Comments on: Balancing Point

Balancing Point

icosahedral — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:46:26 -0800

Balancing Point - A neat little piece playing with reverse motion shots. [Quicktime - via fazed]

By: knave

knave — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 16:55:22 -0800

Great stuff! Thanks!

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:01:54 -0800

That was neat!

By: Vulpyne

Vulpyne — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:02:46 -0800

Wow, nice. Good post.

By: billysumday

billysumday — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:08:23 -0800

Ok, first of all, this is why I love the internet. How else would strangers ever watch stuff like that? Second of all, maybe I'm the only one, and maybe it makes me an ass, but I thought this video was pretty hilarious. Some of the shots at the beginning were great but then he started doing all those stoner/karate/interpretive dance moves. It was as if the stoner karate guy in college watched the Andy Goldsworthy documentary and thought, "hey, I could do that!" but decided to make it better by doing all reverse motion shots. Anyway, I ain't hating, I'm just saying. Thanks for posting.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:10:56 -0800

This is pretty cool, what I could watch at work. I will check it out again tonight. Thanks!

By: Toecutter

Toecutter — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 17:13:28 -0800

Some neat stuff here. Plus I like that whole rock balancing thing.

By: ijoshua

ijoshua — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:06:03 -0800

goddamn hippies

By: dilettanti

dilettanti — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:10:29 -0800

[This is good] [This is a direct link] [Anyone know the song?]

By: jonson

jonson — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:12:18 -0800

First off, this was cool, thanks. But am I the only Half-Life 2 player here? That reverse footage of stuff flying towards the camera looked SO MUCH like the work of the gravity gun. Also, I'm a huge nerd.

By: Freen

Freen — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:14:15 -0800

Me Likums.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:25:16 -0800

Fantastic. I love this kind of goddamn hippy. "but then he started doing all those stoner/karate/interpretive dance moves" Yeah, but keep in mind he's doing that shit backwards, and it still looks fluid. That's pretty damn zen. You can't move smoothly like that and not know what you're doing, forwards or backwards.

By: hockeyman

hockeyman — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:33:31 -0800

My six year old daughter wanted to know if he had "power", like the earth benders in Avatar.

By: hockeyman

hockeyman — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:37:30 -0800

Avatar

By: wanderingmind

wanderingmind — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:48:41 -0800

This was a lot of fun to watch - I agree, watching him make his own backwards motions seem so fluid was a lot of fun to watch, especially the 'catching little rocks on his feet' scene.

By: vernondalhart

vernondalhart — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 18:51:22 -0800

Wow. That was incredibly artfully done. I have no idea how on earth he made his reverse motions look so fluid, but DAMN. David Lynch could certainly take a page from this book...

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 19:13:08 -0800

That was great. Good post.

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:30:11 -0800

Man, it would be awesome if you could somehow watch this backwards! (Seriously, thanks for the post.)

By: Aknaton

Aknaton — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:33:29 -0800

O brave new world, that has such technology in't, for cheap! Don't think I'm knocking this lovely thing. (I particularly like the silhoutted shot with the moon in the foggy background, about 3/4 of the way through.) It just makes me reflect on how much more egalitarian film/video is today, as an art form, than 50 years ago. What did this cost? Several hours' time, a few rocks, and equipment that in this day and age many of us have lying around but wouldn't have thought to use in this way. Good on them. Those smooth moves say martial arts training to me, but I'm not good enough to guess which one. I'll include the obligatory mention of the scene at the bookseller's.

By: mikeweeney

mikeweeney — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:48:06 -0800

I'm basically in awe of this guy. We all wanted to have superpowers as kids, right? Or maybe we still do. And here he goes and finds one of the cheapest, most believable ways of doing it. He can watch that video and be like, "yeah, that's me summoning those rocks. sweet" cool cool cool

By: nelleish

nelleish — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:56:23 -0800

That was immensely cool, very believable too. As others have said, the fluidity of the "backwards" movements is what really seals the deal. I wacthed it a couple of times over, and you can see how it's being done if you look closely, but that doesn't mean I could look as confident sauntering backwards. The whole ninja-wizard aspect really fit, although I'll admit it cracked me up that this was all done in street clothes, not even a hint of costuming. Still, one of the neatest things I've ever seen! hockeyman - she's not the only one! That is a great show.

By: ori

ori — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:46:52 -0800

Chant over sped-up footage of clouds billowing past mountain ranges! Quick, someone call Philip Glass!

By: brain_drain

brain_drain — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 00:04:57 -0800

The water scenes are particularly cool.

By: spacediver

spacediver — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 01:00:13 -0800

Be sure not to miss the others. and enjoy these crazy cliffjumps

By: spacediver

spacediver — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 01:04:05 -0800

anyone else notice the donnie darko inspirations? :)

By: peacay

peacay — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 01:54:19 -0800

Excellent! Thanks icosahedral!! I was reminded of Top Secret actually. I wonder if they had to practice sauntering backwards much? It certainly looked pretty natural. Besto'theweb.

By: uncanny hengeman

uncanny hengeman — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 03:34:16 -0800

Meh.

By: bullitt 5

bullitt 5 — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:33:04 -0800

Very nice.

By: Jikido

Jikido — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:49:46 -0800

very cool!

By: themadjuggler

themadjuggler — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:02:09 -0800

I was actually afraid to click the link thinking it was the backward filmed walking of the ghoul in The Ring! Imagine my delight when it turned out to be fun hippie film buffs!

By: carmen

carmen — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 07:17:44 -0800

very awesome.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:05:51 -0800

I liked the film, but a lot of people are going on and on about the "smooth moves". Really, the only thing he did backwards was the running or walking, which after a little practice isn't that hard to do (and notice he's looking back in most of his shots). Everything else is smooth because he's not doing it backwards -- he's doing it forwards, and our brains turn it into something else. If you watch the movie backwards (easy to do; on a Mac you go to the end of the movie, then press command-left-arrow), you'll see that most of the movements are pretty straightforward and easy. It does take a lot of the magic out of it, though.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:13:11 -0800

Oh, and for those of you who say that David Lynch should take lessons from this guy: Lynch wanted it to look strange, non-fluid, and choppy. That's why he filmed it the way he did. Notice the guy rarely really walks during the film, He sort of hops. It's much easier to hop backwards than walk backwards. Incidentally, slightly different techniques were used in Stir of Echoes to make the ghost move strangely: she moved at 1/4 of the normal speed, but was shot at high speed, so it came out at a normal speed but with only a quarter of the motions kept. The girl playing the ghost was actually a trained dancer. If you want to talk about smooth and controlled motions, she had 'em.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:13:14 -0800

By: fungible

fungible — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 08:19:24 -0800

Inspired at all by Andy Goldsworthy?

By: rmannion

rmannion — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 13:40:01 -0800

If you save and open the video in the Quicktime player, you can watch the video backwards. You'd be surprised at how little effort the, uh, rock-toppler had to put into making sure the reverse video looked interesting.

By: numlok

numlok — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 19:07:14 -0800

Numlok takes the fun out of everything: BalancingPointREVERSED.mov

By: ook

ook — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 08:24:52 -0800

Fine, but he did have to put a tremendous amount of effort into hauling rocks around and stacking them into insteresting sculptural shapes, over at least a six-month period. Jeez. Some of you people, it's like even if curvaceous elves jumped out of your web browsers and showered you in cash gifts and blow jobs, you'd still be spending all your time criticizing their technique and complaining about the currency exchange rate.

By: numlok

numlok — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 08:55:58 -0800

Thanks for the insight, now how about that blowjob?

By: numlok

numlok — Sat, 30 Jul 2005 11:54:54 -0800

BTW, and just to clarify... I really dig "Balancing Point". That said, I don't see any reason why it should be beyond criticism or investigation (esp. regarding technique). If I wasn't impressed by the piece, I wouldn't have wasted time trying to figure out the "magic" behind it. I like disassembling stuff to see how it works. If you don't, please don't click on my "spoiler" link.