The Infinite Zoetrope - Smarter Every Day 90

Hey, it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day!

So, I'm in a—not a strange—oh, it's a golden play button that can only mean one thing: somebody famous! Quite famous, doesn't say.

Yeah, so this is Mystery Guitar Man. If you've checked out YouTube for any amount of time, you know who he is. He makes really cool videos, and the reason I like your videos is because I think they're smart.

You think so?

I do think they're smart.

Well, thank you! I've always wanted to see one of your smart videos being made, so that's what you're doing now with this?

Yeah.

Yeah, this is a zoetrope.

A what?

It’s a zoetrope. I can try to take some of these letters, and… ah, there we go! You have this cylinder that has a bunch of like animation frames up top. See, right now it’s really blurry.

Uh-huh.

They have all these frames, which is basically like—you know—like this, with this, like this, like this, right? Like stop-motion, right?

That's stop-motion, basically.

Yeah. When you spin it, the slits act as a shutter so then you get to see little birds flying around.

So, why do you need the slits?

You need these slits because otherwise your brain, your eyes are seeing way too many frames. Like, you can’t make sense.

Okay, so basically we're eliminating all the parts that we don't want to see. So, you're putting the image in one specific spot. So, you're indexing it or something like that. So, what does that have to do with a record?

This isn’t a Neil Diamond record, is it?

No, no! It's a very cheap record. Somebody’s demo tape, they will record. I guess basically I just spin it like this, and the speed that it spins—which is as fast as I made it go like this—I have my camera shooting at 23 frames per second.

Yeah, a very expensive camera, right?

It’s pretty expensive.

Yeah, that's a good investment. Imagine it’s spinning very slowly. Like, this is one frame, and then this is the next frame, and then this is the next.

So, basically it’s like aliasing, only it’s constructive!

Yeah, I like that! Constructive aliasing. I think you just invented a new term!

So, I shot at a really weird frame rate—like twenty-three point two frames per second—and I can mess with the pitch too. So, this specific very cheap USB thing, it’s like if I can slow it down and turn it up, then you can hear the song.

That's pretty awesome!

That's pretty sweet.

Yeah, so that's how it works basically.

So, enough about that. How long does it take to do this?

This—this is what took the longest. I had to cut out, I think, thirteen hundred different frames. It’s basically like, you know, just go up and line it up correctly.

Are you serious?

Yeah!

So, what are these, by the way?

These are little frames that would basically paste like this: go to the next one, they said go to the next one, paste. And basically these are in sequence, all the frames of the video.

While going, turn the camera on for a second, then turn the camera off. Do this; shut all the lights off, take all these frames up, throw them on the floor, and then put the new frames on! Turn it on, turn the camera and lights on.

So, this is exactly why I like his videos, is because they’re awesome but they’re brute force.

Yes!

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. So, if the video was three seconds long, let’s say that the video was just from here to here, then we would need 72 frames because I did one frame every second.

Gotcha.

Which equals to four full zoetropes because it’s 18 times 18 times 18 times, and they would just send me—right?

Gotcha.

So, okay, so when you made the video, you actually made it one second at a time, and then you would reload the entire zoetrope?

Right, exactly.

And not that exactly one second; it's a little less than a second because only 18 of them fit here because this is a smaller zoetrope. So, I would make it 18 twenty-fourths of a second, whatever that—Adam—

Yeah.

So, if you want to see Mystery Guitar Man’s video or subscribe to him, like I’ve been subscribed for a long time, I really like—I really like a guitar!

Impossible!

Oh wow!

Yeah! Long time, like two men.

Excellent!

So, go check out his channel! Can I have a link? Can you give me a link to this video?

Fantastic!

Anyway, go check him out, subscribe!

I am, I’m Destin. Get smarter every day. Have a good one!