DesignWise Films and Video Production

They call TestTube, an “ideas incubator.” This is where YouTube engineers and developers test out the latest advancements in beta format and ask you to test drive them. Here you can find the new online video editing application YouTube just released.

The new YouTube video editor is still in development, so the features are somewhat limited… for now. Here’s Dave Kaminski explaining how to use it to edit and mashup your videos adding in royalty-free sound files that YouTube provides:

There is an applications called CaptionTube that will let you add captions and subtitles to your YouTube videos. Video Annotations will let you  add interactive commentary to your videos, link to other videos add notes and more.  These are only a few of several interesting development projects you can find in TestTube.

“Alejandro is on the radio. Fuck it sounds so good, we did it little monsters,” – tweets Lady Gaga.

The dissolution of boundaries between music, art, theatre, dance and film, underway since the launch of MTV: Music Television in 1981, occasionally spawns elegant short form works of cinematic fine art. I must admit that last month, I scoffed at Time magazine’s inclusion of Ladt Gaga in their recent list of the 100 most influential people of the year… but I now withdraw that opinion. Alejandro, her latest video, fashioned with director and photographer Steven Klein, is crafted in the genre of an early Fritz Lang cinema noir masterpiece and immediately brings to mind scenes from Metropolis.

The latest Gaga video also reminds me of a rule I personally attribute to Ingmar Bergman – that each and every frame of a film should be so well composed that it could be printed as a still photograph and exhibited in a gallery. Allejandro exhibits that kind of attention to detail in Klein’s careful framing, form and placement of everything and everyone. It may be surprising to realize that Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, also a Klein creation, was released 25 years ago. The comparisons are obvious…

As an ex-Catholic, I have always enjoyed the irreligious subtext in Klein’s work with Madonna and now with Lady Gaga. Alejandro is rich, dark and elegantly erotic. I am glad to be converted at last to just another Gaga worshiper, one of her little monsters.