Staff Blog / Staff Picks: The Best of October 2012

In our recent blog post eulogizing the HD channel and announcing the relaunch of Staff Picks, we promised that we, your trusty Vimeo curation team, would be experimenting with fun, new ways to highlight and package the consistently excellent content you bring to the site. In that spirit, enjoy what we plan on having become a regular feature—plucked from Staff Picks, a Best of the Month watchlist!

Innovative? Perhaps not, but it's such a no-brainer of an idea that it's astonishing we haven't done it until now. The Staff Picks Channel currently features over 150 videos every month, which, frankly, can be a little overwhelming. Why not collect our favorites—the essential, must-watch, instant classics of the previous month into one mind-melting aggregation of awesome?

That's what we've done here, and I think you will agree that the films represented are amazing work. The techno-futuristic sci-fi True Skin was bought for feature film development by Warner Brothers the very week it debuted, and while no official word has come down yet, Hollywood is circling around Dan Blank's amazing sushi chef vs. sea monsters teaser, Monster Roll, as well.

Stepping back from the fantastical to the merely fantastic, Staff Picks alumna Celia Rowlson-Hall and Matty Brown return with some of their strongest work ever, a brutally funny satire and a wonderful visual travelogue respectively, while newcomer J. Alan Spearman, a photojournalist for the Memphis Commercial-Appeal, blew us away with his sensitive and richly-realized portrait of South Memphis as seen from the eyes of a young poet.

And how could we have a list without time lapses? This month we've got two, both pushing the artistic limits of the form in addition to the technical, showing us our world in startlingly unfamiliar, yet beautiful ways.

We've also added a peppering of brilliant music videos and animations to this tasty stew. Aaagh! Too much good stuff! But, even though it's jam-packed, the whole package's runtime is less than your average feature film. Spin through the hubnut below or lean back, watch in Couch Mode and enjoy. This is the best of October. This is Vimeo.

Much love,

Vimeo Curation:
Jason, Sam + Jordan

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44 Comments

Luca Tarantini

Luca Tarantini Plus

The amount staff picks can be overwhelming, but it's a natural result of the abundance of talent in our community. Amazing, I can't wait to go through these.

Jason Sondhi

Jason Sondhi Staff

Well said. It was ridiculously tough to whittle this down.

Visual Ambrosia

Visual Ambrosia PRO

Your progress, site innovations, plus the artistic breadth of your curatorial selections...so excellent.

Here's an idea I've been mulling over for a while, something to pass on to the vimeo.com staff, something that could accelerate greater adoption of full high definition video. Vimeo.com stands out above other internet video access sites for the higher quality video resolution display options offered users. By comparison, YouTube video quality display is kindergarden, almost lame.

Moving forward in this drift about higher quality video resolution display options, I propose vimeo.com initiate a competition emphasizing DOWNLOADABLE FULL HD AND 2K 2560X1440p video clips. Why? Many vimeo.com users have full HD video display hardware, and many have 2560x1440p double HD resolution video display hardware (now that more brands of these are value priced and generally available). it seems time to create a competition to coax adoption of full HD and Higher-than-HD video display. MNH

Jason Sondhi

Jason Sondhi Staff

Thanks for the thoughts! I'm sure this is something that's being kicked around.

Visual Ambrosia

Visual Ambrosia PRO

That sounds terrific! The half HD resolution typical on broadcast TV seems so dated.

10/26/12 LG Electronics monitor manufacturer introduced an 84" Ultra HD 3840x2160p TV for sale in Southern California. Ultra HD resolution is quadruple full HD.

Imractical, LG's 3840x2160p resolution display screen is a bit much. More practical, 2K 2560x1440p resolution also looks sublime, is here and now, more affordable. 2K is PRIME NOW to materialize, for broadcast/broadband content formats. We on vimeo.com need to share 2K

My vimeo.com page has a variety of narrow bit rate, easy to download at full quality, HD, 2K, and even Higher-than-2K clips for Apple MacBook Pro Retina laptops.

Tom Lowe's magical 4K, quadruple HD video, "TimeScapes", so widely appreciated here on vimeo.com, boosts Higher-than-HD awareness. Likewise, let's shout out for downloadable double HD, 2K clips, on vimeo.com, as another catalyst , like Tom's video, to boost public appreciation of HD resolution.

H1

H1 Plus

Thank you Jason, Sam, Jordan & vimeo!

FilterQueen

FilterQueen

Great selection, very impressive pics. Great post...

Jeff Frost

Jeff Frost Plus

Great idea, and great films. Thank you vimeo, Jason, Sam and Jordan! :)

BRTHR

BRTHR PRO

The True Skin to feature film development is definitely inspirational -really shows what online exposure can do. Monster Roll was crazy dope as well.

Jason Sondhi

Jason Sondhi Staff

Tons of Vimeo success stories in that vein just this year. Could make a great list in its own right.

Alan Spearman

Alan Spearman Plus

Thank you Jason + Sam + Jordan + Vimeo. I wish you all could see Chris Dean’s eyes when he reads the comments people are posting in response to AS I AM.

Based on feedback we are working now to set up a fund that helps support the educational dreams of Chris and several kids who appear in AS I AM and another short film made in South Memphis called APRIL.

Also, within this fund, assistance will be given to others who appear in the film. The fund will be managed by an organization in Memphis called the Women’s Foundation For a Greater Memphis. They have the expertise to help significantly.

I'll keep you posted as we announce more details.

We love you guys.

Alan, Mark and Chris

Jason Sondhi

Jason Sondhi Staff

That's really inspiring guys. Keep us up to date so that we can do we can to help.

Visual Ambrosia

Visual Ambrosia PRO

Daniel,
Speaking of Ultra HD:

Here's a two minute Ultra HD clip our studio posted on Vimeo yesterday. Since then, this 4K video has had 10 plays, 20 loads, and 2 downloads:

vimeo.com/52892170

PERHAPS, THIS VIMEO CLIP IS THE ONLY FULLY DOWNLOADABLE, ULTRA HD 3840x2180p demo movie, available on the Internet, anywhere.

We are so, so grateful to vimeo for its superior file sharing options, compared to YouTube. It’s grand that vimeo enables users to download my original Ultra HD video file version.

My Ultra HD vimeo.com/52892170 is stream able @ 12 Mbit/s. By comparison to "TimeScapes", its bit rate, also an MP4 movie , is easier to play, easier to digitally circulate, than the MP4 version of similarly beautiful 4K “TimeScapes” . "TimeScapes", calibrated @ 56 Mbit/s, requires quadruple the bit rate of my Ultra HD demo.

-mnh

Christoph Malin

Christoph Malin Plus

dear ambrosia,

I second that, however, what's the optimum bitrate then? I produce my timelapses in 2K (most of the newer raw source material is 4K), and filled a 12TB thunderbolt pegasus R6 raid in a couple months.

Also I use latest Macbook Pro and iMac, and even they have problems playing 4K source raw material (apple prores) converted to quicktime.

what is your opinion? does 2K at 12 MBit/sec make sense? And how do you convert?

Leli Maki Esquire

Leli Maki Esquire

Just a Question Vimeo Staff. How do you go about picking your staff picks. Just uploaded a short film from South Africa and would for it be considered.

Thank you very much

Leli Maki Esquire

Leli Maki Esquire

Aaaahhhhh so that's the trick, you guys are like ninja online stalkers. Vimeo's MO is very very nifty.

Here's the link: vimeo.com/52833731

"Jeffery Somers is down on his luck wannabe actor. Jeffery is always smiling and his cup is half full. A chance encounter with his idol results in a Domino effect which leads to Jeffery finally taking centre stage."

Thanks so much Jordan.

Pablo

Pablo

Fabuloso!! Love it!!

Veronica Alice

Veronica Alice Plus

Maybe you can direct me to someone who can direct me to a contact that I can direct a question? I've had a vimeo account for some time but I find it difficult to use hence I've been using Youtube more often but I like my contacts here - that brings me to my question - I am looking for one of my contacts and I can't find the right set of links to get me to them. How to I quickly access my contacts list? I did search the name but so much comes up that it is not quick. I notice you seem to have a category for almost everything else but no category called my contacts - I believe you had this on your old format - btw, I preferred that format. Thanks!

Darren Lunny

Darren Lunny PRO

Hi Jason, I'm reasonably new to Vimeo...how do you pick your staff picks? Are they submitted to you or do you find them by searching your database? Looking forward to watching more of them. Cheers, Darren

Darren Lunny

Darren Lunny PRO

Woops, sorry, just scrolled up and found a post that might answer my question. Call off the hounds :)

jamieparr

jamieparr

hi guys i was just wondering if any one knows about the site called crushed? plz let me know

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