Awesome Videos

Wind down that long day of yours by hitting the refresh button in your head and listening to this bluesy gospel tune from Ashville-based artists Chris Rodrigues and Abby the Spoon Lady, jamming right on her porch. (Thanks Rob!)

We at TA are no stranger to Duane Keiser, and he is no stranger to making wonderfully entertaining animations of his paintings. His most recent playful piece involves the tweaking of a still life – with a white vase, of course.

There is something about this time of year and the light in Italy. It is like no other, and Casper Rolsted captures it and much, much more in this beautifully edited time-lapse of the five small villages on the rugged Italian Riviera known as the Cinque Terre.

It’s the perfect time of year to take a roll down memory lane and remember why you love shredding so much with this cinematic video from Diamondback Bicycles. It absolutely reminds us why bikes are awesome. (Thanks Scotty!)

CirrusPilot has an awfully impressive mancave – a hangar which which packs fancy cars, a massive video screen, a jetski, and a single-engine airplane. He also employs a menagerie of six robot vacuums to keep the place tidy, and shared this video of them doing their chores.

Like many of us, Puddles Pity Party has the occasional bad day. The sad clown with the golden voice works out his stress with a little pie, some cupcakes, and a impassioned cover smoosh-up of Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure, and Let It Go from Disney’s Frozen.

British Olympic Skier Graham Bell had the brass balls to skitch behind a speeding Jaguar XF Sportbrake on the ice in Arjeplog, Sweden, setting a new record for fastest towed speed on skis – an average of 189 km/h or about 117 mph.

Actor, comedian, writer, and musician Steve Martin is joined by the talented members of the Steep Canyon Rangers for a captivating four-song set of country and bluegrass melodies in NPR’s amazing and personal concert venue. The tracks are all from The Long Awaited Album.

Take a minute out of your day to enjoy this fun colored chalk-looking animation from the talented, Edinburgh-based Emilio Yebra. It’s a compelling tale of what happens when an arrow hits the wrong target.

“As they say money makes the world go ’round… Yet they also say the best things in life are free.” Comedian Drew Tarvin’s spoken word performance attempts to sum up the meaning of life using 100 phrases from pop culture and other clichéd sayings. Read the full text here.

It’s been a rough week, and the loss of one of rock and roll’s greatest makes us even sadder. Let us celebrate the life and talent of Tom Petty through some of his many hit songs, then say farewell with his cover of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, accompanied by Prince.

The whole All Star but meme thing is already getting pretty played out, but we couldn’t resist sharing Gud Nuse’s version of Smash Mouth’s 1999 hit track, played as a somber minor key ballad on piano, along with a soulful saxophone accompaniment.

Paulo Raposo shows us how it doesn’t take a ton of time or money to make an entertaining short film – just a bit of creativity. He made this stop-motion animation in just a couple of days, using paper, pen, tape, and a little work to put it together in After Effects.

Filmmaker KOJER painstakingly rotoscoped characters and objects from Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro and other Studio Ghibli films, then composited the animation over live footage. The scale is off at times, but we still want to live in that world.

Most films that take place in the future portray it as either stark or dystopian. On the other hand, Spike Jonze’s Her painted a picture of a hopeful future that seems more relatable. Kaptain Kristian explores how Jonze and production designer K.K. Barrett pulled it off.

There’s absolutely zero doubt that a giant water balloon will succumb to David Windestal’s rocket-powered knife in an instant, but it’s the beautiful slow-motion footage of the watery carnage that’s the reason to tune in for this short video clip.

CineFix picks its top 10 cinematographers of all time. The next time you praise a movie’s lighting, camera movement, framing, coloring or even mood, know that it’s not just because of the director, set designer or cameramen. It’s the cinematographer at work.

Builder Peter Brown takes a hunk out of a log of worm-eaten walnut wood and gradually lathes and shapes it into a beautiful work of art. The defects in the wood make working with it much harder, but result in a stunning organic look to the finished piece. Needles to say, it won’t hold cereal milk.

Schlieren imaging is a method of visualization which plays with light refraction to capture images of normally invisible fluid patterns like air movement. Here, Veritasium walks us through a variant which uses colored filters to produce some astounding images.

Funny or Die introduces us to Yarrot Benz and Wendy Wilderötter of the fictitious site AppleRumors; two people who spend their lives collecting and sharing the mundane, yet overhyped stuff that Apple may or may not be bringing to its next products.

Musician Luca Stricagnoli turns in an amazing cover version of Gorillaz’ hit track Feel Good, Inc. on his unusual, but amazing triple-neck Serracini guit-bass, somehow playing the track’s entire melody and rhythm section with just his two hands.

Most of the tunnels we’ve driven through are filthy, layered with exhaust from vehicles driving through. But in Switzerland, Colas Suisse keeps the tunnels spotless with this amazing contraption, which uses an array of spinning brushes to scrub off grime as it drives along.

Maker and demolition man Giaco Whatever no longer has a lawn, so he decided to turn his mower’s motor and blade into a massive blender. Along the way, he chops up some ping pong balls and some cans of Coke with spectacular results. The carnage starts at 5:49.