I joined the team and did the lower 48 states in 12 days. The whole time we tracked ourselves using the Spot GPS unit. Here is out Map: http://mikehedge.com/map/
I shot 5000 photos on the trip. You remember the picturevideo I made for SXSW 2008 from all the photos? Well, I made a picturevideo from all the photos of this trip. I shot all the photos with a Canon 40D. Each frame plays for 3 frames on the timeline.
Erased Tapes launched a great series called Found Songs, where Olafur Arnalds did one song per day for a whole week. All the songs were free and never before released! It was awesome!
On April 19th, my two best friends from high school, Kellyn and Nikki got married. Wow. Happy for them. Wish them all the success in their marriage. Here’s the wedding set.
I decided not to go to NAB in Vegas this year, but Mark Pederson from Off Hollywood was there. Crazy fun news from Vegas this year, although not like 2007 and 2008….
Isis and Titus were in LA with the band they were tour managing, The Whip from the UK!!! It was a blast seeing them and shooting for the band. Here’s my set from the two nights of shooting in LA.
On April 30th I got to work with Logan Kugler for a few articles he was writing for some magazines. We got to hang out with Jay Leno at his Garage. It was neat. Look for my photos in Autoweek. Big shout out to my friend and fellow photography Brad Kugler for the opportunity.
On that same day, Mike Ambs also started his journey east. He will be editing Project Pedal in Michigan for a while. Excited for new episodes of Pedal and the cut of the genius feature documentary film, For Thousands of Miles !!!!!!
Posted by mikehedge on Saturday, April 18, 2009 at 11:15 am
At the end of March, Nathan Garofalos flew in to LA to shoot a quick scene with Nathan Reid and I. It was really fun and the product looks great. We then drove to Orange County to visit the RED HQ, which Nathan had never been to. It was neat hanging out with Kelly at RED, seeing the new RED PL 18-85 zoom lens, and we got to see the footage from the Nissan ad playing on the RED reel.
In the morning we had breakfast with Steve Gibby, then headed to Cal Poly SLO to visit with Katharina, then to Bubble Gum Alley, past the seals, up through Big Sur, past the Bixby Bridge, to meet up with Miles and Elise, then stayed with my friend Robin Beck and her daughter Allison. The next morning we had breakfast with Jessica Zylker who I hadn’t seen for 20 years, then drove out to Lake Tahoe, NV to drop Nathan off. We stayed that night with my Primal Quest friend, Aja Cook. The next morning, we got to shoot with Lauren Rosenbaum,Karen Strolia, and Diyosa, all super inspiring flickr friends. That same day, while we were doing the epic road trip, the film I edited, America’s Phoneless, screened at the Lake Havasu Film Fest and won the Final Cut Award!!!
We then said hi to Cindy and Zack Gainsforth and stayed with Leslie’s parents in Sacramento. We then headed to the Sacramento Film Fest screening 11am on Sun. It was fun to see the team all together. Brette Way, who plays Emma in the film, and her husband Evan (both in an awesome LA band called The Parson Red Heads) came up for the film fest.
After the fest, we headed north to Redding and hung out with Tracy Evans and her family, then up to Ashland, OR for the premiere of Wake Up You’re Sleeping! It was a sold out screening of over 200 people! Nathanial Bennett, the director, gave a great Q&A. Many people were excited to get the DVD or find out where they could see the film again.
We then headed down to Redding to hang out with team SOAR which is one of the adventure race teams I met while shooting Primal Quest in Montana. We went snow shoeing for the day in Lassen National Forest with Betty and Tom Thomas. Crazy fun!!! I also got to shoot some RED footage of the team bike riding.
We then traveled south to Alex Rich’s house. Alex is the genius musician who did the music for the SXSW video I did last year. He has several projects going, including his new project Tonight’s the Night. We then headed to Reno, NV with out hitting any deer!!! or getting cought in the snow storm, and met up with Lauren Randolph!!!!! (jumpshot photographer extraordinaire, and member of the ATDS team) We got to hang out with her for the day and shot some jumpshots. Yes this photo hit Flickr Explore!!!!!
Jackie and I then headed down to Fairfield, CA to do the Jelly Belly Factory Tour, which I had never done, but always wanted to do. Yes my favorite flavor is Juicy Pear. We ended up back in LA finally, and since it was Jackie’s birthday, we headed to Disneyland where you get a free admission for your birthday. We had a grand old time with all the rides and activities. We even got to watch fireworks! On April 14th Jackie left for Washington on her next adventure.
Thank you Jackie for all the adventures we shared. I guess life will go on…
Posted by mikehedge on Wednesday, March 18, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Back in LA? how weird. It has been months and months since I was last in LA. I left in October and continued traveling. I ended up going to 12 countries and ended up as far east as Shanghai, China. But now I am back on the west coast finally. Here’s a shot of the amount of hard drives and media created on such a massive trip. Several of these drives are mirrored elsewhere with other people.
Jackie had never been to the west coast, so it was her first time being in LA. We went and saw Alyssa Suede perform, it’s always nice when I catch one of her shows. Then on February 1st, after coming back from a game of soccer, I found that my hillside was on fire! A pretty large brush fire had erupted very near my house. Lucky for us, the wind was blowing west away from my house. We joined many neighborhood people and watched as helicopter after helicopter full of water put out the fires.
On Feb 3rd, we got to go to Nathan Reid’s comic book release party for his new film Prey: The Beginning. It was a crazy fun night, and we got to shoot photos of the night and meet the comic book artists.
Being back in LA was neat because I got to attend BIL!!! BIL is a conference for people changing the world. It’s where lots of passionate people brainstorm about innovative ideas about what’s going on today and ideas for the future. It’s sorta a sister project of the hugely inspiring conference called TED. While at BIL, I got to meet up again with Bill Erickson,Todd Huffman,EFF Chairman, Brad Templeton, and Lukas Fittl who was in town.
Being in LA wouldn’t have been complete for Jackie without a trip to the beach! So we ventured out to Santa Monica beach. A super fun day =)
On Feb 24th we got to screen America’s Phoneless at the LA Film School. It was super neat to see the film on the big screen. We had many of the cast and crew there! it was neat!
In March, Arin flew out to LA to do a couple presentations. One was at Cal Arts for Jon Reiss’ new media class, and the other was Film Independent’sDirectors Close Up event with Sleepdealer Director, Alex Rivera. I got to shoot photos and video for Arin, and it was neat to be part of the events and be around like-minded people, thinking about ideas for the future of how we are changing the film industry and distribution.
I didn’t make it out to SXSW this year, but congrats to the Ross Brothers who won the Jury Award for their doc 45365 and congrats to Brett Gaylor whose film, RIP: A Remix got lots of great press.
Posted by mikehedge on Sunday, March 15, 2009 at 5:46 am
One of my inspirations, Michel Gondry has gone to Japan and collaborated with 2 other directors to create his film called Tokyo. The trailer looks awesome!
Posted by mikehedge on Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 7:01 am
I did New Year’s eve at Roger’s house in CT, then did a quick trip down to NYC to Arin’s office to copy some master hard drives and to sync some files. Roger Ingraham was nice enough to let the As The Dust Settles team set up shop at Highland Terrace. It became my home base for the month of January. Throughout the month we had many of the east coast based ATDS team doing collaborative editing.
Jeremy, Roger, Katheryn, Susan, Josh, Isis, Tarynn, Jamie, Arin and I were there with many laptops editing our segments. It was great working as a team, and a lot of needed editing work got done for the documentary. We also celebrated Jamie’s and Roger’s birthdays!!!
Posted by mikehedge on Wednesday, December 31, 2008 at 5:58 am
After finally returning to the US in December, I flew to Tennessee to spend Christmas with Jackie’s family. While there we got to visit and we also went to her sister’s wedding in Georgia. I also got to visit Ashleigh Prince and Aaron Nicholson, who I worked with on America’s Phoneless.
After being rained out for a day and shooting out at Camber Sands, Macgregor flew back to Madrid, and I got to hang with Erased Tapes Records owner, Robert Raths for a couple days. It was really awesome to see the day-to-day operations of Erased Tapes. It’s always inspiring to me when I get to see someone else in their element. Robert and I had a grand old time, and yes, the famous crepes Robert makes, are incredibly delicious.
Posted by mikehedge on Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 11:31 am
In November, Macgregor, Zac, Pedro, and I traveled from Madrid to Shanghai. While there, we hung out with Ryan from RED and explored the great city of Shanghai. A highlight for me was seeing the Pearl and experiencing a city with an unbelievable amount of people.
We left Shanghai and flew to Bangkok, Thailand, switched planes, and ended up in Phuket. We then ventured out to the Phi Phi Islands. It is so beautiful there (not to mention Thaifood everyday! =)
We found ourselves back in Bangkok, shot a bunch of footage, and hung out with Martin trying to get our visa for India. We were headed to Mumbai about a week after the shootings, so it was suspicious for the visa guy to see four guys traveling to Mumbai. Long story short, after many hours of waiting, we got our visas and headed to Mumbai, India the next morning.
While in Mumbai, we met up with Binny, who is a friend of my friend Anil. The city of Mumbai is packed with people and cars 24/7. We headed out to Elephanta Island to check out the ancient sculptures in the caves.
Here’s a quick clip of India’s largest slum, Dharavi.
