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Text as Data

Text as Data is the burgeoning new interdisciplinary field of data mining books, emails, social media, and text in general to study human behavior. Of course, it all started with books, room-sized computers, and the challenge of turning text into usable data. Princeton Sociologist Brandon Stewart gives us the skinny in this teaser for his recent Princeton Talk.

Text as Data – Princeton Talks teaser on YouTube and Vimeo.

Brandon’s complete talk is available here.  To learn more about Princeton Talks and for links to each speaker, please visit the Princeton Talks website.

Here’s one more clip where I had some b-roll fun animating an image of an IBM 7090 mainframe into an Apple Watch:

Text as Data – IBM 7090 Clip on YouTube and Vimeo.

Production

Princeton Talks behind the scenes. Two-camera filming with Canon C70 cameras. Princeton, NJ. December, 2021.

If you follow this blog you’ll know that I have a core kit of equipment which I adapt to each project. It’s a base with which I can get the majority of my work completed and, of course, I’ll supplement it with rental gear if the job calls for it.

This core kit lately has been two Canon C70 cameras, my Litepanels lights (four Astra 6x and two Sola 4+ fresnels), and various light modifiers, grip, and monitors. For the Princeton Talks series, I have settled on filming with the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2 and RF 85mm f/1.2 prime lenses for my A and B cameras respectively.

I am in love what I can achieve with the setup. It allows me to create a very cinematic feel while keeping an extremely small footprint which is usually a two-person crew including myself. To me, nothing exemplifies it better than the videos embedded above and as also seen in their frame grab thumbnails.

Super creamy bokeh created by shooting the lenses wide open or close to it and wonderful dynamic range courtesy of the C70’s extended-range DGO sensor. Even after 35+ years of doing this, nothing floats my boat more than creating a beautiful image.