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Born May 8, 1920, Saul Bass was a graphic designer so influential he changed the way we thought about an entire medium: film, specifically film titles and movie posters. The Oscar-winning, Alfred Hitchcock collaborator gets his due today in a nifty Google Doodle video which combines references for nearly a dozen title sequences created by Bass, who also worked with Martin Scorcese.

Comic Riffs has more details on Doodle itself and a Bass bio.

Remember the days when all the classic denim reissues went to Japan? Infuriating, right? Levi's Vintage Clothing has been around since 1999, but has really stepped it up in recent years. The elite Levi's sub-brand produces amazing clothing drawn from the iconic American brand's historic archives. Mr. Porter posted this great video examining the design process behind Levi's Vintage Clothing, which features an attention to detail and research that extends to label and packaging for the reissued Levi's goods. It's exciting to know the market of Levi's fanatics can support such a worth endeavor.

Subject of eager experimentation and speculation since its debut in January, the Twitter video-sharing service Vine has shown that looping, six-second clips may be poised for more than an obligatory 15 minutes of fame. As users continue to test and tweak the app’s possibilities, the Tribeca Film Festival has provided a platform to showcase creativity within the medium with its inaugural Six Second Film Festival.

According to Genna Terranova, Tribeca’s director of programming, the idea for adding Vine to the festival lineup came out of conversations festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal had with actor Adam Goldberg, widely recognized as one of the most popular Vine users. 

“We’re always looking to do new and exciting things with storytelling, and wanted to look at how these new tools are inspiring filmmakers, especially young filmmakers” she says. “When you’re telling stories in a visual medium, it can results in bigger stories later.”

Viners submitted more than 400 entries in the Genre, Series, Auteur, and Animate categories, 40 of which were submitted to judges, who selected these winners on April 26.

The winner of each category will receive $600 (a hundred bucks for each second). Terranova feels the app’s built-in limitations—users can’t really edit, leading to a quick-cut style of recording – are more of a creative constraint than a challenge, requiring lots of premeditation.

“There’s something really challenging about it,” says Terranova. “So much creativity is about play, and Vine is another form of play right now.”

Animators took to the app quickly, but she sees comedy and other styles becoming an emerging focus.

“In six seconds you can achieve something with the tools of sound and video,” she says. “You can generate feeling, emotion, the wow factor. When people find a tool they’re excited about, their natural energy is expressed in the story they’re telling. Indie filmmaking is very drama heavy. [With Vine,] you don’t get a six second Blue Valentine.”

Entries to the Six Second Films Competition can be viewed on the Tribeca Film Festival website.

For A-Trak & Tommy Trash's new "Tuna Melt" video, director Ryan Staake built a Rube Goldberg contraption that would make Pee Wee Herman jealous. The impressive machine, which spans multiple floors and staircases, cues a flip book animation, a paper airplane flight, and uses roughly one million colored tongue depressors to assemble a tuna melt sandwich.  

As an added bonus, the producers assembled a behind-the-scenes clip to show a fraction of the prep work and trials to make a machine like this one work.   

"Tuna Melt"

Making of "Tuna Melt"

For the latest video from their album WIXIW, Liars used a hacked Kinect camera, and open source software to manipulate video footage into what looks like an evolving and morphing graphic map. The clip is actually a sequel of sorts, and according to director Markus Wambsganss, the video is the next step in the triptych style the band started in the "The Other Side Of Mt. Heart Attack" video.

WIXIW is out now on Mute, and Liars will be touring through the middle of June.

Recently, Nothing Major caught up with Dutch artist Parra (who sells his wares under the Rockwell Clothing brand name) while he was in NYC for his "Tracy Had a Hard Sunday" solo show at Jonathan Levine gallery. In this exclusive video interview with Parra for our Pro.files video series, he tells us about his love of the T-shirt format and why he likes drawing the female form.

Video interview by Eavvon O'Neal, Music is "Benedict's Fence" by Wrong Season 

 

 

Andrew Huang directed the "Brennisteinn" video for Iceland's Sigur Rós which is currently touring the states ahead of new album Kveikur, due this summer. The video conjures both the mythical Hades, an ancient volcano and builds some kind of narrative around the yellow gas/liquid/rope that breaks up the stark and intense black and white images. We're still mulling it over.

Prada’s latest installment in its "Real Fantasies" video series showcases the lux Italian fashion house’s SS13 collection—classic restraint paired with Japanese ambiance—in all of its abstract, sophisticated glory. The whimsical art film, directed by AMO, toys with hand-drawn collages, brushstrokes, and models cut and pasted onto cinematic landscapes. Dapper dudes and willowy women dressed in the collection snap photos of one another and chat on the phone. It’s beautifully bizarre—the perfect juxtaposition of quirk and cool that Prada achieves with every collection.

Directed by UK outfit US, this brilliant, 3-D animated video from the Foals latest album Holy Fire inspires awe and curiousity about image production in the same way that the MTV classic "Take On Me" once did. Multiple viewings suggested.

See more fantastic work by Us at Weareus.co.uk.

The Knife has quite a cult following, so the news of its new video for "A Tooth For An Eye" hitting the net is a big deal in some quarters. It's the single off the forthcoming Shaking the Habitual album, the band's first new full-length in seven (gulp) years. Some might see a reversal of gender roles in the video, but it feels more complex than that. The mixed-up context brings modern dance into a gym class for grown men—which is just odd enough to make it compelling viewing.