show this to my roommates. The part where the one guy is dancing and the other is sitting motionless until the first guy activates him is just pure brilliance.

By: o2b

o2b — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:03:51 -0800

let's not forget this lovely piece of breakdancing (windows media): http://www.henry.martinez.net/videos/1stplace.htm

By: Aaorn

Aaorn — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:04:06 -0800

Sweet xmutex, thanks. (14,246KB, if anyone else is searching.)

By: treebjen

treebjen — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:32:31 -0800

The dancing is awesome -- what I find even more cool, though, is the layering of the backdrops used to simulate depth and perspective. It looks like everything's done with blue-screen, then the backdrops are layered in -- that's why everything seems so mildly distorted during the whole video -- but it's on purpose! I love it. They refer to this on their 'WHO' page as "spatial-temporal visual tricks." Also check out the reflection in the window/mirror when the guy is in the convenience mart. No camera in the reflection, but if you look closely, you'll see that the reflection isn't a reflection at all. The "salaryman 6" short film from the same producers is supposed to be fantastic -- can't find it on the net though. I believe it's a somewhat more involved version of the "vibe - salaryman" (Japanese MTV) short.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 10:51:42 -0800

direct link

By: adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:25:20 -0800

treebjen: Nurri sez "salaryman 6" IS even better, not to be missed.

By: Mach3avelli

Mach3avelli — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 11:39:46 -0800

That's called popping, not break dancing.

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Fri, 16 Jan 2004 14:14:56 -0800

This is great! It's almost comfortingly artificial... if it were any less distorted, I think the creepy-factor would tilt over into the uncanny valley. As it is, though, it's fascinating. And thanks for the direct link, zsazsa.

By: freakystyley

freakystyley — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:08:08 -0800

Here's a direct link to download the video: http://www.eyecandy.plus.com/fshock.mpg. Enjoy!

By: freakystyley

freakystyley — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 12:09:30 -0800

Oops, double post :).

By: Pretty_Generic

Pretty_Generic — Sat, 17 Jan 2004 19:51:51 -0800

Marvellous. But nothing beats Dave Elsewhere (the final dancer, from 50secs onwards).