Awesome Sparks

This nifty little skateboard accessory attaches to the underside of your skate deck and produces sparks when you pop a wheelie or scrape its tail along the ground. Install multiple plates for extra sparks. Be sure to check out the demo video with skateboarder Jerry Gurney sparking things up in Yuba City.

We’ve seen footage of a cigarette lighter sparking up in slow-motion, but this video from RentHighSpeed gets us much closer to the action. The clip also serves as a side-by-side demonstration of the frame rates of four Phantom high-speed cameras shot at the same resolution, with a range from 3,200 fps to 28,000 fps.

Builder Laura Kampf designed and created this dangerous but awesome looking machine which generates a huge stream of sparks for creating epic long-exposure photos. When she got stumped about the ignition system, she turned to her pal Adam Savage to help come up with a creative solution.

If you haven’t seen Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers yet, what are you waiting for? During production of this most excellent documentary, Wright convinced “Weird Al” to perform an accordion cover of Sparks’ track This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us from their 1974 classic album Kimono My House.

Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, and Simon Helberg star in this musical film about a stand-up comedian and his love for a famous opera singer. Penned by Ron and Russell Mael, AKA Sparks and directed by Leos Carax, it looks like one wild ride. It’s opening Cannes 2021, in theaters 8.6.2021, and on Amazon Prime on 8.20.2021.

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) directed this documentary about musicians Ron and Russel Mael, aka Sparks. The enigmatic and criminally underappreciated duo has been defying conventions since the 1970s and continues to make compelling music today. It’s tentatively scheduled for release 10.2021.

Here’s a hydraulic press video that’s not from the Hydraulic Press Channel. The clip, recorded in an unnamed metal shop shows how oxidization in the outer layer of steel results in a spectacular show of sparks as small amounts of the metal are shed under compression.

Danger near, danger here! Animator Cyriak is known for his outlandish and trippy visual collages, and they serve as the perfect visual complement to this offbeat track about the end of the world by the enigmatic art rock band Sparks. From the album A Steady Drip Drip Drip.