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Comment by eycndy | Hacker News Reader

Hello! My name is Jacobi. I made Eyecandy. I'm appreciating seeing suggestions. Is there anything you want me to try on the website? Anything I could improve?

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Gifs have large file sizes and poor image quality. Replace them with videos and you’ll improve page load, reduce bandwidth costs (for yourself and your users), and have better quality.

You can configure HTML video to (by default) show no controls and auto-loop so they’ll be indistinguishable from gifs on a first look, but better in every other way.

One thing they're not great for though is shareability. With gifs, you can generally just drag & drop them between most apps and they'll behave as you expect. Not true with videos.

Gifs have limitations and limitations benefit art.

The site doesn't seem to work with GIF's limitations for artistic purposes. It's just slow.

BTW: https://gif.ski can work around most of the visual limitations of GIF, so only poor compression remains.

> N/A (Know where this came from?)

https://eycndy.com/splitscreen?itemId=axdz1h5b22ecka9q12voxj... Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse (2015)

https://eycndy.com/splitscreen?itemId=71ke0wcliam5bx1hd2wvaj... Sisters (1972)

https://eycndy.com/splitscreen?itemId=seohywjmhaktt6kjmt7g8x... Sisters (1972)

https://eycndy.com/rotoscoping?itemId=bh2cjz8pipya1nskejta43... Adidas Here to Create

https://eycndy.com/rotoscoping?itemId=2afcukjqbz27e96l0qmb9h... Adidas Here to Create

https://eycndy.com/splitscreen-1?itemId=4o31q53c05kl5j76zikh... The Perfection (2018)

https://eycndy.com/splitscreen-1?itemId=22teiyrsa1n8t134f1bk... Jennifer's Body (2009)

https://eycndy.com/splitscreen-1?itemId=dio7my4nmf2xbkzut9je... Reservoir Dogs (1992)

  tool          gives useful lead? (listed order)
  Bing          YYYYnYnY
  Google Search YYYYYYYY
  Google Lens   nnYYnYnn
  TinEye        nYYYnYYY
  Yandex        nYYYnYYY

I recognized the Reservoir Dogs example just from my brain.

To the site author, if you're going to list unknown images like this it would be nice if there was a way to give you feedback on them directly.

It's such a delight. It is overwhelming and in the best possible way.

The only thing I might suggest is adding some tagging for additional ways of rummaging. I love your existing approach to categories and I think you should keep them primary. But it would be great to browse by, say, director. E.g., I have enough of Edgar Wright's movies in my head that I'd love to see what clips you have from him and whether it's worth submitting more. I happened to find one here: https://eycndy.com/fourth-wall

That's in the works! I want to incorporate a search bar into the site that uses a complex array of hand-done (and A.I. categorized) tags. So that you can search (for e.g.) by director, color, time of day, composition, genre, etc. In the works.

Very cool!

Animation is missing this classic from Aha: https://media.tenor.com/KAxhQIW7wTYAAAAC/aha-take-on-me.gif

Also movies such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit [1] and Space Jam [2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KujzFdGu7gY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS_muZsLBok

And the intro to Watchmen would deserve to be there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h24D87SqaLQ

Edit: I guess that would simply be the "Slow Motion" section.

Off topic but that is one of the best film intros ever, showing rather than telling a 40 year backstory.

This page is hosted with Squarespace right?

How much does it cost for you to be hosting this site with so many files?

I see that you are using gif for everything. I suggest using webm and similar video formats instead. To use less bandwidth from your visitors.

Yea. Maybe tell me what this site is about?

It's a visual technique library for the creative industry. Ad-folk, Directors, Cinematographers, Editors, and Creatives in general. It's a compilation (library) of all the best techniques categorized by type.

That isn’t at all obvious from the frontpage.

You probably want to keep the design lean, so just a simple “about” in small font would help to explain.

The autoloading is also problematic on mobile/tablet but others already chipped in with solutions.

It was obvious to me. On desktop, the top of the page lists categories. The content below is everything inside that category.

This was super cool to click around on the various techniques and see the examples.

(Questions/Thoughts)

- I was looking to see if there was a Steadicam group, wondering if I would see a gif of Henry and Karen walking into the Copa, that's got to be one of the most famous shots in film in the last 40 years (not a critique, totally possible it's there under a different name I'm not aware of as a layperson, I didn't peruse every group.) [Edit note added]

- "Fourth Wall" should include a gif of "The Big Short", breaking the fourth wall was a great way to get the minutiae of the financial subject out of the way and return to the characters.

- Bonus upvote for finding a shot from "Halt and Catch Fire"! (dolly zoom)

Edit: I knew I was forgetting the proper term for my question about Goodfellas, it's a tracking shot. I didn't see the movie in there though, I think it should be added :)

Love this site, how long did it take to build?

Would be cool to see clips of behind the scenes showing camera placement and set/crew

Love that idea. I'm starting to roll out pages dedicated to each shot (when you click on it) that go into detail about it. The crew, the story, and eventually BTS and 'how to's' on how to make it.

https://eycndy.com/fixed-object-schoolboy-dope-dealer

Oh, and about a year. Started roughly compiling stuff and thinking on this in July of 2022

And for an example of the camera placement examples, check out the subreddit r/praisethecameraman (I think it’s called), sometimes shows the camera crew and rig and how they work their magic to pull off cool effects.

Well done. How did you select and cut the examples? All by hand?

By hand, but I get a lot of great references from the film community.

Looks great, thanks for the experience!

Personally I'd like a "table of contents" where you get the title, a summary and an example. Then you could scroll and learn a bit about all techniques, clicking in one that piqued your interest.

I'm not sure if that's easy or not. Let me know if I can help.

Hi, my only suggestion I immediately had is that if you're paging the content on mobile scroll, then for client performance reasons you could be unloading the older pages from the very top otherwise my experience ends at nearly few scrolls where my cpu says it is done.

Hi Jacobi. I love the content but the design is too busy for me. I can't concentrate on one clip because the others distract me. How about allowing to switch to a style where only one clip is shown and I can scroll down to see more? I wouldn't want to click to advance (like it is now when I zoom in on a clip), just endless scroll like you did it with one clip on the screen at any time.

Also, is https://eycndy.com/crab-shot?itemId=cxns025fad8r33ene8rmxxnw... actually a trucking / crab shot? For me it's just a pan.

Initially thought it was a giphy alternative (still kind of is). Maybe add a subtitle or CTA (at least on mobile) to make sure someone clicks into a gif to learn.

'Click to view film style' 'Select to find related gif' ...

May be overkill, but could change first impressions

I clicked on a a technique, then I clicked on an example, and it went fullscreen. Neat.

I pressed escape, and it went back to all the examples of the technique. I pressed escape again to go back further, and got a Square Space login screen?

There's one. technique I've been wondering about for a while but don't see on the page. Say there's one or two people who are the primary focus, and they stay in focus, but the background shifts so it comes closer even though the primary character(s) don't move. Not sure what it's called, would love to know.

Sounds like you're talking about a dolly zoom?

Yes, the classic example being from Jaws https://youtu.be/_eO_5q5dR9M?t=20

Yea I think Dolly Zoom. https://eycndy.com/dollyzoom There's also double dolly https://eycndy.com/double-dolly

Thanks all!

Loading performance improvements would be great. Took several seconds for anything other than the title to load.

Maybe pull a low-res thumbnail of the first frame for each gif while loading.

You may be able to use a virtual list to make performance even better as users rapidly scroll (but not as impactful as just loading a frame quickly).

Is there an explicit name for tracking shots whereby the camera passes through objects impossibly (a subset of "Object Portal" in your website but I'm referring to shots that don't transition to a difference setting)?

e.g. camera through keyhole/window/mirror.

Really great site would make solid Tik toks and YouTube shorts one technique a minute long. No joke can see this being useful for prompt engineering like for people making AI memes. It’s about knowing what to ask for.

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