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2010-06-27 - Thrilladelphia!

posted Jun 27, 2010 11:08 AM by Jay Chang   [ updated Jun 27, 2010 12:31 PM ]
On Saturday the 26th, we spent a few hours in the city proper.  Liberty Properties, who manages the Comcast Center, held a free outdoor yoga session on the main plaza.  This is the first of several such planned events, and it was really nice to be outside my workplace, doing yoga.  What was really nice was that I was one of only two guys to do this (and there were about 15-20 lovely ladies participating).  Points for me!


The instructor has a studio near Broad and Walnut, and she was very good.  All in all, it was a great way to spend an hour, and we look forward to doing this again when it's offered.  Also, there is free yoga every Wednesday night in Rittenhouse Square, taught by a variety of teachers using a variety of styles, so if you want a good intro to the various flavors of yoga, check it out!

But the main reason we were downtown was to check out Thrilladelphia 2010, a charity event and tribute to Michael Jackson.  Basically a bunch of folks dress up as zombies and stage the routine from Michael Jackson's Thriller video.  I captured the event using my iPhone 4G and put together a video using the iPhone's iMovie app.  Here are some stills from the festivities:

  (the digital zoom isn't too shabby!)
  (practicing...)
  (prepping for the main event)

The event was a bit disorganized, but overall the participants did an amazing job.  Much better than my videography - apparently, I suffer from palsy and I foresee a rich aftermarket in iPhone image stabilization software and hardware.  The video has a bit where some of the dancers are practicing, plus a few stills from the event, and then two takes on the song itself.  The first attempt used the actual song, which was not what the dancers wanted.  It did, however, give the guy in the red jacket a chance to showcase his mad MJ impression skilz.  The second attempt used just the music from the group number portion of the video and the rest of the gang was able to join in the fun.  Here's the embed of my final edited version:

For those of you who care, the video was edited completely on the iPhone itself using iMovie.  It was exported at 720P and uploaded to Vimeo.  Overall the export was roughly 372MB for 4:45 of video.  Overall I'd give the iPhone's iMovie app a three out of five stars.  It is VERY simplistic in its editing capabilities, and I find it incredibly annoying that the video clip titling feature doesn't fade away after a few seconds (or after some user-defined timeframe).  It consumes a lot of screen real estate and is completely unnecessary.  I also discovered that my current computer is completely incapable of running HD video at anything approaching normal speed.  Sigh.  Yet more money down the tubes.  Maybe I buy a 27" iMac and complete my conversion to the Dark Side.  Funny how now it's Apple that's the Evil Empire and Microsoft is reduced to being the equivalent of the Hutts.  As an aside, the iPhone itself gets incredibly hot in the sun.  It was probably around 92 degrees outside and I was filming in bright sunlight.  The metal band around the phone got pretty toasty and I was really worried about the phone melting.  Add to that the processor overhead associated with doing movie capture and you've got a nice red hot rivet in your sweaty hands.  I am not sure if Apple realized just how hot these units would get, or under what conditions they tested it.  It really seems that their legendary quality control is going downhill fast as they try to crank out the hits year after year.