By now, you're firmly in camp Yanny or Laurel, your marriage is in shambles, and up is down. This latest viral illusion was of the auditory variety, thus sparing you from a long angry diatribe about white balance and monitor calibration. I'll admit that I first heard Yanny and it immediately shifted to Laurel, mostly ruining the experience.

If you've spent any time mixing or mastering music, you know to aim for a solid middle-ground mix that sounds good on most stereos. This means making concessions that make the mix sound objectively worse on expensive audiophile level gear, but better overall across more accessible equipment. Certain mix combinations bury instruments or vocals entirely because of how the audio is processed and the speakers' frequency response.

Mass-produced speakers cannot replicate every single audible frequency, particularly the tiny ones in your smartphone. These smaller speakers generally sound more shrill as there isn't enough volume to produce audible low frequencies.

The Y/L illusion results from stripping the lower frequencies from the word Laurel leaving us with something that sounds completely different. The recording is consistent with other online English language pronunciation guide videos. As Yanny isn't a word, it seems pretty clear that this illusion is merely coincidental and isn't two distinct superimposed recordings.

Another possible explanation is the compression of the audio via however you are hearing it (twitter/youtube etc). Slower connections results in the quality dropping automatically to avoid buffering, and this compression mostly removes the lowest frequencies. Just as the tiny speakers cant replicate low frequencies, the compression can also strip out the low end, leaving us again to hear Yanny. 

Lastly, the most fun theory can be extrapolated as survival instinct. It becomes impossible for me to hear Yanny after I have deduced that the voice is in fact saying Laurel. My brain will fill in the gaps (the low notes) from memory. Even if I lose the low end, or listen through a lil' tiny speaker on a sloooow connection, I will still hear Laurel. Try as I might, I can no longer hear Yanny. This phenomenon utilizes the same part of our brain which helps us sync up what we hear and what we see, as this information arrives in our brain at completely different times (speed of light vs speed of sound). This skill keeps us evolved humans from feeling perpetually disoriented. All of this is good because if Yanny is anything like Yanni I don't want to hear it anyway.

I woke up to the news of a firmware update, enabling a bunch of new features on my camera. Most notably, a log mode. Log mode essentially strips out a lot of artificially added contrast and color in order to preserve highlight details and increase the overall dynamic range in the image. I got to immediately put it to use on some interview footage today, and it performed admirably! 

A few things I've discovered about shooting in LOG:

1. It's not the easiest path. Without an external monitor with LUT overlays it becomes tough to understand where your image could wind up in post. Proper exposure is critical, as over/under exposed + desaturated color is a recipe for an ugly final product. 
    
2. It takes time. There's no quick and dirty when you've pre-committed to coloring each and every scene.
    
3. It plays nice. The footage becomes easier to blend with different cameras as they can all be graded to match.
    
4. It needs bits. Low bitrate video doesn't take color correction very well, so pay attention to your codec.

As there are hundreds of articles about color correction, I want to talk instead about firmware and support. I have reached a point as a consumer that I'm skeptical about anything that relies on connecting to your iPhone. The most profitable company in the world stops supporting their products after just 5 years, and there are pieces of production gear that can last seemingly forever. We used to joke that the C-stands and Mole fresnels they rented us in school were used to shoot SPARTACUS. I'm hesitant to believe small hardware manufacturers are up to the herculean task of performing regular security updates until the end of time. What could go wrong, right?

I recently attended yet another event where the organizers decided it would be appropriate to take every single attendee's phone (CAMERA) at the door and lock them away in a neoprene bag, thus creating a uniquely "human experience". There are some places where seizing such technology makes perfect sense, a middle school classroom for example. Parents argue about access in an emergency scenario, but I never had a phone in middle school, and it most definitely would have negatively impacted my grades. However, I fail to see how a phone is unwelcome at a rock concert. Is it the inadvertent ringtone? A phone's dinky little speakers are no match for a stadium concert PA system. Does the soft glow of a neighboring screen distract you? That's too damn bad, because the stage is literally covered in strobe lights and smoke and projections. No, the real problem is one's tendency to be recorded and embarrassed, and nothing else. Hell, even Prince let us shoot the first two songs. 

The artist will say something like "I can't connect with the audience if they're distracted". If you really wanted people's undivided attention, I fail to see where selling insane amounts of booze fits into the equation. If NASA took your phone before demonstrating some cutting edge technology, it stands to reason that NASA would not also allow you to get wildly inebriated on the tour. Whether or not you agree with the action of documenting, the aesthetic of cheap concert video or drunk photography as a medium, filming the show is how some people choose to engage. Maybe that person will re-watch this footage later, maybe they wont. Perhaps its an easier token to hang onto than a ticket stub (tickets, which are quickly being replaced by.... YOUR PHONE). Call me crazy (I won't answer. My phone is locked in a bag), but I'd rather have a concert photo from my unique perspective than an overtly gouge-priced t-shirt.

If the "human experience" is valued so much higher than convenience, then why are we hosting concerts in stadiums? Why not play the gig in the middle of a field, or at the bottom of a canyon? The difference is the grand canyon can't post an angry video of you (also drunk) yelling at your own fans. 

The brutal irony was that the performance, whether it was documented to death or not, proved to be wickedly underwhelming. Where I come from we call that phoning it in.

I made this little movie almost 10 years ago, shot on Kodak Vision 3 Super 16mm. I'm fortunate to have at least one of my student projects on film as DV footage is borderline unwatchable on a modern screen. The story evolved from a person I once knew being featured on True Life: I Hate My Tattoos. It's a student project, so be kind!

Best Crew:
 Brittany Washington | Harrison Rex Reynolds | Kayla Croft

Starring:
Tomas Olano | Brandon Denton