Everything But The News - A Report From Youtube's Vidcon

This was pretty amusing. PBS representative Jim Lehrer took a long, hard look at the world of Youtube entertainment through some seriously virgin eyes at the Vidcon expo, mainly centered around vloggers and personalities from Google's highly produced channels. Upon discovering a world of self absorbed folks with views in the tens of millions, Lehrer must ultimately make a tough choice: Become part of the jump cut, fast talking, low attention span grabbing crowd. For a PBS produced video, there's a lot of meta humor and self deprecation which makes it a pretty charming, old meets new piece.

PBS Offbook - Frame By Frame (The Art Of Stop Motion)

In the latest bite sized Offbook expose, they focus on the art of stop motion in it's many different incarnations, starting off from the origin of stop motion in the US and Europe (The histories vary) to its relevance in this day and age as a reemerging art form. The most interesting tidbit came in the form of stop motion animators fearing for their craft following the decision to embrace CGI with the ground breaking Jurassic Park, which was originally slated to be a stop motion movie (Early tests actually exist online).

While I think we can all attest to the fact that stop motion kind of faltered in cinema for quite a period with the advent of CGI, it's returned to prevalence thanks to how much it visually stands out in the overly saturated animated feature industry these days (Paranorman comes to mind). We really should thank studios like Aardman, which steadfastly stood by the medium that made them successful through the dark ages of stop motion. Having been running the blog for a few years now it really does seem like there's been a resurgence in indie animators and studios using the medium, as well as services like Vine encouraging users to experiment.

PBS Offbook - The Rise Of E-Sports

Offbook's latest minidoc dives right into the world of competitive gaming and the steady increase in professional gaming as the game industry and it's offerings have matured. Born in the heyday of arcades and LAN parties, the practice has evolved into an online space populated by millions of viewers and thousands of competitive players.

Whether you're into Starcraft 2, Counterstrike, League of Legends or none of the above, Offbook delivers a fascinating bite sized look at the ever growing phenomenon. How soon till we're watching e-sports on prime time TV? Sooner than you think.

We ❤ Retro Media: Vinyl, VHS, Tapes & Film

PBS Offbook's latest series goes into the resurgence of more physical forms of media following the digital format revolution. Despite the convenience of MP3's, instant streaming video and the clean look of modern cameras, the mini documentary goes into people who have gone back and embraced the older school formats. From vinyl collecting to gushing about the grainy, glitchy look of VHS, Offbook offers a small taste of all the interesting niche groups out there.

Why Save PBS?

As you may know, on February 19th the House of Representatives passed a resolution that would cut funds for public broadcasting. By doing so we could potentially lose one of the few television stations that has continued to stand by its beliefs only to save the government next to nothing in the long run.

Creative director for PBS, Chris Bishop, created this info-graph to show us what we would potentially lose if this were to go through (in my opinion far more than the government would actually save). I find it incredibly sickening that we may be losing one of the only community and educational oriented channels out there. If you want to help protect PBS (which I hope you do), head over here and sign up or write a letter to congress. Let them know how you feel instead of complaining about it on the internet.

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