Back in LA

Posted by mikehedge on March 18, 2009

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.

IMG_7447

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.

IMG_7293IMG_7348IMG_7459IMG_7583IMG_7512

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.

IMG_7841IMG_8238IMG_8126

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.

IMG_8309IMG_8328IMG_8401

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.

IMG_8771IMG_8781

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 =)

IMG_9055IMG_9228IMG_9015IMG_8942IMG_9201

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!

IMG_9266IMG_9272IMG_9281

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.

Arin20090311_0101Arin20090311_0116Arin20090311_0122Arin20090311_0037Arin20090311_0187

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

  1. brad Kugler Said,

    Nice! Always fun to hear and SEE your numerous adventures.

  2. mikehedge.com » Blog Archive » 1127 2009 BLOG Said,

    […] In February, I finally returned back to LA. It had been months and months since I was last in LA. I left in October and continued traveling. I ended up going to 12 countries. The amount of media I created on that trip was crazy! terabytes and terabytes. Please read the blog here. […]

Add A Comment