Drone Cinematography + Live Video Streaming
I’m really bummed to have missed the Blip Festival again this year. I first heard about it at SXSW last year when I saw a screening of Reformat the Plant, a documentary on the chiptunes scene and the first Blip Festival. As an 8-bit video game and computer junkie, this was what I’ve been waiting for. BBtv was there this year.
This is freaking pimp. The White Holly, a boat normally used for research did a bit of Burning Man style research on the high bay waters off Sausalito this past weekend. Fire art, blinky lights, a pulse jet, Dan Das Mann sculptures, fireworks, a loud ass Victory Siren and an upside down Telsa coil! From Megavolt2‘s description of the video below.
On Saturday December 13, 2008 the former navy ship White Holly, now a privately operated scientific research vessel run by Captain Vince Backen, was entered into The Sausalito Yacht Club “Parade of Lights” held in Sausalito, California in the San Francisco Bay. Boat parades will never be the same… the event was organized by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito in collaboration with Jack Schroll and Black Rock FX (El Diablo – jet engine fire effect, Chrysler air raid siren, smoke generator and methanol mines,) John Behrens and Omega Recoil, (upside down Tesla Coil,) Epiphany by Dan Das Mann, Karen Cusolito and Pyrokinetics (Danya Parkinson and Jo Bard,) Headless Point Studio, American Steel Studios, Flaming Lotus Girls (Mini Mega Junior – fire poofer,) Camron “Teiwaz” Assadi and The Crucible of Oakland California (flame cannons on the upper poop- deck,) Bonefire Bob and over 150 others! All of this so they could have a good time for approximately two minutes…
Burning Man long ago escaped the playa, so it’s no surprise to see some of the best stuff make it out the serene waters of the bay. I hope I don’t need to buy tickets next year.
You need to watch the above video in HD. Then check out this other great video of the action. Geeked.info has some more info and links to other videos and photos.
I’m finally plowing through the massive amounts of footage I shot at Roboexotica in Vienna. This cocktail robot, the K&K Kavalier Klavier by students at FH Joanneum in Gratz, is a piano that allows one to “compose a drink”. You’ll notice a bunch of liquors and mixers mounted at the top. They connect to a series of tubes in the back that connect to valves controlled by a microcontroller that magically determines the right mixture of liquids based on the song you play. Here’s Astera making Red a drink with a little Bach piano concerto.
Astera plays a drink on the Kavalier Klavier from ekai on Vimeo.
Bre Pettis posted an amazing photoset of old Austrian illustrations of how one might die by electrocution that he discovered last week while we were checking out the Technisches museum in Vienna.
Also in the energy section of the museum was an interactive model of how to move radioactive objects around. Here’s Bre giving it a whirl.
Bre knows how to handle unstable materials from ekai on Vimeo.
They both begin with an A, but that’s about all Austria and Alabama have in common. Don’t let Austrians and Alabama mix. The results can be quite… wrong, yet somehow still entertaining.
A cool installation by Peter Kogler at the MUMOK in Vienna, Austria. It’s a large square room with a bunch of projectors synced up projecting this. It feels awesome.
Riding the space elevator from ekai on Vimeo.
Another year, another day after Thanksgiving, another Buy Nothing Day. Instead, make something! You just might save someone’s life.
Kiki & Bubu capture the consumptive spirit of Christmas in song quite nicely.
Here’s an excerpt with my sit down interview with Spike Lee yesterday. Myself and a handful of other bloggers & vloggers got 20 minutes with Spike to ask him about the influence of the Internet, social networks, mobile devices and cheap tools on film making. Oh, and also his view on UFOs!! This is part of the Nokia Productions film project.
A few questions with Spike Lee from ekai on Vimeo.
Sam Rockwell: Bronstein at Large from ekai on Vimeo.
One of the coolest things about what I do for living is being able to work with a wide variety of people. Last week, my friend Eve who works at San Francisco Chronicle, asked if I could shoot a video interview with Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large at the Chron and Sam Rockwell, actor who stars in Choke. Choke is the latest film based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, famous for writing Fight Club. It opens this Friday.
After a year of legal wrangling, 19-year old Star Simpson finally tells her story to BoingBoingTV. Star was the MIT student who was arrested at Boston’s Logan airport last year for wearing LED art on a hoodie when she went to go pick her friend Tim up. She was immediately surrounded by 40 cops, shackled and charged with “possessing a hoax device.” When it became apparent to Boston’s overreactive authorities that Star was not a threat and the media frenzy was in overdrive, they persisted in charging her with a crime. A year later, the case is settled and Star gives her first interview recounting the events.
I shot the video from Star’s perspective, so I got a chance to meet her and understand her a bit. She’s a super sweet, curious and creative college student, the complete opposite of what Boston’s authorities made her out to be. Boston has a history of overreacting to things they don’t understand, which is quite unfortunate. The climate of fear that many of us live under, leads to this kind of egregious reaction. At the end of the day, Star simply wants to build cool stuff that we can all appreciate.
