1127 2009
Here is was a post looks like with all my blog from Dec 2008 through November 2009. Please read and comment on the Official 1127 2009 Blog post here.
It’s difficult enough trying to put into words some of my experiences, but craming an entire year into one post, especially this year has been quite an ordeal…
Welcome to 1127 2009! Hope this year has been outstanding and successful for everyone. This is my 7th year sending out these 1127 emails. Each year I give a quick recap of my past 12 months. Hopefully people will keep me up to date with what they are up to. This year’s 1127 blog will follow a slightly different style than last years. Last year, was my first year adding photos to my 1127 blog. After posting that post, I continued to post blogs with lots of photos and descriptions of all my adventures. If I were to include everything that happened since my last 1127 post, It would be 5 times longer than my last year’s post.
I left off on my crazy 1127 blog last year, on a plane flying to China. It’s hard to believe an entire year has passed. Do I feel that I have accomplished what I set out to accomplish in the past 12 months? This is something that I continue to think about. What is it that I accomplished? What am I comparing my accomplishments to? What makes life fulfilling? What is the goal I have this life? My goal has been: “To inspire others.” I’m sure I have inspired people this year, I’m sure I continue to inspire people. Has it been rewarding?
I did manage to fill my year up with many film shoots, many film festivals, many trips, and shot another few hundred thousand photos. I was published in many magazines, and even received an award for a short film I edited. Did I finish the things on my todo list from 2008? No. Did I finish some of them? Yes indeed!
The largest project of my life, which I started back in 2008, continues to be worked on. I hope that 2010 will be a year of finishing many of the incomplete projects I have done over that past few years. In many ways, I feel like I have been writing pages in my “book of life” so fast, but have never bothered to go back, fix the spelling errors, bind the pages, and publish the book!
I am incredibly grateful for the people who choose to surround me with their support. A huge thank you to all the people who continue to inspire me.
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 including a shot of India’s largest slum, Dharavi.
India Dec 09-2008 from mikehedge on Vimeo.
From India, we flew back to Madrid.
Once Macgregor and I landed in Madrid, we quickly repacked and flew to London to shoot some footage for a teaser for the Erased Tapes’ band, Codes In The Clouds.
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.
Before leaving the UK, I got to meet several other inspirations of mine: Bill Erickson, one of the founders of the BIL Conference, Richard Moross, founder of Moo.com, Frank Da Silva of DMTlabs, and Matt Biddulph, one of the founders of Dopplr.com. I also got to hang out with Anita Ondine of Touchlight Media and Lukas Fittl co-founder of Soup.io.
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.
Genius!!!! finally a great way to use the R3D files from the RED cameras inside Adobe Premiere!!!
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/davtechtable/new-premiere-pro-41-and-after-effects-902-update
Here’s a still from the RED footage we shot out at Burning Man:
Here is the blog I normally post in November, it has many photos of my travels, many of which I shot RED footage on.
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!!!
UYUNI project is done!
Thanks everyone for making the REDuser.net thread the second most viewed thread in the “Shot on Red” section in the history of the forum.
Here is the first 2 minutes of the film:
First two minutes of UYUNI from Macgregor on Vimeo.
Here is a quick slideshow of production and post production:
Link to URL
Link to URL
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!
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.
Later in February, we got to join the New Media West: Office Hours meeting, where everyone joined up to discuss new forms of online media projects. It was awesome to see a bunch of people that I hadn’t seen in a while! Shout out to: Mike Ambs, Rudy Jahchan, Casey McKinnon, Ric Rey, Meg McGarry, Brigitte Dale, Cristian Olave, and I also got to meet the co-founder of the Streamy Awards, Marc Hustvedt.
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’s Directors 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.
Mike
My good friend Robert Raths and his label Erased Tapes have a genius band called Code In The Clouds. They have a great EP which is out. While I was out in the UK shooting with them, Macgregor and I shot this teaser for their new album which releases June 1st!!!!
Macgregor also finished the ad we shot for Nissan out in Death Valley last year = genius!
Sometimes it upsets me when I’m being lied to. But whatever, life continues, no time for emotion when one needs to save the world.
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.
We then picked up Jackie at the OC airport and started the most epic PCH road trip ever. I have never done the PCH, so I figured I would take the opportunity to head up the coast on my way to the Sacramento Film Fest and the Ashland Film Fest for the premiere of Wake Up You’re Sleeping.
After saying hi to Bryn, we headed north and visited with Randy Carranza, and his daughter Alexis, then stayed at Markus Sandy’s house, the Digital Dojo. The next morning we met up with Scott London and his daughter Gabriela in Santa Barbara and visited with them. We then met up with Trevor Carpenter and camped on the beach at Pismo Beach.
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 headed to SF and went photowalking with Thomas Hawk at the SF MOMA, then met up with Tristan Savatier and talked about Burning Man and photography. We then headed to Startup Weekend (which was created by my friend, Andrew Hyde.) Tyler Willis and Jeremy Tanner organized the SF Weekend which went really well! Many of the startups won’t end up sticking, but some do, like my friend Paul Stamatiou’s project from Atlanta Startup Weekend 2007, Skribit.com. Anyways, I had a fun time shooting photos and video I hope to edit some day. I also finally got to meet Daniel Brusilovsky, one of my inspiring internet friends.
We stayed that night with my friend Jerry Paffendorf at The Dragon Drop and headed to the Burning Man BBQ where we met up with fellow Burners and met with Marian Goodell, Heather Gallagher (Camera girl), and Andie Grace (Actiongrl) !!! And I finally got to meet Michael Michael (Danger Ranger), one of the original Burning Man co-founders and a huge inspiration for my documentary As The Dust Settles.
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…
The last couple weeks of April and first couple weeks of May were kinda a blur. Things were fast. Here’s a recap.
April 15th, I went the DVD Party for the film The Art of Travel which Chris Masterson starred in. The film was directed by Thomas Whelan and produced by my filmmaking friend Brian LaBelle.
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.
My friend Thomas Verrette premiered his film, I Am The Bluebird at the Atlanta Film Fest. I was super excited! Here’s his genius trailer:
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.
Did Jury Service for a few days which sucked…. Then Alex’s new EP for his side project, Tonight’s The Night launched on itunes!
Drove to Orange County and dropped RED998 off at the RED HQ to get the audio board upgraded. I then went to the Evolver Los Angeles launch where Daniel Pinchbeck ran a gathering of minds. A few days later my friend Leah Meyerhoff cast the main actors for her film Unicorns. She was written up in Variety. congrats!
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.
In May, I launched a test project on the new site Kickstarter. Pretty neat! I Am The Bluebird won the audience award at the Sunscreen Film Fest. congrats! Here’s Brad Kugler’s recap video.
The all the new 16×9 widescreen Four Eyed Monsters episodes launched on youtube! The DVD is available in the US here.
RED998 was in a submarine in Fallen Leaf Lake up at Tahoe with Nathan Garofalos
May 10th was the LA premiere of the film I edited. America’s Phoneless, directed by Ted Prescott. It was part of the closing night of film at Mockfest 2009.
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 !!!!!!
I stumbled upon Live for Fame from Karen Abad. It’s a neat sharing site where you can share your best photo work and music work…. Nice work Michael Perry and Andrew Cornett!! Her’e s my profile there. I have a few of my favorite photos from flickr up.
I decided not to fly to the Cannes Film Fest this year…. my friend Scilla Andreen from Indieflix, Anita Ondine from TouchLight Media, and Jamie King (who did the film Steal This Film) were all there. Hopefully someday a project of mine will make it there.
May 18th was Caitlin Randolph’s and Viola’s birthdays! You guys rock!
Also check out my friend Roger’s film!!!!! The Age of Change
peace,
Mike
Quiznos teamed up with independent filmmakers, Hunter Weeks (10 MPH/10 Yards/Ride the Divide) and Mike Dion to produce a series of videos that capture the Quiznos Torpedo phenomenon and aim to inspire anyone to create videos of their own for the “Where’s Your Torpedo” $10,000 Video Challenge.
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 our 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.
Genius Music by my friends!
First Music Track by: We All Inherit The Moon myspace.com/weallinheritthemoon
Second Music Track by: The American Dollar theamericandollar.info
picturevideo on vimeo.
picturevideo on youtube.
Here is the slideshow of the flickr set.
Check out the contest at www.toastytorpedo.com
Quiznos on Twitter twitter.com/QuiznosToaster
Quiznos on Facebook tinyurl.com/quiznosfb
Here are the videos that we made:
Immediately after returning from the epic 50 States in 14 Days journey all over the US, I jumped in my car, and headed to Yosemite to join Tiff and Todd and their family for a couple days up in Yosemite and the Sequoias. Seeing Half Dome again was so awesome! It’s been a while since I was last up in Yosemite. Seeing the giant Sequoias was super fun, we even got to drive through one =) Tiff shoots awesome photos.
I have wanted to do the tour of Griffith Observatory for many years. Back in 2002 they closed the doors and started a $93 million renovation and expansion project. In November 2006, they reopened with several new exhibits!
It was super fun getting to enjoy the new exhibits. At night we even got to see Saturn through a telescope. Here’s Tiff’s post.
Anyone still missing what is happening? Well lots of things are happening. Lots of things have happened…
Bill Ryan and Kerry Cassidy have been working on a truly beautiful project that I hope everyone knows about. It’s called Project Camelot
Take an active part in making our future better by taking some time to find out the truth.
Here is a video of a seminar that Bill Deagle did at the Granada Forum. Bill gives a great summary of many things that are going on. I have done extensive research on many of the things that Bill talks about. I’d say about 90% of what Bill says is true. Project Camelot has done several interviews with Bill as well.
Part 1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2221852945040630461
Part2
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2585664107547943684&hl=en
Part 3
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-452228146235353070
Part 4
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2014494460891596371
If you want to learn more about what is going on, get in touch.
Halves!!!!
Awhile back, I started a collaboration project called Halves. The idea is that each person picks 5 things to shoot and we both shoot all 10.
I finished two of the Halves projects!!!!! One with Meghan Plowman, here’s the set: Link And another one with Tracey Mellinger. Here’s the set: Link
Each of these sets are awesome!!!! We hope to make some awesome prints at some point.
I got to be part of the DIYDAYS events in 2008 in LA and San Francisco. This year, I couldn’t join the DIYDAYS in Philly, so I made a video. Arin Crumley and Zak Forsman, among others are doing a neat panel called: Changes in Creative Collaboration. Here is the video I made which is part of the New Breed project from The Workbook Project.
music by: http://www.myspace.com/countersparkmusic
How does one take a moment to reflect? How does one put into words the experiences of life? Here’s a quick update.
My friend Robert Hogg and his company, Toy Kite Software launched a crazy genius iphone game called iSamurai. If you have an iphone, it’s a pretty genius app.
One of my major inspirations is a genius filmmaker named Ondi Timoner. Her latest documentary, We Live In Public, is out now!!! Lots of screenings everywhere. Since she won best documentary at this year’s Sundance, she has been touring all over the world for various film festivals. The film is now out! Check out the trailer here.
I was excited to receive a copy of Issue#81 of MovieMaker Magazine. This issue has a list of the Top Ten Indie Innovators. Arin Crumley is on the list, and my photo was used as the photo page for the article. It’s a shot from our 2008 shoot at Burning Man for As The Dust Settles. Here’s a link to the PDF http://tinyurl.com/ATDSmmag. I blogged about it on the ATDS blog here.
I went to RED’s REDucation Day. I got to briefly hang out with Mark from Off Hollywood & Ted from RED & Dino & Mike Cioni & Alexander from Octamas. It was awesome seeing a bunch of my original RED inspirations.
I finally got to see BURDEN!!!!!!!!!!! I have been a huge fan of this project for many many years. My friend Michael Lynch directed it out in chicago, and has been doing the post production and getting the SFX done for a quite a while. Congrats!!!! Here’s a blog with a bunch of photos from the premiere !!! Link
I also got to attend the DVXUSER screening, which was at the Downtown Indie Theatre this year. Zak did an awesome job running it. Some really great work. I also got to see Javier again! It was like a mini FHTA reunion!!!!
Jackie was out in LA for part of August doing an architecture program at UCLA, we went to the beach for a day! It was nice seeing her.
In August, Kieran Murphy (who I worked with back in the day on Eagle Eye) was shooting a TV show pilot for director Hadley Klein called Good Morning Rabbit. Nathan flew in to AC on the shoot, and RED998 with the Canon lenses was once again used to shoot some genius footage. Here’s some of Hadley’s BTS photos. Here’s some press links. Link Link Link Link.
If anyone was following the ATDS twitter, you would have known that As The Dust Settles was chosen to be part of the IndieGoGo Tease and Screen event at the Sausalito Film Fest. It was a super neat experience and the screening was sold out. We got to join several other IndieGoGo films including Zak Forsman’s Eloquent Graffiti. I got to screen a really unique interactive teaser. I blogged about it on the ATDS blog. IndieGoGo also blogged about the event here.
Late in August, my friend Terry Jones finally launched FluidDB. Crazy excited to see where this project will go!!!
A while ago, Ozan, Macgregor, and I shot a spec ad for the Aston Martin Vantage. Big thanks to Ted Prescott!!! RED998 and RED506 at it again!!!! Here’s the spec ad: http://vimeo.com/6255317 Macgregor also finished a nice montage of what we shot on RED998 while in India in December. It’s an epic video postcard! Here’s my Flickr set: http://bit.ly/MHindia
Anyone follow the LA fires? It seemed like my house was surrounded.
Working with such a large group of people can be a struggle. But in the end, I hope that everything works out. I posted a twitter on Aug 28th expressing how I felt about the situation.
“A round table (like the Knights of the Round Table) has no head. But someone did build the table. And someone did buy the chairs.”
Anyone heading to Burning Man?
Well…. do you publicly blog about things? or keep them private? Who cares? I tend to always speak positively about other people publicly. Anyways.
With a huge epic participatory documentary not yet complete, I headed back to Burning Man for my second time. Last year was crazy epic in every way possible. It was my first time, and I was producing a huge documentary. Last year’s blog after BM. We loaded the bikes and headed out.
Welcome to Burning man 2009! This year’s theme was “Evolution”
The experience at this year’s Burning Man was extremely different from last year. This year I found myself alone most of the time. I did end up hanging out with a bunch of the As The Dust Settles photobook team! So that was really neat. Huge shout out to Katie Lee, Scott London, Lauren Randolph, Tristan Savatier, Ryan Jesena, Tomas Loewy, John Curley, and Gary Cohen
They each continue to blow me away with their genius work. I’m super excited to put together an awesome photobook, that truly captures the 2008 Burning Man experience. It’s gonna be great. Check out some of their work from this year’s Burning Man: Tomas’s 2009 slideshow, Tristin’s 2009 set, Ryan’s 2009 set, Scott’s epic 2009 set, John’s 2009 set, John also was blogging around the clock for the official Burning Man Blog, and Lauren’s 2009 set. This year, Lauren and her friend Audrey, ran Camp Emoticon. It was an awesome photobooth on the playa.
I camped in Monkey Business Camp with several friends including Matt Scott and Star. We had a huge yellow banana above our camp and a bunch of little monkeys along the front of the camp. Lots of people commented on the yellow banana that Matt built.
A project that I have been following for years, was not at Burning Man 2008, but it was on the playa this year! Bigger and Better than ever!!! Mark Lotter’s Cubatron!
I ran into a bunch of people this year: I crossed paths with my friend Dillon Morris! I also found Laurent Le Gall, the director of a great Burning Man documentary called, Voyage in Utopia. It was awesome meeting another Burning Man documentary filmmaker, especially one who is such an inspiration. Here’s his trailer for Voyage in Utopia. I also randomly found Valerio! He is a really great person, a macro chef, and an expert on the Mayan calendar. Last year we met up at Kushi and had several lengthy conversations about the universe, we ended up discussing Burning Man quite a bit, and last year he joined our documentary project. He continues to be an inspiration.
This year I got to meet a few new people who have become huge inspirations. Here’s one of the unique stories: On Friday of BM this year I was wondering around. I ended up being led down a path to a tepee. Inside this tepee a bunch of people were listening to someone. I sat down and listened for hours. A truly genius discussion about life and the universe. I left totally inspired. I then headed to the Do Lab/El Circo Stage to shoot that night. I ended up there a bit early and got to listen to the genius musicians, Lynx and Jamie Janover. After the performance I got to talk to Lynx, and became a huge fan. I got a EP CD from her.
When I got home after BM, I followed up, adding her to my myspace friends and sending her a message about how much I loved her work. I also messaged Jamie and told him how much I loved his work. I was able to check email and sync up with a few blogs I follow, and in one of the blogs was a link to Nassim’s Unified Field Theory paper as well as a video that someone had made explaining it. This led me down the path of reseaching everything I could about Nassim’s work. This led me to a video of Jamie giving his talk about Nassim’s work. The man I had sat and listened to for hours in the tepee at Burning Man was Jamie. Crazy small world. Everything is so crazy connected. I would love to work with Lynx and Jamie. Hopefully soon.
I did manage to find some of the people who worked with me on the documentary we did last year. It was nice seeing them.
Brad Templeton continues to create breathtaking panoramas. Check out his work here. I also found Andie Grace’s daughter Juniper! amazing how fast kids grow =) And I also payed a visit to Todd Huffman and friends at the Playagon Village. Todd is one of the founders of the BIL Conference and continues to do a lot of interesting projects.
I can’t wait to process some of the footage I shot on RED998 this year. Here’s my flickr set. It was crazy crazy dusty and windy this year. Here’s an average mid-day moment.
And lastly, I did end up finding Larry Harvey. I even got to say thank you to him eye-to-eye.
light and love.
Macgregor finished the FX for this short teaser for the crazy epic short we plan on shooting hopefully in 2010. This footage we shot on RED998 while in China in December 2008.
Right after arriving back from Burning Man, I got to be part of a really great short film directed by Ruairi Robinson (Academy Award nominee in 2002). Ruairi has been a huge a inspiration of mine for many years. He has done many successful short films and commercials. I saw The Silent City, and I said, wow. genius! So I was grateful and excited to be able to work with him. Macgregor flew in to be the cinematographer on the project, and Nathan Garofalos flew in to be the 2nd AC. I ended up being the 2nd AD and on set still photographer. I delt with everyone’s paper work and made sure everything on set was running smoothly. It was a fun-filled week with an awesome cast and crew!
Can’t wait to work with Ruairi again. One of the producers was Nick Ryan. He did an awesome film called A Lonely Sky and has also been one of my inspirations.
We shot on a few RED cameras, the main one with ELITE anamorphic lenses, and RED998 with some Canon lenses for some cut-aways.
Right after I returned all the gear from Ruairi’s shoot, Ozan flew in from Vancouver. A few days later, Macgregor, Ozan, RED998, and I took off for a crazy road trip adventure! Neither Macgregor or Ozan had seen the sites of California. And even though I had just been on a crazy neat trip up to Yosemite, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work with them on a few projects.
Day 1 of the trip took us out past the Salton Sea, to Imperial Sand Dunes. I had never been there before, so that was super neat. We then headed up to Red Rock Canyon outside of Vegas. We stayed in Vegas, and Ozan and I did XScream on top of the Stratosphere, On our way to meet up with Ayz, we stopped at a gas station in Indian Springs NV. They were playing a song from my friend Ali’s new album!
We then met up with Ayz Waraich and his team. We shot for a day on a project he was working on with a few actors. For parts of the day we had 20mph winds. Fun times were had!
We then headed up to shoot around Tioga Pass and cross over through Yosemite, but several hours before we got there, they had closed the Tioga Pass because of too much snow! No worries! We headed up through Tahoe, and stopped by Nathan’s house. From there we went straight across to San Francisco, and ended up staying with Jerry at the Drgaon Drop. Huge shout out to Jerry! Check out his new project called Loveland where you can invest in inches of Detroit.
We shot in the SF area for a couple days and briefly met up with Aaron Marshall. Aaron did the music for UYUNI!!! He is also a genius filmmaker. We then headed up to Marin County. Such a beautiful place!!! Then we headed down to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The Redwood trees are so beautiful and green!
Along the long drive back to LA, we stopped in Bakersfield area to shoot near the old oil fields there. Our last stop on the crazy adventure before Ozan and Macgregor flew out, was shooting on the beach in the Malibu/Point Dume area… at Sunset of course!
The trip can be summarized with “go go go. stop stop stop. go go go. stop go! GO! stop! one more time!” I look forward to the footage, I’m sure the results will be genius! Along this whole adventure I was a runner, in one of the projects we shot, so every day I got a ton of exercise.
My friends over at Panacea have put together probably one of the most important collections ever. Free energy technology is real and has been real for a very long time. I have been doing extensive research in this field ever since I read Atlas Shrugged. There are countless people who have developed all sorts of inventions that use the energy that we have at our finger tips. Can you imagine if we gathered some of the greatest inventors and offered them some of the funds that we just spent in the middle east?
Check out the YouTube playlist Part 1 here and Part 2 playlist here.
Without a moment to relax, my adventures continued. After getting back from the epic CA road trip, I got busy doing taxes and eating pizza… DejaVu? I joined Arin Crumley at the FIND Filmmaker Forum after party. He was part of a disscusion with Lizzie Gillett, one of the producers of The Age of Stupid, and one of the people involved with http://www.indiescreenings.net/ I also got to hang out with Ondi Timoner and chatted about ATDS.
A couple days later I got to meet up with Rob Hindle. He is the genius filmmaker behind The Lone Filmmaker series. For many years he has been making a feature film by himself. I showed him a couple teasers for As The Dust Settles that I was working on, and we talked about filmmaking.
Late in October was the launch of Workbook Project’s RADAR Season 2!! Oct 30 was the RED announcement, for the new cameras Scarlet and Epic. We had over 12,000 people on REDuser for the announcement. Crazy excited about the new cameras.
For several days in the beginning of November, I got to shoot some BTS stills for my friend Ayz’s sci-fi short, The Devine River. It was awesome being on set, and having solely the focus of shooting great BTS stills. Normally I’m multi-tasking, or producing or running around as an AD. So it was neat to be able to shoot for him. The film should turn out really nicely. They shot on RED with some anamorphic lenses. I also got to meet Karen Abad, who was also helping out with the shoot. She’s a fellow Project Pedal fan and supporter.
My friend Michael Perry, who started LiveforFame.com highlighted me and my photography work on LiveforFame Check out the Video: http://vimeo.com/7429949
The month of November continued. After countless hours of importing/labeling/organizing/yelling at miniDV tapes, and countless terabytes of copying/indexing/formatting, night after night after night, I end up heading to bed just catching our nearest star rising over the horizon. The sunrises are epically beautiful.
Noah Kadner’s book got published on Peachpit!!! I have a bunch of photos is the book including a photo on page 1 of us shooting As The Dust Settles. His book, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera, covers a bunch of info about the RED camera and working with the workflow. You can get the book at Amazon.com
Amongst all the crazy projects I have been doing, I did get to watch Jason Calacanis’s show, This Week In Startups a couple times. He did one with Matt Mullenweg and another one with Gary Vaynerchuk. (whose genius book, CRUSH IT! just came out) These are amongst my favorite #TWIST shows yet.
November 19th I went to DIY DAYS LA. It was neat seeing Lance and a bunch of people. Jon Reiss’s new book Think Outside The Box Office is out now. Here is Jon Reiss’s talk from that day:
In the last couple weeks I have been dealing with a lot of media manage type stuff. I also have been working on a project, getting several thousand slides sorted and mailed out to ScanCafe and DigMyPics. These photos are from the 60’s and 70’s mostly, so getting them scanned and organized is important. I am finding some truly beautiful moments captured by my mom and dad.
During the months of October and November I shared a ton of things on my facebook wall. I shared links to things that inspired me, I asked questions and got feedback, I also shared some things that people should be aware of. I have not been very vocal with all the information I have. Maybe I will decide to be more vocal at some point. But really what needs to happen, is that people need to wake up. There are things that have happened in our country and on our planet that have been kept secret for many many decades. Recently, with the power and freedom of the internet, people have decided to go public by becoming whistleblowers, people have decided to speak out about things. Please do research. All information is now available online. Find out the truth.
Here’s a quick collection of thoughts/links/updates I posted on facebook. I invite you to read on:
Sept 25: I hope people can read between the lines. This doesn’t sound good to me.
Sept 26th: wow. what a day. Ron Paul out there doing his best. Did you guys watch the videos of the HR1207 hearings? and at the same time the totally crazy videos coming back from the G20 meetings….. kinda crazy that both are happening at the same time.
Oct 9: October led me to many things. Many truly inspiring ideas. Run as fast as you can in direction of your dreams. seriously. How more clearly can I put it? The list has countless things on it…… but this morning at around 3 am I became enlightened. It’s a feeling I have never had. and I feel that it will never go away. I will be finishing my current slate of actions and I will be moving on to another place and time. Nassim Haramein is genius!. well done my friend! if you want to understand everything. Here is a simple video explaining everything and the pdf. Unified Field theory! Bam! Um…… Cybersecurity Act of 2009 seriously? Spike’s film that he made with Max, called Where The Wild Things Are came out! Here’s a great BTS of the film.
Oct 10: An epically genius list of some of the most important documentaries ever made. have fun with this one….truth. know it. Wow. Marko Rodin is genius! Vortex-based Math video Wonderful words from Esther: “You get to choose. How you feel indicates how you have chosen.” For many years I have learned an incredible amount from Esther and the Teachings of Abraham. I got the scans back from the disposable cameras we shot at Burning Man!!!! Can’t wait to upload them. Oct 11: Wow. How do bills like this get created? H.R. 256 and H.R. 3017
Oct 15: I feel blessed to be surrounded by so many people who love me. thank you for all your energy and support. You are not the costumes you wear. you are not your fears. you are not your body. you are not what others thnk. relax. Remember. The DNA in your 100 trillion cells in your body, if stretched end to end, will wrap around planet Earth 5 million times….!! Oct 16: So many major things happening in DEC it is CRAZY! Once again feeling crazy inspired by this genius video. Ok… well um….. I….. just got to talk to Marko Rodin on the phone. wow.
Oct 17: My friend Johnny has some killer new tracks! loving them!!! Counterspark* rocks!
Oct 18: If someone else upsets you, it’s because they are hitting an issue that you have. If someone does something, and it no longer is your issue, you won’t be upset by them. Light and Love. Listening to Worried About Satan genius! (soundtrack for @asthedust)
Oct 21: Avoiding drowning in the sea of drives. #27 done, about 20 more! Now listening to Cheer (soundtrack for @asthedust) Alec’s work is genius!
Oct 22: Alex’s new film is out. Do your research. Find out what’s going on. Fall of the Republic. Another fascinating video. be fearless! Link. Oct 24: so sad… you have started a chain reaction that will be hard to stop. Hope everyone is well. Be smart. Be well. declaring a national emergency…. seriously?
Oct 26: I predict that enough people will be smart enough to study the truth about our history. and will be smart enough to avoid getting looped into the games that are playing on the stage right now… follow where the money has gone… Mercola. thank you. your information is much appreciated. be smart. do your research. All information is now available online. Ron Paul speaking about it. Shocking evidence about it being created and planned. Like the actual patents for the vaccine from the drug companies prior to the first report of the flu? Seems eerily similar to the Patriot Act being written before Sept 11… Seriously do some research. If you really are interested in knowing. start here 911
Oct 27: Ali rockin’ her US tour for her new album!!!!! Live video from Alabama!!! www.afinefrenzy.com Seriously getting close… another few days of crazy confusing copies and back ups… then Day 1 of editing begins! I dare you to be you. Remember to treat each life experience as a gain, it will always benefit you better. I was talking to some of my plants today… They brought up some neat ideas I had not thought of in a while. Plants don’t need to understand english. They understand our emotions. Love plants! or for the short version of one of the key parts. So beautiful! the clusters of galaxies are so epic. Hubble’s universe.
Oct 29: ya so crazy excited!!!!!! I have been dealing with Hard drives now for WEEKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! can’t wait to edit! Oct 30: down to the last few Terabytes!!!!! on another note….. everyone ready for full disclosure? it’s coming soon! Oct 31: Check out Roger’s genius feature film Moonshine. So I was talking with someone yesterday. The chat ended up with us talking about the Pentagon. Then she mentioned something about a plane that hit the Pentagon… I gave her a curious look. Then asked her why she thought a plane had ever hit the Pentagon… she fumbled a bit… and I said “You should do some research.”
NOVEMBER!!!
Nov 1: We are now in the month of November! I’ve never been more excited in my entire life. Nov 4: when we become young enough to understand, there will no longer be any questions. Nov 5: so… can someone please write a super neat script using some of the things on this wonderful list!!!! love it!!!! Or maybe a series of shorts!!! Here’s page 5. Nov 6: some of the greatest stars of my life: My mom, grandma, and aunt.
Nov 7: be careful with your smiles, they are contagious. I am interested in your success. I love the beat and the message of this Hip-Hop video by Matisyahu. Each of us assigns the meaning to things we focus on. what we focus on is what we feel. Wow. Genius video showing The Decade in 7 Minutes Been doing a lot of reading about my favorite author, Ayn Rand. Her ideas are really valid. Be selfish. Recently a bunch of videos have been placed on youtube. Some really great interviews. Dear timeline, I hear that you and I have a date. It makes me happy that I will see you soon. Hopefully we can get to know eachother well.
Nov 9: On Flickr, I recently hit 110,000 view counts on my stream! and someone bought me an extra year of Flickr Pro!!!! thank you!!! Nov 13: be careful who you listen to. Just because before, you may have believed the lies of certain people, doesn’t mean that you can’t do some research for yourself and learn what the truth really is. Be fearless, it’s magic. Nov 14: Sending love to those being killed by Baxter in Kiev. sadly I believe the ripple effect has started. I was just in Kiev a few years ago. beautiful place… Be fully aware with everything that is happening. Dec and January mark the beginning of many many plans. While you are at it, research Codex.
Nov 16: Do you believe everything people say? hm… I tend to do research and come to my own conclusions. What is sad, is how all this has been planned for years and years… It’s so weird how dumb it looks when they try to bury the truth about it. Nov 17: “He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.” -Ben Franklin I am steering this ship. If it’s gonna crash, it will be my fault. Secret: “Be the bigger person… I enjoy every day… It’s the game I love… Massive appreciation!! Don’t listen! It’s all about Hunger! So many people are 99% of the way there.” -Gary Vaynerchuk. The video rocks!
Nov 18: All information is now available. yes. all of it. Be clear with your intentions. people are speaking. secrets are no longer secrets. things are gonna get crazy!… Fearless!!!! pass along the good news!!! thinking some awesome thoughts about some people!!!! aaaaah!!!!
Nov 21: everyone ready???? fun times ahead! the Hadron Collider has restarted! Genius musician, Nils Frahm has signed with Erased Tapes!!!! Nov 22: my home team, LA Galaxy didn’t win the MLS Cup.
Nov 23: So, the emails were leaked. Nothing new, the lies have been told for years and years. Instead of trying to figure out who will make more money, can we focus on some solutions now? I’m increasingly interested in nothing. The fullness and completeness of nothing… simple. clean. unattached. Nov 24: Each of us assigns the meaning to things we focus on. What we focus on is what we feel.
So, I’m almost on to bigger and better things, but all the organizing needs to be done first…
Back on October 9th I posted an update on my facebook wall. It stated:
“The list has countless things on it…… but this morning at around 3 am I became enlightened. It’s a feeling I have never had. and I feel that it will never go away. I will be finishing my current slate of actions and I will be moving on to another place and time.“
Being grateful. Light and Love, Mike
Crazy!!!!
Soon, I hopefully will finish several projects. I want to get the Room 27 DVD available online. I also have some awesome BTS video to edit for Wake Up You’re Sleeping! and UYUNI. I also need to finish the greatest participatory documentary ever made: As The Dust Settles. Looks like RED998 is heading out for a crazy epic 2010 ski project with Poorboyz!!! Anyone gonna be out at Sundance in January?
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Appreciation, happiness, freedom, energy, love, and remember think for yourself.
Being grateful. Light and Love, Mike Hedge
behedge@yahoo.com