I Second That E-Motion

Fifth Week**:

Cinemagram. Now, I enjoy a good app as much as the next guy, but I’ll admit I take to them a little slower than most because I don’t have an iPhone.

My Droid 3 has a pull-out keyboard, which is awesome, but it gets cool apps the same way middle children get ‘new’ clothes (i.e. months or years after they’ve stopped being new, and only as hand-me-downs from big brother).

Luckily, I also have an iPad 2 (a 30th birthday present to myself), so I can use any iPhone app I want, as long as I don’t mind all that extra black space around the edges.

And isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?

And so it was that I took my love of Instagram to the next level — with Cinemagram.

Quickly, for those less tech-savvy readers:

Instagram: A photo-taking-and-editing app (now available for the Droid as well) that lets you style photos at will. (All my photos in previous posts were taken with Instagram; see Kristen Smith’s awesome around-town columns for more examples.)

Cinemagram: A photo-taking-and-animating app. You actually shoot a video, then select a portion of the field of vision to animate. The rest of the area stays frozen. So it looks like a photo where only a specific area is animated. Time for an example:

TITLE: Restless Ron Syndrome

Here we see WCHL’s Assistant News Director, Alletta Cooper, and Morning News Host, Ron Stutts, paying attention at a company meeting***. I just animated Ron’s side of the screen in this Cinemagram, so only Alletta looks dutifully attentive. Sorry, Ron. Then Cinemagram auto-looped the forward-reverse in an animated GIF.

The app also makes it very easy to post your cines (pronounced “sin-ease” ****) to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, which is cool if you’re a social (media) butterfly like I am.

Actually, one big reason Cinemagram has felt like an adventure to me this week has been that I’ve been using it on my iPad, not on my phone. When I decide to shoot a video with my phone, it’s no big deal. But when I take a video with my iPad, it’s a whole other story.

In cinematography, as in all areas of life, size does matter. It’s a lot more difficult to get your friends to help with your movies when you look like you’re a farsighted Kindle owner. (I’ve also been told I should wince less.) Here are a couple more of my cines:

TITLE: Scooch, Vinny

TITLE: Short Light.

(Note to Penny Rich: I wasn’t driving.)

In any case, I had fun. Is this app going to change my life? Probably not. But, just like most apps I get a hold of these days, it changes how I live my life for a month or two, maybe gives me a chance to flex a different mental muscle, and, sometimes, that’s enough.

I’ve spent the past week looking around for Theater of the Ordinary moments, finding 3-second stories in meetings and rear-view mirrors. Also, I was dogsitting for my sister this week, and when she got dogsick*****, I was able to send her something much better than a picture:

TITLE: Biting The Hand That Squeaks At You

** My definition of “week” comes from the Gregarian Calendar (which is similar to the Gregorian Calendar, except it’s based on fitting stuff into my busy social life).
*** I was also paying attention. I was just simultaneously shooting this video for my column. Multi-tasking, people, multi-tasking.
**** …although perhaps I shouldn’t have put it like that.
***** As in homesick for her dog, not as in sick as a dog. And not, homophonically, as in this.

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