Kenyatta’s Favorites from 2011

All week your faithful editors at Here’s Some Awesome will be selecting their favorites from the year! Some may be previously posted, some may be entirely new — but all represent the kind of awesome we’ve been happy to bring you guys all year long. Please enjoy, and happy holidays!

Being that I missed a couple of weeks, I’m going to cheat and show you six+1 of my favorite awesome videos of 2011.

Protect IP Act Breaks The Internet

So, you know the #SOPA bill that’s still being considered? This video by Kirby Ferguson, creator of the Everything Is A Remix series, is still my favorite explanation of the SOPA/E-PARASITE/Protect IP legislation. It criminalizes a lot of web culture that we hold dear — music playing in the background of videos, footage of people dancing, clips of kids playing video games, and videos of people playing cover songs. It’s American Protectionism at its worst. Please forward, retweet, force your friends to drink this down.

Meme Proposal | Tim * Audrey

There are tons of Unique and Clever Marriage Proposals® on the internet. Flash mob marriage proposals are so established that they have their own TV shows.  Fake Movie Trailer proposals were huge this year but who wants to go to the movies to watch even more trailers?

What I found interesting about the above video (shot and made in Malaysia) is that the guy proposes to his girlfriend in nothing but internet memes. Insert thoughtful bit about the pervasiveness of Internet Culture and the accessibility of cheap, gorgeous cameras here.

Tokyo Slo-Mode

Speaking of cheap, gorgeous cameras: if I’ve been absent from my HSA duties as of late, it’s because I’ve been spending all of my time on VHX and Vimeo lately, fascinated with what people are creating with sub-$1000 DSLRs like the Canon Rebel/KISS series and the Panasonic GH2. The video above isn’t necessarily groundbreaking aesthetically but it was made relatively inexpensively (it boasts of how it was made with a $700 Canon T3i “and starter lenses”) and it looks and feels great. Add in some neat, relatively inexpensive plugins and you have everything you need to tell engaging stories. (Bring Your Own Talent, of course.)

War Photojournalism Behind the Scenes

This short piece by photojournalist Ruben Salvadori shows how some of those fascinating conflict zone photographs that seem perfectly timed aren’t really so much about capturing a moment as much as they’re about creating them. His aim doesn’t seem to be to demean them. Being cynical about conflict photography is easy (see: ‘Vancouver Riot Kiss‘) but actually understanding the context around them is a bit more complex.

Ronen’s Adventure: Trapped in an iPhone (A Video Jigsaw Puzzle)

Earlier this year I posted RonenV’s awesome process portrait of Reggie Watts.  The very next week he posted this video which I find even more awesome. A collaboration with choreographer Vanya Polunin, it’s exactly what it says.

Ani-Up by Evan Roth

This is still my favorite video of 2011. Animated gifs + an 8-bit hip hop cover. What else do you need?

And if you’ll excuse the indulgence, my last video is more of a personal post. I asked myself: what video would best sum up what the last year has meant to me? And back came this singular piece of artistry, a portrayal of the excitement of possibility as well as the pressure of integrating the self wtih society. Never have I found a more perfect expression of the duality of the psyche in a sea of modernity and interaction…

Hey Ya

Okay fine. This video is awesome because it’s really fucking cute.

Cheers. See you all in 2012.