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The Decelerators

Byrichard
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CuriosityStream – a place to find interesting documentaries

Byrichard

Yesterday I started exploring CuriosityStream, a video streaming website that makes finding and watching documentaries easy. You can have a trial run of seven days but after watching three documentaries since yesterday evening I am convinced that it is a place where I want to watch more content. 


I like documentaries that are well produced and enhance my understanding of topics. The documentaries I have watched are Dawn of the Oceans and the first episode of Quantum Physics yesterday. Today I watched Ships that Changed the World. 


For documentaries to be worthwhile they must inform and educate their audiences without sensationalism and breathless commentary. They must also provide information that is interesting and relevant. I also believe that to a certain degree they need to be neutral. With Netflix I feel that their documentaries are out to push an agenda, are not that well produced and slide towards low production values and partisanship. 


When documentaries are well produced they are like books. They enhance your understanding of a subject and by the end of the film or episode you come away having learned something.  



The categories so far are Science, History, Technology, Nature, Society, Lifestyle and 360 videos. In the 360 videos I noticed that there is the ZDF documentary about volcanoes. This was one of the most impressive and effective uses of 360 video I have seen. 


You can browse through these categories and find films on specific topics and watch them then and there or you can browse through and add these documentaries to a watch list. This is useful when watching series. 


A sample watchlist. 


When you find documentaries that are especially interesting you can share them straight from curiositystream to Facebook and Twitter. 



Curiositystream is quick to respond to tweets. If you have comments or feedback there is a high probability that they will be seen. 


https://twitter.com/CuriosityStream/status/1055459403002867712

World Television

World Television

Byrichard

Now that I know that I can treat Netflix as an international film festival I do. Last night I watched the first episode of Crash Landing on You. A South Korean film about a woman CEO who goes for a parapente flight, gets caught in a storm, and dropped in North Korea. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXMjTXL2Vks


The premise of this television show is interesting because it’s based on a true incident with a South Korean celebrity, but also because this is something we think about much less, especially in Europe, since most borders ceased to be watched. 


In my own lifetime borders between France, Switzerland and other countries have been closed down for the most part. We can walk between countries without ever showing our passports. I often drive from Switzerland to Spain without showing a passport. It’s nice. Europe is a village. 


That’s where Crash Landing on You is so interesting. It shows us a completely different culture, one where borders still exist. If you’re in the US or other countries, where borders still hold importance then the cultural interest is diminished. 


I watch the content in Korean, with English subtitles that are sometimes displayed too briefly in some cases. They need to rethink the reading time of subtitles. 


It’s great that Netflix actively encourages people to search for content by original language, but also that if we choose to watch Korean, French, or other language content, that it shows associated content. It’s a way of making Netflix more international, more multicultural, and more inclusive. 


Until I found this feature I felt that Netflix was to US centric and that the content on offer was of no interest to me, for the most part. 


Now that view has changed, as I have a wealth of new content to watch. 

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K2 With a Drone

Byrichard

K2 with a Drone is a documentary following Petr Jan Juracka, a scientific photographer’s trip to K2 with Klara Kolouchova with two drones. He performed extensive testing before setting off on the trip. He flew the drone in a hyperbaric chamber to see how it would react. He flew it in freezing conditions to check that the batteries would cope and then he flew in other places.

He had already flown his drone in a multitude of countries and Pakistan was the latest challenge. We see the journey to base camp. We see images of the snow and ice, of rivers, of challenging roads and more. The documentary mixes fixed camera footage and drone footage in a pleasant to watch manner.

Thanks to God, to a lot of work of professional kindergarten teachers, great support of my parents and a lot of eye-training I see. And I see perfectly! Since the times my vision went good I enjoy every detail, every color and I admire any type of light. – Petr Jan Jura?ka

For some of the cold weather testing:

As I watched this documentary one question I wanted to have answered is how he powers his drone and other devices. Apparently he has a set of solar panels that he can deploy outside his tent. When acclimating at base camp solar panels would be ideal. There is no need to carry a heavy generator and fuel. You just bring a few weatherproof panels, deploy them on the side of the tent and wait for various batteries to charge. In that shot we see that the weather is overcast.

Overall this is an interesting documentary that I would expect to see at events  such as the Alpine Film Festival in Les Diablerets or the Montagne en Scène events. Combined with more footage of the climb of K2 it could provide for a more complete documentary.

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Sending HTC M8 phones to the Middle of the Stratosphere

Byrichard

A few months ago I saw the video of a mobility scooter going fast across snow. The video was shared as an anim gif with no context. As I explored the diversity of content on Youtube I came across Colin Furze videos. In one project he sent mobile phones to the Middle of the Stratosphere at about thirty three thousand meters.

He usually produces at least two videos. The first video usually shows him building his latest project and the second video shows him using the finished project. To celebrate the million subscriber marks he creates fireworks contraptions. He has created a hover bike, a centripetal chicken cooker, an underground bunker, magnetic shoes, a jet powered barbecue and has tried to set fireworks off in the stratosphere.

When you look at individual videos you see that they can get up to nineteen million views. He has just over three million subscribers at the time of writing this blog post. I suspect that he has more video views than subscribers because of the subject matter. As the projects vary from jet propulsion to mobility scooters to cooking content is compelling part of the time. Youtube also recommends his content so we might watch it through recommendations rather than direct searches for specific terms or keywords.

In the video where he tried to make magnetic shoes to walk across a ceiling we see him try and fail several times before he finally manages to achieve his goal. Once his goal is achieved the video ends and you can “wait” for next week’s video to appear online. When you learn about youtube personalities weeks, months or years in to their “career” the more content you can watch in a single sitting.

What unique or eccentric topics or projects could you document?