Sector Y v2.0

This was my final video before Sector Y (and myself) took a long hiatus. This was my “final epic video” that I always wanted to do, but couldn’t get myself dedicated enough to do for all my other videos.

This was my first, and maybe one of the first(?), videos that was fully created in After Effects. The original clip video (Spindox 2-05-00) was originally created as a test for my new Dazzle “video capture card.” It was essentially a bunch of footage, one-after-another, with a JPG image as the title. As I began to create more videos, I stuck with the JPG title screens. It was the only part of the videos that never really evolved. Towards the end of 2001, the titles started to have simple animations, like rotating logos, etc. But nothing was completely animated.When it came to PSY, however, I tried to do fully animated title sequences for most of the videos.

By the end of the PSY Project, I had gotten decent enough doing just title sequences, and wanted to see what I could do with animating actual video footage. I had the idea for this video for a long time, and so I got to work in what would end up being the most painstaking and labor intensive video I had ever made.

The idea behind the video was simple: have a grid of videos, and animate a camera to fly between various clips. The problem was my hardware. At the time I had an 866MHz Powerbook G4 with 512MB of RAM. And that did not play well with After Effects and the 100 clips I wanted to animate simultaneously in the movie.

Despite this, I pushed through and after maybe a month I finally was able to create the video that I wanted. The final render took about 75 to 100 hours to output. But it was totally worth it…despite the fact that only about 250 people saw the video. By the time this video was done, it was solely for the PSY DVD and was never placed online until now. Well, actually last year. I just forgot to update my site with it when Sector Y launched. Oops!

Video: Sensory Overload [ Vimeo | Download (720×480) ]
Music: War by Cunninlynguists (Produced by Kno)

This video was one of the videos from thte PSY DVD. It was composed of mostly old footage, but a good amount of new footage as well. (This footage is mainly from the 2000 and 2001 era.) I’m not sure why the song choice is the same as another video I did. I do remember it being intentional, but I can no longer remember the reasoning behind it. Lots of footage was collected from 2000 Nationals, with others being sent in as part of the “PSY” project.

Video: Survival [ Vimeo | Download (720×480 MP4) ]
Music: Crazy by Seal
Duration: 4:09

There’s a handy RSS feed on the front page of Sector Y so you can easily keep up with each trick daily…but I’ll also post the roundup videos here each month. :)f

So many good things happened to me in 2004 I just had to make a video that documented some of my favorite things.

Good Things from Takeshi Kamisato on Vimeo.

Download Good Things
Length: 4:20
Music: Good Things by Rival Schools
Date: 2004
Featuring: Takeshi Kamisato, Steve Brown, Mark Hayward, Shingo Terada, Rafael Matsunaga, Felix Avellana, Jack Ringca, Whip, Tim Redmond, Eric Girardi, Scott Walker, Mark McBride

I started yoyoing during the 1998 yoyo boom. Most of 1998 was spent learning tricks from Ken’s World on a String, and I even got to visit US Nationals that year. But even though my roots were based in 1998, 1999 was the year when things really started to take off.

I became a regular at the Spindox meetings in 1999. I spent most of my time learning new tricks from Paul Escolar, Gary Longoria, and David Capurro. In essence, this was the beginning of what would become a major advancement in string tricks. Posting videos on the web helped continue yoyoing popularity, and Sector Y was eventually born on October 15, 1999. This video is a look back at the scene that helped create the original Sector Y.

Title: 1999 [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Change the World [Instrumental] by Bone thugs-n-harmony
Time: 3:16
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/8049363[/vimeo]

Velocity was a fun video to make. I had a lot of footage that just didn’t fit into other videos for one reason or another. Most of it was either old stuff or simple stuff. I decided to see if I could cram it all into one video and this was the result.

Most of the Parental Advisory section of the String Theory DVD (where this video originally debuted) was full of old footage. And while this may be a “rehash video,” there’s still some unseen footage in here. I always fought with the idea of how to present footage that had already been seen, so the Parental Advisory section was just an experiment on what I could possibly do to make dated footage seem less boring. I wasn’t sure if these videos would ever see the light of day, but I released it because nobody would gain anything if I had just kept the footage to myself.

Ever since this video was made (I believe sometime in 2001), yoyoing has sped up quite a bit. As freestyles have become about racking up as many points as possible, speed has been the focus of many yoyoers over the past few years. As a result, most of this stuff doesn’t look as fast as it used to. Time has taken a toll on this video but I hope some of it can still be appreciated.

This video has explicit lyrics.

Title: Velocity [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Velocity by Extended F@mm (featuring Tonedeff)
Time: 3:52
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/8049263[/vimeo]

This video was inspired by one of GReg’s clip videos. In 2000 or 2001, GReg had released a clip video that was very basic and rudimentary compared to other videos of that era. Despite not having the newest tricks, it was full of charm. I like to think of it as similar to a child’s kindergarten drawing: it’s never really a fantastic work of art, but you still put it on your fridge.

This video was my attempt to do the same thing. It contained a lot of footage from 2000 – 2001 that had already been released, but also a few clips from other people who had sent in their footage.

This video has explicit lyrics.

Title: Professional Elegance [ Stream | Download ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Doo Rags by Nas
Time: 3:56
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: Quicktime H.264

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/8049417[/vimeo]

2001 was a huge year for yoyoing. Trick innovation continued to push forward, and new styles such as slack, and chopsticks, started emerging.

I had filmed most of the year so I didn’t have much unseen footage around to make a new video. But I knew the year was important enough that something needed to be shown.

Exit 2001 was a bigger hit than I expected it to be. I didn’t expect many people to like it simply because there wasn’t much new footage. With most of my videos, I wanted my audience to be impressed and blown away by new footage. With this one, I wanted them to sit back and reflect on the last year of yoyoing. The reduced speed and color-fade helped accomplish that.

With this video, 2001 came to a close and 2002 was ushered in.

Title: Exit 2001 [ Download | Stream ]
Creator: Gabriel Lozano
Music: Only Time by Enya
Time: 3:33
Resolution: 640×480 (SD)
File Type: MP4