Screen vs. Reality Tricks

Matthew Weathers is a professor here at Biola who's kind of our YouTube celebrity. He's, I think, did you get to 10 million? On Monday. So he now, his channel on YouTube has just broken 10 million hits. He makes these amazing videos and I'm gonna ask him to share a couple with us this morning as we kind of close here. And then maybe you also at some point then wanna talk about what your session's gonna be about today. All right, so I'm turning it over to Matthew. Welcome, Matthew. I'll show you a little bit of some of the videos I've done for a class. I teach this class on campus and I have fun playing tricks on them sometimes. And I thought it'd be fun to sort of explain my thinking behind what I do for these little trick videos they're just for fun but they come out of my wondering about how the screen and real life interact with each other and so that's kind of the the impetus behind these things and I suppose since I'm talking about since I'm talking about the screen and how it interacts with real life I should start off with the video this sort of introduces the topic here let's see Good afternoon,, it's morning. Sorry about that. I meant to say morning there. Oh, it's morning. Sorry, I didn't know. Well, why don't you just start over. That's okay. it actually it's been sunny recently so you know what this is just not gonna work when you have video it just doesn't work very well so let's get rid of that okay so as you can see the problem with video is that it's not reactive it can't it's a one-way conversation you can't be listening well yeah that's kind of how video this fine. Will you please leave so I can take over? Okay All right, so but obviously video the screen intrudes in our lives sometimes and so Sorry about that. Oh, it's not much. Does somebody have the same ringtone as me? So I'm not sure where that Sorry, all right so that that's just for fun to demonstrate what I'm talking about how the screen can interact with real life and also talk about how what what is the we're seeing increasing time where people spend time in front of the screen both on mobile devices and on TVs and all different places and so kind of that those are the questions I was thinking about when I made some of these joke. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of lead you through or play some clips of these and sort of talk about what they are. This is back in 2009. I used to teach in a classroom where the screen was a little bit lower and there's this big desk right in front. and I'd been teaching there for several semesters, and I would do things like show PowerPoints quite a bit, because I teach this math class that I talked about the history of math and I show you know different interesting videos sometimes and and sometimes I actually put um fill myself doing math problems and and make that available for my students but over the years I sort of thought of the idea like what what would it be like to interact with it more because I was already interacting with the screen so there's the students here's me teaching here's the screen and so I made made this that it sort of played with that idea some. You can see me, but I can't see you very well. Let me see what happens when I step out of the room. I was reminded that I was due on October 31st at a desk. Let me erase this so I can show you. This is the wrong eraser. This is the whiteboard eraser. Well, I don't need this. So obviously I'm hiding behind the screen there. Okay, so let's see what would happen if we started with this equation right here. All right, so that was the first thing I did, and I posted that on YouTube, and a bunch of people saw it and they liked it, and so I thought, oh, I should do this again every semester. Well, I didn't think that. Everybody just sort of started assuming, you should do something this semester since you did for the other class. So that is kind of going from the screen into the real world. And so then I thought, oh, what other things could I do? So here's another, oh, you know what? This is the same one again. A few more seconds of the same one. I found some candies, here, I'll give some to you guys. I found it. I think yeah okay and so then this next one is another semester I did something similar all right so this one I thought oh what about going the opposite direction having instead Instead of the video affecting real life, you know, the eraser coming out of the screen, what if we do the opposite direction kind of? You'll see what I mean. Let's see if I can fix this up over here. Woo! I'm talking to the pilots there. Put the video in the folder. Put that back in there. And there. Now it should work. That's exactly right, I so I'm like, forget it. This is when Windows 7 was brand new. I thought, let's go back to XP. All right, back to XP should work now. Let's get that in there. Let's get this all together. Does anybody want to start with you? I'm just going to get rid of this right here. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay screen into real life. And then, OK, so then I thought, one of the things that you see, I mean, even as I walk up here, you see that the problem with me walking in front of this screen, if they're recording this, is that there's content on the screen, but there's also me here, and then there's the light on my face, and there's a shadow and stuff like that, so I thought I'd play with that idea some right with me you gotta do exactly what I'm the real person here you're just a shadow you have to do exactly what hey walking out of the screen all right, like I was saying, this type of three-dimensional interaction in Flatland surprises the square in a way that... What's going on? Hey, I think he's just making fun of me. I don't know what's going on there. Oh, whoa. Hey, don't throw that away. wait, wait, wait, stop, what are you doing, he's messing up my whole computer here, I want you to stop that right now, he's going to cause all kinds of trouble, wait, no, stop, stop, whoa, I don't know what he did, here, let me reset it, okay, he's going to mess up my computer, I've got to shut down this computer before he does anything, And down, shut down. Hey, hey, whoa, whoa. I've got to get help here. I'm going to press the help key. Oh, I can get my laser pointer. Oops, I'm in the boots. Oh, hey, there we go. Thank you very much. Let your students to have a happy Easter break, great vacation, relax, enjoy yourself, you're dismissed. So, all right, happy, happy birthday. Okay, so that was an April Fool's joke I did maybe a year and a half ago. And that was our president, Dr. Barry Corey, who agreed to do a cameo. I had to camp out upstairs outside of his office and the people who were scheduling him said,, he has about three minutes, because he's leaving from, he has to get, he's leaving right at five, and it was like two, the day before, maybe two days before April Fools, and I wanted to do this, this was the last day of class, happened to be April Fools, but it also happened to be the last day of class right before everybody's leaving for spring break anyway so yeah I posted that and then aol.com of all places ended up featuring it on their front page so I got about two million hits in two days shortly after April Fool's from that video so that was kind of fun I don't remember, okay so then I moved to this classroom and I like the idea of breaking expectations because normally when you're when you're looking at a screen like this you're thinking we're looking what it's communicating is that you're looking at a computer screen and that this is is the browser, and that that's the video, and that all those things should stay within those confines. And so I couldn't really hide behind the screen very well. I mean, obviously, we're in this room right now, right? If I head back here, you can sort of see me still, right? So I tried to do something different and we're talking about I was doing something on complex numbers so that here's a few clips from that from that time to be nervous in there could you just go hide somewhere wait are you talking to me yes you get out of the way somewhere because I don't want to see but it makes it worse I hide to appear like this okay good as I was saying complex numbers have an imaginary part in them. Hey, I see you there. Go away. And over there on the whiteboard, if you take a real number I'm holding a laser pointer. Then you end up with a complex number. So the laser pointer is coming over here. And about complex numbers, is if you take an imaginary number like i... Hey, what's wrong with the connection? That last thing I said was really important. Let me rewind it again so you can see it. So if you take i times i, i squared, you end up with negative 1. So that's true for any of the imaginary numbers, because complex numbers are made up... Hey, what is this thing? I don't know what this is, but I don't know why this keeps happening. I'm just going to get rid of this. And so it won't happen again. Let me move this over all the way to the, there we go. Now it won't, you know what? Wait a second here. Did you start me an Internet Explorer? What were you thinking? You know what, I've got to start a better browser here. Let's see here, okay, much better, hey, hey, excuse me, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to be a distraction, sorry about that, actually, you know what, let me just exit out of this, and then we it. All right, that's a good idea. Oh, and then I posted this on April Fools, too, and I ended the video with this. I said, oh, if you wanna see how YouTube, so the idea is the YouTube video is interacting with outside of the confines of the browser and so I said if you want to see Interacting with real life right now try this hold down ctrl type W. Does anybody know what happens if you do that? Yeah, it closes the browser, right? So there's a YouTube video telling you to do something and then it did something and then I got Apparently hundreds of people did that from the comments they're like I got me to you know so I was I was a secretly gratified quite not secretly I was quite gratified that they closed their browsers but then of course they couldn't click and share it so I don't know maybe it's a unless they go back anyway, so the last one I'll show you is something I did last Thanksgiving, and I'm not going to show you the actual video, I'm going to show you, it showed up on a media outlet, and so they, they cut, they did some clips, most of these are about three or four minutes long, I didn't want to play the whole one for you right here, but you can go look on my YouTube channel if you want to see the, all of them, and there's actually a couple I skipped because some of these are about three or four minutes long I didn't want to play the whole one for you right here but you can go look on my youtube channel if you want to see that all of them and there's actually a couple I skip because some of them are not as good my favorite one I think is the shadow one I don't know why it's just I like those ideas work where I'm grabbing something and moving it so anyway in this one I wonder what it would be like to toss something into the screen and also to grab things out of the screen. And so I did something for Thanksgiving, but, and then this is my most proud moment. Not only did it show up on YouTube, but it showed up on a Japanese TV show, which is awesome. This is kind of, this is my goal in life to make make it on a Japanese, it's all in Japanese. Oh, so listen for a couple words. Let's see, sensei, they call me sensei, which is awesome. That just means teacher. And they say California and screen, so you can listen for those Japanese words. And it even moves the screen! It even picked up the things outside the screen! It's a very unique lesson! I want to take this lesson! You already know, right? It's a video that was recorded in advance. Let's do it again. they interviewed me over skype also a half an hour interview and then they kept just like three words you can raise the standards of the classroom you can provide a better educational experience Thanks for watching! Skype also a half an hour interview and then they kept just like three words and raise the standards of the classroom you can provide a better educational experience for the students by showing videos rather than just simply using the blackboard share what you're going to do in your session today sure so uh i'm going to talk about living in a visually oriented culture and i'm going to try and convince you that we do live in a visually oriented culture which nobody needs convincing of and also the cultural implications of that and i'm hoping to inspire you to go get involved and go do something go do something visual it's not that hard I'm gonna spend about half the time talking about the culture and ideas and then about half half the time giving you some some ideas of the tools that are out there yes you had a question no I did use Camtasia for what you just saw at the very beginning. The other things take quite a bit of work, like the shadow thing. You have to do rotoscoping and you have to do some different masking and where I reach outside, that kind of stuff. I'll be referencing the tools. Half an isn't isn much time, but the other thing is that it's beyond my ability a little bit. Fortunately, we have a whole building full of film students here at Biola, and so a couple film students have helped me with that. And actually, at the very end of our session, if there's maybe 10 minutes, if some of you want to come along, we're gonna go over on a field trip and go take a look at the Biola's production center for about 10 minutes at the end and I know there's gonna be this question so I'll ask you now what exactly where exactly is that YouTube channel youtube.com slash slash MD weathers I've encouraged guys are going to want to go there I'd encourage you to in fact well let's thank Matthew for sharing a little bit about that Biola University offers a variety of biblically centered degree programs ranging from business to ministry to the arts and sciences visit biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life